Live Honey Bee Removal – Nationwide

SwarmCatcher specialises in the removal of live honey bee nests & colonies along with all the honey comb and detritus.
We remove honey bee swarms, bee nests & bee colonies from chimneys, walls, roofs and other places they ought not be, without using insecticides or pesticides. 

We extract bees alive and relocate them before bee proofing the structure to prevent them returning – guaranteed! (see our page Honey Bee Removal Proofing & Guarantees)

We offer the complete package from bee removal & relocation to reinstatement works, and provide this service across the UK.

Live honey bee removal & relocation is what we are all about, we are the UK specialists in live honey bee removal and relocation. We don’t dabble at it, having been doing this for years we have gained a huge level of experience of removing bees from places they should not be.

  • We remove bees from places they should not be
  • We then relocate these bees to somewhere more suitable
  • We remove the wax, the honey, the brood and the detritus
  • We do not kill the bees, we do everything to ensure their survival
  • We don’t use insecticide or toxic chemicals to kill the bees
  • We minimise the possibility of secondary infestations for clothes moth & carpet beetle
  • We move the majority of bees by hand, keeping stress to a minimum and probability of survival to a maximum
  • We clean up all the remaining flying bees with a bee vac and then reunite them with the rest of the bee colony
  • We proof against future reinfestation of honey bees
  • We reinstate brickwork & pointing (this does not include redecorating)

Using insecticide significantly complicates a job and increase costs, see our page Poisoning Honey Bees.
When insecticide is used on a honey bee colony all the comb, dead bees, and honey needs to be treated and disposed of as toxic waste – it most certainly should not be burnt as suggested by one of the chimney sweep associations on the web. Which is a great example of why you should not believe everything written on the web by those that don’t really know enough about what they are advising on.

SwarmCatcher specialises in removing honey bees from places that others can’t, and are not insured to.

No matter the circumstances we can move the bees out and into a new home far far away.
The honey bees may be a newly arrived bee swarm or an established honey bee colony that’s been there for many years, it makes no difference – we have a unique skill set that has allowed us to specialise in live honey bee removal & relocation for a long time now.

Live honey bee removal v Swarm collecting

Live honey bee removal is completely different from swarm collecting.

Swarm collection is something that beekeepers should & often do for free. However they are limited in what they can do, i.e. collecting swarms from bushes

  • Beekeepers are not insured to work at height as a general rule
  • Beekeepers are not insured for hot work – i.e. using a smoker on or around your property
  • Beekeepers are not insured or qualified to use insecticides – not even that can of RAID or tub of ant powder bought in the supermarket (legally these can only be used by the home occupiers – and most probably not outside of the building)
  • Beekeepers (usually) do not have the required building structure knowledge or the practical experience

Please see our page Live Honey Bee Removal V Swarm Collecting for more on this.
On that page we discuss further about the need to be very wary of the advice offered by way too many swarm collectors. Far too often we hear of the very poor advice offered by the supposedly knowledgeable beekeeper.
Bear in mind the bees that are attempting to take up residence in your property are there because of one of two reasons.

  • A local beekeeper has lost control of his hive due to lack of attention or knowledge
  • A local beekeeper has in previous years lost control of his hive due to lack of attention or knowledge

Either way a local beekeeper has not been dong what was needed at some point in time.

You should also look at our page on our new Swarm Eviction service for bee swarms that have recently turned up to your property – taking the correct course of action at this point is very important, and despite this being a seemingly expensive service can save you a lot of money over the long-term.

Live honey bee removal Specialists

Swarmcatcher specialise in the live honey bee removal of honey bees from chimneys, roofs, brick & block cavity walls, soffits and many other unexpected locations. We carry out these live honey bee removals relocating the living colony to a more appropriate location – usually one of our apiaries.

To carry out these live honey bee removals we have developed several sophisticated techniques allowing us to remove honey bee colonies from most locations without having to dismantle the structure and without harming the honey bees.

We are at the forefront of bee removal techniques in the UK and offer the best advice and cost effective solutions for removing honey bees alive from your property.

What does a Live Honey Bee Removal service include?

Our live honey bee removal service includes the removal of not only the bees but the comb and honey as well.

This is very important as when left in situ there would also be a residual mass of brood (bee larvae) included with the wax comb and honey stores. This brood will die without the nurse bees to look after it, and decompose if not removed; leaving not only foul odours to contend with but also possible staining.  

Just having a bee vac to suck up all the bees is not the answer, there is far more to it.

Additionally any uncapped honey stores will run and likely add to the mess. Further down the line you may well suffer additional pest infestations, such as carpet beetles, clothes moths, ants, mice or something larger.

All of this is preventable by the complete removal of the colony, stores and any dead honey bees that may have gathered beneath the hive.

Live honey bee removal – process

When carrying out a live honey bee removal we will often vacuum the majority of the initial defensive honey bees unharmed into a bee box (we normally use a large national brood box with some frames in, so as to reduce the stress the bees are put under) the remainder of the worker bees and the nurse bees we usually leave sitting on the brood (looking after the bees to be). This brood will then be cut out with the nurse bees and placed into a nuc box.

This way the brood is kept at the correct temperature by the nurse bees during the honey bee relocation process, on occasion we may assist with the use of heat pads when it’s cold.

The remainder of the colony is removed, the walls scraped down to remove as much wax as possible, and where possible the area beneath the colony is vacuumed to remove all the bees that have died and fallen.

Any remaining flying bees within the area will be vacuumed into the bee box, and later added to the nuc box when off site.

Often, especially in chimneys there can be several inches of dead bees, which would otherwise be a great source of food for a large infestation of clothes moth, carpet beetle, meal worms etc.  Once this mass of material is consumed all these SPI (stored product insects) will be looking for another food source – your wool carpets, silk dresses, woollen suits and sweaters.

If we can’t get to the dead bees we will discuss alternate options for preventing an infestation, and deal with them in your preferred method, normally nontoxic if practical.

Post Live Honey Bee Removal – Honey bee proofing

Once the live honey bee removal has been completed it is necessary to proof the location against the arrival of another honey bee colony. This can be a complicated part of the process dependent upon where the bees have been removed from. In some circumstances such as chimneys they can easily be proofed against after removal, in other circumstances such as on some roofs it is in fact impossible.

Fortunately we have put a great deal of thought into this and are able to offer some rather clever solutions dependent upon the scenario. Year on year we just get better and better.

For further reading please see our page on bee proofing & guarantees

Honey Bee Removal Guarantees

Seriously do not be conned by this offering.

For further reading please see our page on bee proofing & guarantees

Really need a guarantee?

If you really want a guarantee even after having read it carefully, then we will match any guarantee for a fee dependent upon access costs.
But upon careful reading you will probably see that it has no real worth, other than that of a great sales gimmick.

PS don’t forget access costs. These are not usually covered in the guarantees

Further Live Honey Bee Removal Advice

If you have honey bees in your property please contact us; a photo can be worth a 1000 words so if you can email us a couple showing where they are entering the property, the location of the entrance with respect to accessibility, along with any historic or other relevant information, and an address so we can see the property on google, then we can advise on the best approach to removing the honey bees without having to visit. Our online advice is free!

Our honey bee relocation Specialist is waiting for you!

Swarmcatcher are the UK honey bee colony removal specialists that provide an ethical eco-friendly bee removal and relocation service across the UK.

Get In Touch: Tell Us About Your Bees
Honey-bee-chimney-cutout-Llandaff-13

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.

Learn More
Honey-bee-cutout-porch-roof-Windsor-Eaton-Berkshire

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

Learn More
Honey-bee-swarm-smoked-after-3-days-01SC5WM_150dpi

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.

Learn More

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

For further information on bee removal and relocation please use the contact form in the side bar or message button below, or CALL 01297 441272 to speak to someone local who knows all about it.

If you are looking for information on removing bees from a chimney check out our article ‘Honey bees in chimney‘, or if you repeatedly have bee swarms take up home in your chimney you may want to look at our page ‘Why honey bees like chimneys‘ & ‘Everything you need to consider when removing bees in a chimney‘ which is a fairly extensive overview.

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 honey bees in a wall our page ‘Honey bees in wall‘ maybe of use.

For examples on removals of honey bees from these and other more unusual places check thru our blog page Honey Bee Removal EXPERTS and investigate out Tag cloud too.

Don’t forget a general overview on honey bee removals which can be found at ‘Live honey bee removal‘.

Our honey bee Specialist is waiting for you

Message us now