We did another cut-out this weekend. A house on the other side of Cedar Lake from us had a colony of honeybees in a wall, and they are no longer there.
This was an old house, the owner's childhood home. They truly don't make them like this anymore, with solid oak studs and wooden sheeting on the walls. The bees had gotten in at an inner corner where two walls met.
We were lucky in that they were confined to one section of wall. We were a little less lucky in that the best way to get to them was through the wall of a tiny closet, with barely enough room to work. I removed a section of drywall and the hardwood sheeting underneath. We vacuumed up as many bees as we could, then carefully pried and scraped out the comb. Most of this was honey comb, nearly two buckets full. The rest was brood comb, still enough to fill two medium boxes when rubber-banded into the frames.
After removing all the comb and scraping the walls down to remove as much wax as possible, we kept vacuuming bees to get as many of them as we could. We left the site overnight, then returned the next morning to vacuum up the remaining bees, and to fill the place where they had entered the house with steel wool. This will keep any other swarms of bees from entering until the owner can make repairs and fill the gap properly.
If you or someone you know has bees in a building where they shouldn't be, give us a call at 618-713-4101, and we'll happy to help you get them out. Remember, never spray honeybees in a structure, as that will leave all the beeswax and honey in the wall, drawing insects and rodents with all the attendant problems they bring. Let us remove the bees and their stores, getting rid of the problem for good.
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