What to do if you find a bee swarm
Gardening Question From Jeanne:
I live in East County (La Mesa)…a swarm has settled on my screen door…they have been there all day…a bee keeper removal said they may leave @ dusk. They are still around. I did not know any of the above info. Thank you for that.
Answer from Pat:
I can see how you might be very nervous having a bee swarm on your screen door, but yes, they might leave at dusk. Then they will be someone else’s problem. (In the meanwhile, they do not constitute a hazard for now and I hope you have another door so you can go in and out of your house.) What would be bad would be if the bees found a hole under the eaves of your house and went into the walls. I hope that does not happen. I suggest you try to contact someone today even though it is Sunday.
If a bee keeper came to your home he would subdue the bees with smoke. Dusk is a good time to do this since the bees are more subdued at dusk anyway. He would then find the young queen inside the swarm and take this young queen out from the middle of the swarm and put her into a cardboard box. He would then sit around and wait until the bee swarm would follow the young queen into the box. Then he would close the box and carry it away.
That’s all there is to it, but bee keepers also have protective clothing and they have been slowly subjected to bee stings so they have developed an immunity to them. (Bee stings are beneficial since bee keepers usually do not suffer from arthritis as result. Bee stings are a cure for arthritis.)
There is a man in San Diego County, Pete Holtzen, Honey Bee Rescue, 619/286-7258 (or www.honeybeerescue.com) who takes bees away, but he may charge for this. Ask him his charges. In my opinion it is well worthwhile to pay the cost of having a knowledgeable bee keeper come to one’s home and have some assurance that the keeper will keep the bees and not waste the swarm. Don’t use pesticides to get rid of bees. Pest companies kill bees with Sevin. We should not kill bees, and also pesticides such as Sevin are broad-spectrum pesticides. They kill other things in the environment. You do not want pesticides used around your home or screen door where people, animals, and beneficial insects and arachnids can be affected.
Pete keeps the bees instead of destroying them. Some bee keepers think of swarming bees as “junk bees.” There are no junk bees. We need all the bees we can get and should save swarms and not kill these highly beneficial creatures who help us all stay alive on this planet Earth. Thank you very much for writing to my blog and getting the facts on this matter. Isn’t it funny how emergencies always seem to happen on weekends? I wish you luck and hope you can still enjoy the humor and interest of this situation.
Pat – thank you so much for all of your helpful advice! I hope to see you speak one day!
I had a swarm of bees show up on the roofline near my front door late last winter. They stayed for nearly a week (I was going to be away for work that week and hoped they’d fly away), and thankfully, they didn’t go into any attic vents or anything.
I tried contacting the county vector control, but they kill bees. I tried a number of bee removal services, and asked their techniques, and most kill the bees too. They instill fear of an africanized bee swarm getting out of control. This is not to be taken lightly, since dogs have been killed by the attacks! But the bees at my house were minding their own business up there on the roof, so I didn’t feel the need to kill them (and yes, I have an indoor/outdoor dog who I could keep inside for a few days).
I kept trying to find a better solution, and eventually a friend pointed me to the LA County bee keepers association http://www.losangelescountybeekeepers.com/swarm-removals/ A very nice and wise bee keeper was happy to come to my house and pick up the swarm. He charged about as much as the removal services (around $100-$150), but he said as long as they weren’t “too rowdy” he’d be able to relocate them to “the back 40”. When he arrived and saw the bees, he really wanted to help them. Without a place to set up their hive, he said they were in trouble. The queen has a short window to build her hive and reproduce or the colony will collapse. He was hopeful he could take these bees and blend them with another colony in need of a queen – success for both colonies!
They were Africanized bees, which is worrisome, but he said for the most part they are fine to work with, are great pollinators, and make great honey. He watches them closely to make sure they don’t get too aggressive while he’s tending to them.
He said I could watch him do his work if I was interested (fascinating!), and I waited from a safe distance, but 2 bees came straight at me when he relocated the queen, and I was stung right under my eye – yikes! Have the benedryl handy, just in case!
I’m still glad I was able to help them get to a new home. And the beekeeper provided a ton of interesting information, planting suggestions and more. Oh, and I almost forgot — the best piece of advice was about getting a mesh screen to put over the crawl space and attic vents. I believe it was 8 squares to the inch that would be small enough to keep bees from getting into the house.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to write this story, which will be highly informative and helpful to other readers. As one addendum I suggest when watching a bee keeper deal with Africanized bees, it’s best to wear a shade hat with a “mosquito head net” over it to protect from bites. (These mesh gadgets are available at fishing shops everywhere and online at Amazon.com, where it often only takes 2 days to receive a desired object.)
Re: meeting and talking to me: I am beginning to write a new concise edition of my popular organic gardening book and plan to promote it with talks and all social media when it is published. Currently I am not doing talks but plan to resume when my new book is published. Perhaps you can come to a talk and thus meet me.
Do you know of a bee keeper who could take bees swarming at my home in Solana Beach? I can’t afford the exterminator who offered and I do not want them killed of course.
According to an Internet message from the San Diego Bee Keepers, bee swarm removal is not free.
Phone your local Humane Society, Botanical Garden, Master Gardener Association or Agricultural Extension for help finding a bee keeper who will come and collect a swarm of bees.
For future reference, the LA County link provided in an earlier comment has a list of contacts for swarm removals in/around LA Co & neighboring counties. Here’s the website for the San Diego Beekeeping Society http://www.sandiegobeekeepingsociety.com/swarm-list.php They also have a Facebook page. Try searching for beekeeping associations in your area / county if you’re in a different location.
Many beekeepers will still charge for removal, but isn’t it better to try to save the colony?!