Why do bees like my roof? - Page 2

These are what we had near our house last summer, I really hope they didnt get into the roof. They sound like helicopters when flying about.

Well I just bought a house a couple of months ago and this is a good reminder that it's usually better to fix a problem immediately rather than let it hang around.

And my god, don't eat the poisoned honey!

Wow. Well I'm a commercial beekeeper. We run 1200 hives and produce Honey, Bees and provide pollination services from Michigan to Florida and almonds in California. We also provide a Honey Bee removal service where we don't destroy the bees and do a minimal amount of damage removing the Bees and there combs.

 

Just spraying the Bees or having an exterminator destroy them will not solve a Honey Bee infestation. The colony can weight anywhere from 2 lbs to 15 lbs. That is alot of organic matter. The dead colony has alot of moisture content that along with any larvae and honey has the equivalent of a dead Raccoon in your wall, it will get stinky . The other problem with leaving the combs behind is other critters are attracted including Honey Bees. Think about a scout bee looking for a new home. She finds no one home but the refrigerator is full.

 

Hope this helps .

Edited by Yonv - 6/3/10 at 8:13am

Holy crap, I didn't know such a thing existed. I'm not surprised they sound like helicopters, they look like the satanic spawn of a helicopter and a bee.

 

Helibees... Beecopters... Dear god, we're doomed.

Ugh. We had bees once - those big, black bumblebees. Sealing the heck out of the roof worked. I don't know if it would help you, but marine foam (or expanding foam) for big spaces works. Then I seal everything small with caulk.

It works pretty well. We do this when we tear down apartments. Bug calls have dropped to zero over the past few years. We have a house torn down to the studs (interior) right now and we've been sealing with a vengeance. There's no place to get in and no empty spaces to form nests or whatever they do.

I don't know how to safely evict bees, though. I'd rather call in a pro. I'd be tempted to get into full biker armor and take care of it. On the other hand, that might be one of those ideas that seemed like a good idea at the time.

But for furry varmints, my favorite method is the dreaded strobe light. If you have mice, rats, squirrels, etc. in an attic, put a cheap Radio Shack strobe light up there for a few days. They get the hell out. No chemicals, no rotting corpses in the walls, none of those problems. They just get out. Then you can seal. I've considered using a motion-activated strobe light to run off raccoons. Though I'm pretty sure the outside cats would hate it and it'd probably drive off the possum, which I like. (Possums are harmless little garbage disposals that clean your yard for free.)

Wasp infestation. Things were able to chew through the aging and weakening window seals and got into the walls.

I estimated that they built a hive between the outer stones and the inner bathroom wall since whenever I take a shower, a scout or three would come out of the fan vent to check out what was going on. Heat or humidity or both. The "solution" to this was to leave the fan on all the time. Noisy yes. After a week I opened up the fan cover and had meself an adequate collection of half-chopped up wasp cadavers.

The main problem. Could not afford a professional (ex)terminator so I had to be one. After four cans of Raid, half a can of WD-40 and a lighter (yes I attempted to incinerate the wasps within the walls), the real solution was a Quebec winter. Now it's summer again and nobody came back (or...out, I guess).

The entrance holes are still there.