Honey Bee Removal – Wenvoe
This was one of our earlier cutouts if we had known then what we know now this would have been a much more straightforward job.
We had been expecting to find the colony behind the wood cladding, but as you can see it wasn’t there, so on this occasion we needed to come back the following day with kit to allow us to work from inside the property as cleanly as possible, and for the contents of the room to be moved.
If we had had a thermal camera back then we would have found the bees straight away.
These honey bees had been using a couple of small holes in the wooden wall cladding about halfway up, to gain entry into the property.
We had made the assumption that they were going to be behind this wooden cladding in the wall void; something we had come across often, but not on this occasion. To our surprise they were taking a very long walk up the inside of the cavity wall to the honey bee nest in the ceiling space.
This was probably because over time someone had been sealing up the various entrance points that the bees had been using.
Thermal Imaging benefits
These days we use a very expensive FLIR thermal imaging camera to assist us in figuring out whats going on when we carry out a bee inspection so as to identify the best options available to you.
If we had had that piece of kit at the beginning of this bee removal we would have known exactly where the bees were, i.e. in the ceiling rather than the wall.
Swarming queen
We got there in the end and managed to clear the ceiling void of all the honey comb and bees; But just to add a complication to this job the Queen bee took off with a large swarm while we were halfway thru making an opening in the ceiling.
You can see in the photo that there is drone brood, and the space was packed so it was likely there was an intent to swarm in the next couple of days.
Luckily for us the queen landed high-up in a tree, close-by, and we were fortunate enough to be able to bag her and the swarm. We later combined the queen, the swarm and the brood (young bees, eggs and larvae) along with the remainder of the colony, in a full sized hive with a super on top, far away from the colonies original location.
For further information on bee removal and relocation please use the contact form in the side bar or
call 01297 441272 to speak to someone local who knows all about it.
If you are looking for more info on removing bees from a chimney check out our article Removing bees in a chimney, for information on bee removal and relocation from roofs you may want to look at our page Honey bees in roof, or if you have bees in a wall our page Honey bees in wall maybe of use.
For additional examples on removals of honey bees from other more unusual places check thru The Hive Blog and search for “unusual bee removals”.
