Honey bee removal Surrey

Our live honey bee removal & relocation service is available for properties in Surrey, London and the surrounding Home Counties

While we have a base located in Dorset on the South Coast of England our live honey bee removal & relocation service works remotely from there, carrying out honey bee removal in Surrey & London on a very regular basis.

SwarmCatcher is not a franchise business or a call centre, it is a family run environmentally responsible business that specialises in one thing, the removal of honey bees from places they should not be.

If you reach out to us and fill in our contact form you will benefit from a free assessment on how best to remove your honey bees, there is rarely a need for an onsite survey, if there is then we can advise on this to.

Specialist honey bee removal Surrey

If you have had a honey bee swarm arrive at your property and its taken up residence leaving you with honey bees in a roof or honey bees in a chimney, or honey bees in a wall cavity or honey bees in some other place they shouldn’t be, you will benefit greatly by contacting us.
SwarmCatcher are the Surrey honey bee removal specialists, regularly carrying out work within Surrey and surrounding areas.

Why choose Swarmcatcher for your Honey Bee Removal in Surrey

SwarmCatcher specialise in the live removal & relocation of honey bees, we are not a franchise, or a pest control company that have no real experience in removing honey bees from building structures in Surrey or somewhere else, we are a business that carries out bee removals every day of the week all year round.
Having developed unique techniques for the successful live removal of honey bee nests from homes & businesses all around Surrey we are uniquely suited to your needs.

Whether your property is close to London, in or near Richmond-on-Thames, Hampton-on-Thames or further away in the beautiful Surry Hills SwarmCatcher have all the experience needed to carry out a poison free honey bee removal extracting all your honey bees and comb without the use of any insecticide or harm to the honey bee colony.

If your property is in Cobham, Leatherhead, Guildford, Woking, Weybridge, Esher, Epsom, Virginia Water or Farnham, SwarmCatcher cover these towns to. We extract all the bees, alive, and then relocate them to one of our apiaries.

Once we have removed the honey bees we proof the area to prevent a future swarm from returning, so if your property is in a different town or village in Surrey such as Guildford, Walton-on-Thames, Camberley, Redhill, Egham, Staines, Godalming, Frimley, Dorking, Chertsey, Bagshot you can be assured that the honey bee nest and all its contents will be removed, and that the chimney or wall that the bees were in will be protected from a future bee swarm doing the same.

SwarmCatcher already removes honeybees & honeycomb from towns & villages across Surrey, extracting all the contents of the honey bee nest from within a building structure. We do this without causing any long-term damage as a result of using inappropriate methods.

The live removal is done without causing harm to the bee colony or the building and upon completion the bees are relocated to a safe place. We will then reinstate the building fabric so that you are safe in the knowledge that the bees won’t come back over a period of time.

Our honey bee removal Surrey service is offered as a complete package, including the removal of the honey bees, the relocation of the honey bee colony and the reinstatement works, or can be offered as separate entities, dependent upon your needs.

Honey bees in chimney – Surrey

If the bees are in a chimney in Surrey then this is most likely going to need a scaffold erected to the top of the chimney stack.
We offer to include this cost in our complete package but advise you to utilise your preferred local Surrey based scaffolder to avoid our inevitable markup on the scaffolding cost.
We always suggest that we talk to the scaffolder directly on your behalf so that there is no misunderstanding about our requirements. Removing honey bees from a chimney in Surrey requires specific requirements to allow the work to be carried out safely, properly and quickly, if the scaffolding is not right it will add time to the work, and can even delay the work being carried out.

We have never needed to dismantle a chimney, it’s totally unnecessary normally.
We will need to remove a couple of bricks usually (sometimes not).
So be very wary of anyone suggesting the chimney needs rebuilding, which we are hearing is being advised from new customers regularly this year.

Often removing honey bees from a chimney will involve the replacement of the flaunching (cement work on top of the chimney holding the chimney pots in place), again we can do this or you can utilise your preferred Surrey based builder. More often than not this can be fitted in at the end of the day before we leave, or if necessary done the following day.

If pointing is needed we can carry out any repointing work for you, this obviously adds time to the removal work, and we would generally advise you to employ a local builder for any pointing work, especially if its lime mortar, as they will probably be more competitively priced than us, and can better give the time that is needed.

For more information about honey bees in a chimney in Surrey we suggest looking at our home page and following the links through to honey bees in chimney and then follow through to the relevant pages.

Protecting against honey bees in a chimney in Surrey

Proofing against a reinfestation of honey bees in a chimney in Surrey is generally straightforward and not expensive to do.
For chimney flues not in use there are a couple of great off the shelf products that can be utilised, if nothing off the shelf is available its easy enough to be creative with lead and stainless steel mesh.

Honey bees in roof – Surrey

Whether fixed scaffolding is going to be necessary to remove honey bees in a roof in Surrey is going to depend on a number of factors best assessed by us (for no charge) after you have provided us all the information & photos we need.
If scaffolding is required we can liaise with the scaffolder on your behalf explaining our requirements, but at your direct expense or we can arrange for the scaffold to be erected including our markup.
If you need pointers we can usually direct you to a local Surrey based scaffolder that is happy erecting scaffold with honey bees present, and let them know what we need, this avoids any unnecessary mark up by ourselves.

More often than not we will reinstate the roof, so that anyone unaware would not know we had been there. However on depending on the roof type and the complexity we may suggest that bringing in a local Surrey based roofer would be beneficial. After all roofers are specialists and some roofing work needs to be carried out by specialists.
Even if its not needed, often the work will be carried out more quickly and less expensively by them, but we advise on this, from the start.

For more information about honey bees in a roof in Surrey we suggest looking at our home page and following the links through to honey bees in roof and then follow through to the relevant pages.

Protecting against honey bees in a roof in Surrey

Proofing against bees in a roof can often be a complicated and difficult subject, and one that needs to be discussed after we have had all the information that we need to assess your particular scenario.
We do delve into it in a small way in some of the onsite pages, but a lot of our techniques are unique to us and often best discussed on site in person once the bees are removed. None of them are stupidly expensive – but they are concepts & techniques that we have come up with to solve problems without causing other problems such as water condensation and damp issues.

Honey bees in wall – Surrey

Depending where the honey bees are in the wall cavity there may or may not be need for a fixed scaffold. Sometimes we can utilise a mobile tower, but often it will need a fixed scaffold. If fixed scaffold is required we can arrange for this for you, or we can talk to your local Surrey scaffolder on your behalf letting him know what we need, but having him bill you directly to avoid any unnecessary markup from us.

When we carry out a honey bee removal from a brick wall in Surrey we will limit the number of bricks removed to a minimum. This makes for uninspiring photos as we don’t remove large areas of brickwork, we carry out a live honey bee removal from a wall cavity in Surrey creating the least amount of disturbance possible.
Often this involves removing just 6 or 7 bricks (possibly less, depending how long the bees have been in situ, sometimes more). These bricks are removed whole and are put back again once the bees are out at the end of the day.

For more information about honey bees in a wall in Surrey we suggest looking at our home page and following the links through to honey bees in walls and then follow through to the relevant pages.

Internal or external bee removal from wall in Surrey

Not all bees in walls in the Surrey area are removed from the outside, sometimes they are best done from within the property, again we can discuss this better when we have the details & photos needed to be able to assess the honey bee removal requirements.

Protecting against honey bees in a wall in Surrey

There is nothing complicated about preventing honey bees from returning to a wall, providing its of solid construction, ie bricks and mortar and not designed with easy access to the cavity in mind.
The majority of walls are cavity walls with an external face using bricks. More often than not the bees will gain access to the wall cavity as a result of

• material degradation (weak weathered mortar),
• a hole that has been purposefully created but is no longer required and has not been filled (such as where an old overflow pipe may have run)
• a hole specifically left open during construction, that should really have been insect proofed (a weep hole, or air brick)
• a join between two different materials (i.e. soffit and brick wall)

None of these are difficult to proof against.

However not all walls are the same, so some walls require a lot more attention to detail, we can discuss this further when we have your specific details and photos. We use various techniques that we have developed over time that not only deal with proofing against the honey bees in walls in Surrey but also don’t cause future problems as a result of condensation and damp that can be caused by more commonly used methods by those with little understanding of building techniques.

Honey bee Swarm removal – Surrey

For those of you looking at our page because you have had a honey bee swarm turnup on site, which is currently clustered in a bush, tree or some other spot then you need to be getting in touch with a local bee keeping association or club and politely asking if they have someone available to come and collect it.

Swarm collection is not our speciality, it is usually relatively straight forward and does not require a great amount of knowledge so can be carried out by a far greater umber of people. That’s not to say that these swarm collectors are not knowledgeable, its that they don’t have the breadth of knowledge or experience that we as specialist bee removers have.

The quicker the collection can be carried out the better as it gives the swarm less time to decide to pickup and occupy yours or someone else’s property.
Unfortunately once they do occupy a property be it the chimney, roof or a wall everything gets a lot more expensive.

A quick search of the internet using the term “Bee Swarm Collection” followed by your town or village name should come up with a local swarm collector that can help you.

Please find below a list of sites that we identified when writing this page that say they carry out swarm collection within the Surrey area.

Croydon & surrounding area – Croydon Beekeepers Association
They have two contact numbers for arranging a swarm collection within their area.

Epsom & surrounding area – Epsom Beekeepers Association
This website refers you to the BBKA interactive map for locating honey bee swarm collectors “find a local swarm collector“

Guildford & surrounding area – Guildford Beekeepers
They offer a free service, but really they should be rewarded for their efforts.
They collect swarms in the following postcode areas
GU1 2** Guildford area
GU1 3** Guildford area
GU2 7** Guildford area
GU3 1** Hoggs Back area
GU3 3** Hoggs Back area
GU4 8** Shere, Albury Shalaford
GU5 0** Bramley
GU6 8** Cranleigh and surrounding areas
GU8 4** Hascombe
GU12 6** Ash Green
GU15 1** Camberley
GU21 4** Woking area
GU21 8** St. Johns & Woking area
GU23 4** Ripley Area
GU24 0** Pirbright, Worplesdon, Normandy
GU24 9** Bisley, West End, Knaphill
KT11 3** West Horsley area
KT24 5** East Horsley area
KT24 6** East Horsley area

Kingston upon Thames & surrounding areas – Kingston Beekeepers Association

Reigate & surrounding areas – Reigate Beekeepers
They have a list of swarm collectors that you can contact directly, that collect swarms in the following areas.
Abinger, Bookham, Caterham, Dorking, Horley, Leatherhead, Leith Hill, Merstham, Redhill, Reigate & Westcott.

Weybridge & surrounding areas – Weybridge Beekeepers a division of Surrey Beekeepers :
They don’t list their swarm collectors on their site, but you may well find a local collector using the BBKA “find a local swarm collector” page by using your full post code.

Honey Bees in Chimney

We attend more chimney honey bee removals than we do of any other type of honey bee removal or cutout. We don’t need to dismantle the chimney, we rarely remove more than 4 individual bricks. When honey bees occupy a chimney space it is usually one of three scenarios or a combination of them.

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Honey Bees in Roof

Generally speaking honey bees don’t colonise large roof spaces, when they are flying in beneath tiles they more often than not are colonising a cavity wall or an old dismantled chimney stack that is hidden beneath the tiles. But they love dormer windows and flat roofs

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Honey Bees in Wall

We remove bees from walls and we can do it without taking them down or knocking huge holes into them. We remove the bees the wax & the honey. Rarely do we need to remove more than 8 bricks, which we remove whole so they go back as they were.

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Very Happy with the service from Swarmcatcher

I contacted Swarmcatcher to enquire about removing the bees that had set up home in a disused chimney of my elderly parent’s home in Northamptonshire. There was a large hive in the chimney, the bees had been there 5 years. I received expert advice from the Swarmcatcher team, who gave me clear and detailed information regarding the removal process and associated costs. They subsequently carried out the removal work to their quoted cost and schedule. The bees are now safely rehomed and my parent’s house no longer ‘hums’ all summer. I would thoroughly recommend Swarmcatcher.

Theresa Roper

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