We’re garage people, meaning that’s how we primarily enter and leave the house, take out the trash, bring in groceries, get the mail, etc. So on one of our infrequent excusions outside the front door of the house for the first time in months, we spotted a HUGE beehive down the wall looking remarkably similar to THIS one:
For a scale reference, I could hold a basketball next to it and the beehive’d be bigger than that.
The bees swarming are a nuisance, so much so I haven’t mowed the lawn this week. We need to remove it, SAEFLY, cheaply and qucikly. Exterminator estimates start at $200 and – we’d rather not.
Suggestions welcome. We’d like to preserve the honeycomb, if possible, but we’re not above using gasoline.
That looks a lot more like a wasp nest than a bee nest.
Bees typically live in large colonies of flat wax-based honeycomb hanging vertically. What you’ve got is more of a “large paper nest shaped like an upside-down pear usually hanging from branches or eaves.”
That looks more like a hornet’s nest than a honey bee hive. You won’t find any honey in that.
Get yourself a big can of Raid Wasp and Hornet spray and have at them long after sundown. Leave the lights off until just before you spray. The can has a narrow nozzle, kind of like carburetor cleaner.
That’s what I’d do, though getting two cans will let you blast the SOBs the next night if the first can didn’t get all of them. You need to soak the nest pretty good.
I agree with this diagnosis. I had a 6" thick, 12’ high beehive in my siding and it was flat. Them’s some kind of wasps you got goin’ on there.
I implore you to cough up the cash and have a professional take care of it. But if you must do this yourself, rule #1: Do it at night. The little fuckers are sleepy and less likely to fuck you up. Wear long sleeves, keep a can of wasp killer nearby (preferably in your hand).
Also, you need to have someplace to dump that mutha once you detach it. And it needs to be far, far away.
**Squink. ** Maybe that is a wasp’s nest picture I posted. Oh, well. Sorry for the confusion. I was using the picture primarily for the size of the hive and how it’s hanging like just that tucked in the corner on the underside of the brick facing, there. Anyway, there’s nothing but honeybees swarming around and sticking to the side of the REAL beehive outside, so it’s definitely just a beehive. Explosives on a stick, eh? Hmmmm.
**A.R. Cane. ** Can’t squeeze blood from a stone, man. With the car in the shop, the mortgage due, the first round of first the month bills just paid, my father just out the hospital and me in between jobs YET AGAIN, money’s too tight right now to cough up $200 for this particular expense.
Cheesesteak. Might just do.
**
Kalhoun. ** Yes I am.
Uh… any other suggestions that don’t involve a 270lb man wearing double layered clothes running around willy-nilly in the dark after attacking a beehive with pesticides, now’s your chance.
I could maybe come up with a few, but none that would be quite as funny.
A. R. Cane’s suggestion entailed the possibility that a beekeeper might take the bees (if that’s what they are) away for free, just to get his hands on the bees, I should think.
I once lived in a rural area and the guy who owned the property next to mine had hives on his, otherwise vacant, land. He was tending the bees one day and my son was over there watching him. He gave my son a frame full of honeycomb which my son brought home. We cut the comb from the frame and strained it through cheesecloth. I told my son to return the frame, but the guy was gone, so he left it on our back porch. The next morning our porch was full of bees and everytime we tried to go out the back door it would rile them up. I called the beekeeper, who lived several hours away, and he advised to wait until after sunset, the bees would return to thier hives and we could the take the frame back to the hive area. That’s exactly what happened. Apparently the bees had discovered the frame and were trying to salvage the honey left on it.
If they really are bees and not hornets you should be able to do it yourself easily. The posters who mentioned Raid are correct. Soak it down around sunset. The can sprays a good 20 feet so you should be just fine.
It works an hornets as well but they are quite aggressive so more care is called for.
But if they really are honeybees, do try to search for a local beekeeper society or a professional beekeeper in your area and see if they will come out and remove them for you. Many will be happy to do so and this would be a better outcome. Honeybees are doing poorly in North America these days due to investations of throat mites and every little bit helps when it comes to propping them up.
If there are any apiarists in your area, call them, they might take the hive off your hands.
Lat summer a large swarm of bees landed in the hedge outside our apartment, someone called a local beekeeper, who came with a portable hive, got all the bees into it and took them away.
That seems like a win-win solution if possible- no chance of angry bees hurting you, they don’t have to die, it should be free (or at any rate, cheaper than an exterminator) and someone gets to enjoy the honey.
I second Tamerlane’s suggestion. IF they are bees, then call a beekeeper club, I’m sure they’d know someone who’d be happy to take that swam. When I was little, a swam moved into a tree in our front yard. My father knew someone at work who kept bees, and he had a friend remove it free of charge.
