There was a large swarm of bees tormenting people in the parking lot of my apartment building.
Last night, a guy in one of those white suits with the mesh veil and such was out and he had two big aerosol cans and he sprayed them into some bush that was growing over the top of the roof of the garage.
As he sprayed, hundreds of bees just started dropping to the ground dead. Right now, my parking lot looks like a bee slaughterhouse.
So any idea what sort of stuff the extreminator used?
When I was on the local list to deal with swarms of bees, I always tried to collect them for my self. Sometimes when I could not accomplish this, I would use a spray bottle filled with soap and water. It was cost effective, environmentally freindly, and worked really well.
What do you need a lot of bees for? After you have collected two or three bees, what would the point of having a whole colony of dead bees be (excuse the pun) 
How many bees do you have in your collection? Do you use the bees for research?
He meant take them alive.
Presumably the idea is to collect the swarm alive, in order to introduce them to a hive for the production of honey - certainly I’ve heard of this happening.
Umm, but my question was what would be a likely poison that would have been used. The bees are dead. Very much dead.
A friend of mine swear by paraffin(kerosene) for killing wasps - he claims it kills them instantly on contact - I wouldn’t have thought that a professional exterminator would use something like that due to the fire potential, but a number of commercial insecticides have a ‘knockdown’ action; this is dependent not only on the actual toxin used, but also the solvent and delivery method.
The exterminator used a product such as this. Fires a stream of poisen that kills on contact. I have to use something like this every few years, seems hornets and wasps like to build nest on my house.
Thanks that’s probably it. The exterminator did mention that he wasn’t going to clean up all the dead bees until later today. That would give it 24 hours.
I suppose finding out whether or not these were Africanized bees didn’t make a difference. There used to be the occasional bee outside my door doing whatever they do around flowering plants, but this was obviously a bigger deal.
I only have one hive of bees today that I keep to play with. What with mites beekeeping is a lot more labor intensive than it was 21 years ago when my apiary peaked at 25 hives with say 35,000 bees a piece (you do the math). I was on a list to collect swarms that landed where they scared people, it’s a community service there are better ways to get bees to make honey. Sometimes a swarm lit where it could not be collected so it was killed to make people happy. Trust me, dish washing detergent in a pump sprayer will kill a pisspot of bees fast. It’s cheap and easy and effective and it won’t hurt anything else. You can’t say the same of commercial sprays. Just for the record, I am a charter member of the SC Beekeepers Association. I was at the first meeting in the 70’s and at 15 I was the youngest member.
Are you sure it was really a swarm of bees? A bee swarm is typeically a clump of bees
Sorry for the double post. A five year old kid appeared out of no where and jumped in my lap.
Are you sure it was really a swarm of bees? A bee swarm is typically a clump of bees about the size and shape of a football, or larger. Unless they are “killer bees,” which are only found in the South of the U.S, and Central and South America, and in Africa, a swarm is very docile. I’ve hived many wearing no protection at all.
It is also very early for swarms, except in the south.
Typically when I hear that a “swarm of bees is attacking people,” it turns out to be someone has disturbed a nest of Yellow Jackets, which are about the same size as a honey bee and yellow in color.
As far as killing bees, Sevin (carbayl) is to bees about what plutonium is to people. As noted, soapy water is reputed to work also by clogging their spiracles and suffocating them.
fluffball86 , beekeepers save swarms and make new colonies of them.
Oops, I thought he was collecting them like butterflies. I thought it would be kind of funny to have a whole display case full of the exact same type of bee.
Back home on the farm, we always used a can of ether. Just wait until it lights on something, then nail it with a spray. Supposedly it chokes the wasp out.