Just getting acquainted with the new castle and I noticed BEES entering and leaving the building from a hole just outside a window frame. They are not entering the room but have a passage into the wall. I have not found any inside the house. How do I determine if they are Honey, Carpenter or whatever type of Bees? I understand that if they are Honey or Carpenter Bees I must evict them. Can they stay if they are some other type?
They must go!
Your walls will fill with honey!
Think of the ants & flies it will attract!
If your house is new, document everything, as you may need to sue the previous owner. No foolin!
Aaaah! Bees in the walls!!!
(I would quite literally die of fright!)
Carpenter bees are much larger than honeybees. But regardless of the type, you need to call an exterminator asap!
Paging Covered_in_Bees!
Paging Covered_in_Bees!
I don’t know whether Covered_in_Bees! could actually help here, but it seems appropriate…
Carpenter bees are the size of bumblebees and drill 1/2 holes in your wood. The holes will be drilled UP and then tunneled sideways. There would only be a handful of them but your house would look like someone drilled a bunch of vertical holes into it.
Sounds like you have honey bees. After you’ve rid yourself of them I would think in terms of removing the honey or you will have ants as your next house guest.
I’ve got a single carpenter bee in my deck. I’ve left it alone, but if it brings freinds I will have to spray. Carpenter bees are definitely solo, so you have honey bees.
Be forewarned, that hole is going to be filled with new carpenter bees.
I live in a brick house, and several years ago some hornets (or yellowjackets?) had gotten in through a small hole in the mortar, and apparently were nesting within the wall. I attempted to get rid of them by spraying bug killer into the hole, but the bastards wouldn’t take a subtle hint like that. So in desperation I just patched the hole. End of problem.
I would not have done that with bees, but I consider the others to be expendable.
Verminators had one on that problem yesterday. They opened the dry wall and removed a huge honeycomb. They also killed a hell of a lot of bees before and during. Then they plugged up the hole.
Thanks for the info…I caught one and it turns out that I have Yellow Jackets, smooth not fuzzy. Yellow Jackets are wasps do not produce honey so you do not have to remove the nest. They are very aggressive in the late summer and fall, but if I can live with them the nest will die off in the winter and I can merely plug the hole.
Yellow jackets are my sworn enemy and I would go after them even faster than I’d get bees taken care of… in fact, if you were my neighbor and didn’t do it, I’d come after YOU. But you’re right that the structural concerns are less significant.
You can buy wasp spray that will jet 10 feet or so out, making it easy to spray the holes from a distance.
I’ve never had problems with yellow jackets. I swat them like I’m in a batting cage.
Oh, and it doesn’t stop at one hole. I ignored them, not realizing my porch/deck/house was their nest. This year I had enough and I started watching 'em. Somewhere along the way, I learned that they were carpenter bees.
Suddenly the mysterious “bird poop” on the eaves of my house (and many, many neighbors) became clear to me… it wasn’t poop. It was vomit. Bee vomit. Carpenter Bee vomit.
I used some duct tape to make a mirror-on-a-stick. I went around the perimeter of my porch… I got at least a dozen holes. I sprayed & dusted them. I’ll fill them in soon, but I have little hope that it’ll end the problem. I can’t reach the ones on the second story, and I can’t treat the homes of my neighbors. They’ll be back.
Oh, and why haven’t I filled in the holes yet? I’m terrified of the groundhogs that decided to move in under the deck. Gotta catch them first.
Really? I’ve lived in coastal CA and WA and they’ve been pretty aggressive both places.
Years ago, my brother’s soccer league had a massive gathering for photos and one of his teammates arrived late and took a shortcut that went right over a ground nest of yellow jackets. The late kid nearly died (he was rushed to the hospital with breathing problems after hundreds of stings; at least he wasn’t allergic) but he kept running into the crowd far enough that most of the kids got stung a few times.
I’ve had wasps living under the vinyl shutters for years now. They’re out on hot sunny days but don’t bother us. Sometimes they start a paper wasp nest under the porch roof but we nip that in the bud with a broom. And one particularly stubborn wasp kept trying to start a condo in the newspaper tube; I had to destroy the results of his hard work every morning.
Yellow jackets are indeed very aggressive little buggers. If you can’t wait until winter, the insecticide Sevin is very toxic to bees. You can get Sevin in dust form and use a dust applicator to get it into the hole. They get the dust on their bodies when they enter and exit. It’ll do the job.
Check your local hardware or building supply store for insecticide that can be added as or with paint. (Some paint on clear, some are mixed with whatever paint or stain you use to cover the house.) When next year’s crop of bees begins to burrow, they are killed off as they bore through the paint to get to the wall/soffet/whatever.
The brand with which I am most familiar is Bug Juice* from Weatherall, but there are others.
- (Intersting name, as that was what we called the “fruit punch-like” stuff they served at summer camp.)