Bee Removal in a Rented Property — Who Pays?

Bee removal in a rented property

If you rent your home and honey bees have moved into the building, the short answer is that it depends on where the colony is and whether it is actually causing a problem inside the property.

Most of the calls we take from tenants follow the same pattern: bees have appeared, the landlord has been told, and nobody is sure whose problem it is. This page sets out the legal position, the practical options, and the mistakes that cost landlords more than the removal would have.

When the landlord is responsible

Under Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, a landlord must keep the structure and exterior of a rented property in repair. The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 goes further: the property must be safe, healthy and free from things that could cause serious harm, from the first day of the tenancy and throughout.

Pest activity linked to structural defects falls to the landlord. A honey bee colony that has entered through a gap in the mortar, a cracked soffit or an unscreened air brick has exploited a maintenance issue — not something the tenant caused. The Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) under the Housing Act 2004 lists domestic hygiene, including pests, as a prescribed hazard. A local authority can serve an improvement notice on a landlord who does not act, and failure to comply is a criminal offence.

If bees are entering the living space — coming through light fittings, gaps in plasterboard, or an unsealed fireplace opening — the property is not fit for habitation in any reasonable reading of the 2018 Act, particularly where anyone in the household has an allergy to bee stings. If this is your situation, send us photos and we will come back with a cost indication your landlord can act on.

When the landlord does not need to remove the colony

A landlord’s duty is to resolve the problem, not necessarily to pay for a full live removal. In practice, many landlords will look for the cheapest option, and in some situations that is reasonable:

Where the colony does affect day-to-day use of the property — bees in a porch roof above the front door, or entering a wall cavity right beside the main entrance — there is a stronger case that the landlord needs to act. A tenant who cannot safely use the main entry to their home has a legitimate complaint.

  • Bees inside the property. Bees appearing inside a building are almost always coming from a nest within the structure — not foraging bees that have wandered in through an open window. Honey bees do not generally enter buildings to look for food. If bees are appearing indoors, there is a colony in the walls, roof or chimney and they have found a route through.
  • Colony in a chimney with no open fireplace. If the fireplace opening is already boarded or sealed, the bees have no route into the living space. The landlord may see no reason to act — the tenant cannot see or reach the colony, and blocking the entry point on the outside may be enough. See our page on honey bees in chimneys for more on this.
  • Colony in a wall cavity away from occupied areas. The landlord can seal the entry point — fill the weep hole, repoint the mortar — once the colony has been excluded or has left. Cost: minimal. We cover this in detail on our honey bees in walls page.
  • Colony in a roof void with no route to the rooms below. If the bees are not entering the living space, there is no immediate habitability issue. See honey bees in a roof and honey bees in an attic.

Why the cheap fix often costs more

Blocking the entrance and hoping the problem goes away is the most common landlord response. It is also the one most likely to make things worse.

A sealed-in colony does not simply leave. If the bees cannot get out, the colony dies. An established colony can hold 20–30 kg of honey and several kilograms of wax comb. Without bees to regulate the temperature, the wax melts in warm weather and the honey runs. It comes through ceilings, down internal walls and into the rooms below. At that point the landlord has a much larger repair bill — replastering, repainting, replacing carpet — plus the original colony still needs clearing out. We explain this in more detail on our poisoning honey bees page.

Sealed-in bees look for another way out — and build comb there. Honey bees are persistent. Block the external entry point and the colony will search for the next gap — through internal walls, around pipe runs, through recessed light fittings, or via overflow pipes. When they find a new route they do not simply pass through it; they extend the nest into it. What was a colony in one section of wall cavity is now a colony spread across two, with comb built at the new exit point. The removal that would have been a straightforward single-location job is now larger, more disruptive and more expensive.

Secondary pests become the landlord’s problem. Dead comb and honey attract wax moth, carpet beetle, clothes moth, ants, and in some cases rodents. If the landlord chose to seal rather than remove, they created the conditions for the secondary infestation. The cost of treating clothes moth or carpet beetle damage — to the tenant’s belongings as well as the property — now sits with the landlord, on top of the original colony that still needs clearing out.

The scent remains. Even after a colony dies or is excluded, the pheromones and wax scent in the cavity attract new swarms. Without removing the comb and proofing the entry, the same wall or chimney will be recolonised, often within the same season. The landlord ends up dealing with the same complaint from the same tenant year after year.

The real cost: selling the property

The biggest financial risk for a landlord is not the tenant’s complaint — it is what happens when the property goes on the market.

A surveyor carrying out a mortgage valuation or homebuyer report will note signs of current or historic bee activity: staining around entry points, propolis marks, wax debris in roof voids. An active colony is flagged as a defect. Mortgage lenders may require the colony to be removed and the entry proofed before they will lend on the property. A buyer who discovers an unresolved colony during the survey will renegotiate the price, delay completion, or withdraw entirely.

A live removal that would have cost the landlord £800–£2,000 during the tenancy can cost many times that in a lost or renegotiated sale. It is the single most common reason landlords contact us — not because the tenant complained, but because the sale fell through. See our removal pricing guide for what to expect.

Does landlord insurance cover bee removal?

Most landlord buildings insurance policies do not cover bee nest removal. Insurers treat pest infestations as a maintenance issue rather than a sudden loss, and exclude both the removal and any resulting repair costs. Some policies do include nest removal — Hiscox landlord buildings insurance covers it as standard up to £2,000 per claim — so it is worth checking your policy before assuming you are not covered.

If the colony has caused structural damage — honey seeping through a ceiling, plasterwork ruined, secondary pest damage to carpets or furnishings — that may be claimable separately under the buildings or contents cover. But an insurer who can show the landlord knew about the colony and chose not to act has grounds to decline the claim. The longer a known colony is left in place, the weaker the insurance position becomes.

What to do if you are a tenant

  1. Report the colony to your landlord in writing. State where the bees are, when you first noticed them, and whether they are entering the living space. Note any allergy risk in the household.
  2. Photograph the entry point and any bees inside the property. Keep a record of dates and all communication.
  3. Give the landlord reasonable time to respond. What is reasonable depends on the risk — bees inside the rooms is more urgent than bees in an inaccessible roof void.
  4. If the landlord does not act, contact the environmental health team at your local council. They have powers under the Housing Act 2004 to inspect the property and serve an improvement notice on the landlord.
  5. Seek advice before withholding rent. Rent arrears can lead to possession proceedings regardless of the landlord’s failure to act. Citizens Advice or Shelter can help you understand your options.

What to do if you are a landlord

  1. Get the bees identified first. Not every bee in a building is a honey bee. Bumble bees nest for one season and leave on their own — no removal needed. Solitary bees (mason bees, mining bees) are harmless and do not form colonies. Send us a photo and we will identify them for you.
  2. Understand what is actually there. A swarm that arrived last week is a smaller and cheaper job than a colony that has been building comb for three years. Ask the tenant — or the neighbours — how long the bees have been present.
  3. Get a proper assessment and quote. A specialist bee removal company will give you a cost indication from photos and a phone conversation — a site visit is rarely needed. The quote should cover removal of the bees, the comb and the honey, reinstatement of any brickwork or access opened, and proofing to prevent recolonisation. Send us photos and we will come back with a figure.
  4. Do not just block the entrance. It is cheaper in the short term but almost always more expensive in the long term — see the section above.
  5. Act before the property goes on the market. Dealing with a colony during a tenancy costs the removal fee. Dealing with it during a sale costs the removal fee plus the negotiation, the delay and the risk of losing the buyer.

Honey bees are not a protected species

Honey bees are not a protected species in the UK. They are not listed under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. A parliamentary petition to give them protected status was considered and rejected. There is no law preventing a property owner from removing a honey bee colony from their building.

What is regulated is the use of pesticides (Control of Pesticides Regulations 1986) — you cannot spray an unlicensed chemical into a wall cavity. And some other bee species do have legal protection: certain bumblebee species are covered by the Wildlife and Countryside Act, and the large mason bee is specifically protected. But the European honey bee (Apis mellifera), the species that nests inside buildings, is not.

This matters because some advice websites and pest control directories incorrectly state that bees are protected and that you cannot remove them. That is wrong. You can remove them. The question is how — and a live removal with relocation is better for the bees, better for the building, and avoids the secondary problems that poisoning or abandonment cause.

Recurring clothes moth? Check the chimney

A recurring clothes moth problem that comes back year after year, particularly in rooms near a chimney breast or an older fireplace that has been boarded over, is very often associated with an old honey bee colony that was never removed. The comb, the dead bees and the debris are still inside the chimney, feeding generation after generation of clothes moths. Treating the clothes moths without removing the source material from the chimney will not fix it.

This is worth knowing as both a tenant and a landlord. If a tenant reports persistent clothes moth damage and the property has a history of bees — or a chimney that was sealed up years ago — the cause may not be what it appears to be. The clothes moth treatment is not the fix. Removing the old colony material from the chimney is.

We can help

SwarmCatcher carries out live honey bee nest removals across England, Scotland and Wales. We remove the bees, the comb and the honey, reinstate the access point, and proof against recolonisation — no pesticides, no poison.

If you are a tenant, we are happy to speak to your landlord directly to explain the work and provide a written cost indication.

If you are a landlord, send us photos and details and we will come back with an accurate cost indication — usually without needing a site visit.

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Ian Fuller has removed honey bee colonies alive from buildings across England, Scotland and Wales for more than 20 years. Beekeeper by family tradition, pest controller and engineer by training.

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