Posted: 7/13/2009 3:59:17 PM EDT
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I have some bee's living in my backyard stucco fence. This is the second time this has happened, first time I had to tear that part of the fence down to get the combs out (had lots of honey that lasted me months) and after building up the wall again (needed remodeling anyway) and repainting the entire thing, making sure there were no holes left, I was bee free for several years. Now this summer they've come back and somehow managed to find a new hole inside and have begun again.
Is there a way I can coax them out without having to destroy a brand new stucco fence? I was thinking of building one of those wood beehive rack systems and was hoping there would be a way I could convince them to move into that instead. |
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You can remove them and install them in a hive, but you cannot coax them out. Sorry! Crap. 
I really don't want to kill the bee's either by sealing them up like in a tomb. And the thought of having my own fresh, free honey is an appealing one, the honey from the last hive was pretty delicious. If I were to only remove a small section of the fence, and somehow managed to find the queen and transplant her into a new hive with some old cones, would that bring the rest out? |
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You can remove them and install them in a hive, but you cannot coax them out. Sorry! Crap.
I really don't want to kill the bee's either by sealing them up like in a tomb. And the thought of having my own fresh, free honey is an appealing one, the honey from the last hive was pretty delicious. If I were to only remove a small section of the fence, and somehow managed to find the queen and transplant her into a new hive with some old cones, would that bring the rest out? Often, yes, and I've done that. It's nice to see that you're comfortable working around them. Most people aren't. |
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One of my friends had a mess of bees in the wall of his house and he sprayed them with everything under the sun to kill them to no avail.
He hired a bee keeper to remove them He used a special vacuum to get the bees out of the wall, started at 7PM and did not finish until 12PM. He said the bees would be kept in quarantine for a month then placed in a hive. He also removed 28lbs of honey comb. |
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You can remove them and install them in a hive, but you cannot coax them out. Sorry! Crap.
I really don't want to kill the bee's either by sealing them up like in a tomb. And the thought of having my own fresh, free honey is an appealing one, the honey from the last hive was pretty delicious. If I were to only remove a small section of the fence, and somehow managed to find the queen and transplant her into a new hive with some old cones, would that bring the rest out? Often, yes, and I've done that. It's nice to see that you're comfortable working around them. Most people aren't. I've yet to get stung by them. But as a kid I've gotten stung plenty of times, and even then it wasn't that painful. At least not when compared to a wasp sting.
Their flight path to the hive intersects the steps into my pool, so as they come in for a landing its very easy for anyone to get hit by them, and I have had a few land on me. Other people would freak out and probably get stung. So they definitely have to be relocated. |
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One of my friends had a mess of bees in the wall of his house and he sprayed them with everything under the sun to kill them to no avail. He hired a bee keeper to remove them He used a special vacuum to get the bees out of the wall, started at 7PM and did not finish until 12PM. He said the bees would be kept in quarantine for a month then placed in a hive. He also removed 28lbs of honey comb. Wow, thats not much. I have worked with a local bee keeper once (I hope he calls me back for another day, weather has been crappy) and we found one box that was full of honey. It weighed around 100+ lbs
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It's nice to see that you're comfortable working around them. Most people aren't. Yeah, it's a wonder people are so afraid of bees. Oh, right, it's the MILLION FUCKING STINGERS! Haha, when I worked with the bee keeper I was scared shitless when I had a hive a few inches from my face with thousands of bees crawling all over the place and hearing the massive roar of millions of wings flapping. Its an indescribable adrenaline dump
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I've also noticed some bee corpses strewn around the area. Is this just a natural die off or could they be infected with some kind of bee virus? The rest seem to be thriving and there's plenty of bee traffic to and from the hive. Probably a bee virus/mites. The keeper I worked with was throwing coasters laced with medication in the hives so the bees would eat the coasters and get all juiced up. |
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I had a beehive in my attic soffit. you could see them swarming at the tip top of the roof. I'll have to find pics of it. It scared the bejeezus out of me. I am terrified of bees and my house (attic) was swarming with them. I hired a beekeeper to come remove the hive (it's apparently not legal to just kill them IF you can remove them), so, he got them. he didn't take all the comb though, and being hot, drips down the side of my house. ew.
kill it with fire. |
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You can remove them and install them in a hive, but you cannot coax them out. Sorry! Crap.
I really don't want to kill the bee's either by sealing them up like in a tomb. And the thought of having my own fresh, free honey is an appealing one, the honey from the last hive was pretty delicious. If I were to only remove a small section of the fence, and somehow managed to find the queen and transplant her into a new hive with some old cones, would that bring the rest out? Actually you can coax them out. Sorry to contradict thebeekeeper1 (site staff no less, don't ban me bro!!, lol!). One way is to do what is called a trap out. 
This uses hardware cloth (1/8") formed into a cone and placed over the entrance. It allows the honeybees to exit but not return. If you've seen those commercial wasp traps, it works in a similar way (they just don't seem to figure out how to navigate back in the one access point). Eventually the entire colony acts like it is being starved out and will exit. If you want to try and catch them you can place a hive at the entrance like this: 
If you don't want to try and capture the bees, but just want them gone (w/out killing them), you could also try to get them to exit by using some "fume" liquid soaked on cotton balls and stuff them down the entrance. This is the same stuff some beekeepers use to flush bees from honey supers prior to harvesting (I just use a blower myself). This is a good (non-toxic) brand ~> 
Check your craigslist or local beekeeping org for free swarm removal offers if you don't want to deal with it yourself. Cheers, Paje |
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You can remove them and install them in a hive, but you cannot coax them out. Sorry! Crap.
I really don't want to kill the bee's either by sealing them up like in a tomb. And the thought of having my own fresh, free honey is an appealing one, the honey from the last hive was pretty delicious. If I were to only remove a small section of the fence, and somehow managed to find the queen and transplant her into a new hive with some old cones, would that bring the rest out? Actually you can coax them out. Sorry to contradict thebeekeeper1 (site staff no less, don't ban me bro!!, lol!). One way is to do what is called a trap out. http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j226/Iddee/TRAP%20OUTS/bees002.jpg This uses hardware cloth (1/8") formed into a cone and placed over the entrance. It allows the honeybees to exit but not return. If you've seen those commercial wasp traps, it works in a similar way (they just don't seem to figure out how to navigate back in the one access point). Eventually the entire colony acts like it is being starved out and will exit. If you want to try and catch them you can place a hive at the entrance like this: http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j226/Iddee/TRAP%20OUTS/Storedpics001.jpg If you don't want to try and capture the bees, but just want them gone (w/out killing them), you could also try to get them to exit by using some "fume" liquid soaked on cotton balls and stuff them down the entrance. This is the same stuff some beekeepers use to flush bees from honey supers prior to harvesting (I just use a blower myself). This is a good (non-toxic) brand ~> http://www.bee-quick.com/pump_an.gif Check your craigslist or local beekeeping org for free swarm removal offers if you don't want to deal with it yourself. Cheers, Paje You are correct––but that method is such a PITA, and has such a low success rate as to be unworkable, IMO. I just don't view it as being worthwhile. 
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Living in AZ, make sure they are not Africanized ( killer) bees.  I don't think they are. They would have killed me long ago.
They seem amazingly tolerant of my presence, I can walk up to 3 feet away from the wall and not cause alarm. When they were first building, I tried to harass them with the water hose, hoping they would move out, but they persisted and didn't even attack. Though they weren't very happy.  As I understand it, AHB are for more likely to abandon a hive when harassed.
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You can remove them and install them in a hive, but you cannot coax them out. Sorry! Crap.
I really don't want to kill the bee's either by sealing them up like in a tomb. And the thought of having my own fresh, free honey is an appealing one, the honey from the last hive was pretty delicious. If I were to only remove a small section of the fence, and somehow managed to find the queen and transplant her into a new hive with some old cones, would that bring the rest out? Actually you can coax them out. Sorry to contradict thebeekeeper1 (site staff no less, don't ban me bro!!, lol!). One way is to do what is called a trap out. http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j226/Iddee/TRAP%20OUTS/bees002.jpg This uses hardware cloth (1/8") formed into a cone and placed over the entrance. It allows the honeybees to exit but not return. If you've seen those commercial wasp traps, it works in a similar way (they just don't seem to figure out how to navigate back in the one access point). Eventually the entire colony acts like it is being starved out and will exit. If you want to try and catch them you can place a hive at the entrance like this: http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j226/Iddee/TRAP%20OUTS/Storedpics001.jpg If you don't want to try and capture the bees, but just want them gone (w/out killing them), you could also try to get them to exit by using some "fume" liquid soaked on cotton balls and stuff them down the entrance. This is the same stuff some beekeepers use to flush bees from honey supers prior to harvesting (I just use a blower myself). This is a good (non-toxic) brand ~> http://www.bee-quick.com/pump_an.gif Check your craigslist or local beekeeping org for free swarm removal offers if you don't want to deal with it yourself. Cheers, Paje Hmm, I might give that a shot. I just want to avoid damaging the wall since its been completely redone. If I cant get them to relocate on their own, I'll probably just try that spray. |