Honey bees in my roof

dc197

Marktheshark wrote: »

Bees and wasps chew wood and turn it in to paper.

OP said these are honeybees. Honeybees do not make paper from wood.

dermonte wrote: »

The wasp hive was about 100 cm away from bee hive. So they said they will treat wasps. The wasps are dissapeared after the treatment and within 2 weeks bees disappeared too.

Another possibility is that the bees entered the vacant wasps' nest and accidentally brought home some of the residual poison.

Biggles wrote: »

Block their entrance, either during the day so that many of them are outside and may survive, or during the winter, when they may well die (of cold or starvation) anyway?

A terrible idea. If you do it during the day when the bees are out foraging, all that will happen is you will have a cloud of thousands of confused bees buzzing around where they think the entrance should be.

If you do it in the winter, nothing will happen for weeks, as they generally stay inside 'til spring.

If you do it at night, they will just find or make another way out.

Elli452 wrote: »

Bees are less active in the winter months and their numbers are significantly diminished. Can you wait and try the ceiling removal/hive extraction then? If you make sure all doors are closed (except an exit) I can't see the whole house being invaded. At the end of the day if you have honey bees then killing them is only going to remove half the problem. And the remaining honey comb is likely to attract more unsavoury invaders (wasps).

Indeed. The remaining comb will attracts wasp who'll raid it there and then, and will attract other honey bees next summer who will want to make a home in it. You must remove, or seal, the comb.

brightontraveller wrote: »

In some parts of the country there are real problems with people stealing hives etc so getting someone to remove them wouldn’t be a problem just require more effort

Stealing complete hives is a real problem. It is easy to do, you basically block the hive and pick it up.
The OP does not have a hive (the wooden box), he has a colony which has made its home in his house. You cannot just pick up a honeybee colony unless it is already in a container such as a wooden beehive.

THIS is the reason why the OP's local beekeepers - regardless of skill - will not remove the colony, because it is inaccessible and downright difficult.

An analogy might be a salmon farmer asking someone to move his cages of fish (relatively easy), versus someone asking to move a bunch of loose wild salmon which have made their home in a certain part of a loch.

brightontraveller wrote: »

Get a bee keeper not hobbyist

If you are referring to "professional" beekeepers, or bee farmers, they will have little interest in collecting someone else's bees.
Beekeepers do this to increase, at little cost, their number of colonies, sometimes to give the colonies to beginners or to someone who's lost all their colonies.
Bee farmers have no need to use this method to increase their stock, as their many scores or even hundreds of existing colonies produce enough new colonies naturally with minimal effort. They are far too busy tending to their own bees to be faffing trying to retrieve a wild colony from up a tree or down a chimney.

The people who are most likely to collect swarms around town are non-professional beekeepers, or hobbyists.
Sure, there are some clueless ones, but most local associations have a Swarm Officer who either collects them himself or sends an experienced deputy to do so. Joe Newbie would not be dispatched by the local club.
The officer in my local club holds national qualifications in beekeeping, he is a hobbyist but not clueless.

xylophone

I can't visualise the situation.

You say that there is a crack in the wall - presumably high on the wall - why can't bricks be removed to access the hive?

nimbo

jibbyboo wrote: »

Considering selling the house at the moment during winter, but presumably we'd have to declare the bees? And ethically it's questionable not to right, even if we don't need to legally...?
!

I know it's harsh but I'm allergic to bee stings and if I'd bought a house with a known infestation and moved in i'd be more than miffed to find out my dream home had the capacity to kill me.

In a rented house I had bees - not honey bees small and brown ones. Very cute. Up the chimney behind the gas fire where the back boiler was. Bee keeper said he couldn't get them - not a surprise only a formality as I could t have them exterminated until he ruled out a house move for them. Exterminator said he didn't know how he'd get the chemicals up the chimney safely due to set up of fire etc.

My very old school mum bought a sulphur candle. Looked like a small tin of Paint they're apparently used to de bug green houses after winter. Stuck It Under the fire and smoked them out. Also made the house stink for a week - but
I no longer had to wear shoes in the front room and avoid that part of my house.

I realise it wouldn't remove the honey comb - but it may get rid of enough of the bees to send a builder in? once the bees are gone and the bees dead could you call the insurance about the damage caused by them - rather then need to get rid of them???

dc197

nimbo wrote: »

once the bees are gone and the bees dead could you call the insurance about the damage caused by them - rather then need to get rid of them???

More ignorance.
Honeybees will cause no damage to a house. They do not bore, they do not strip wood, they do not break anything.

marleyboy

dc197 wrote: »

More ignorance.
Honeybees will cause no damage to a house. They do not bore, they do not strip wood, they do not break anything.

The same applies to cockroaches, bedbugs and houseflies. I guess what they don't have is the owners permission, ergo they DO trespass.

I would not want bees nesting in my loft, Joe Bloggs telling me they do no harm up there is not going to change the fact I want them out, one way or the other.