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Big bee problem baffling to exterminators

wdlove

wdlove

macrumors P6
Original poster
Oct 20, 2002
16,568
0
COMMERCE CITY - It's a home the Allee family had always hoped for, but up near the chimney of their dream house is an enemy invasion.

Bees, bees and more bees.

And they're not just outside the house; they're in the attic, too. Tucked back in the attic rafters is a honeycomb some bee keepers estimate is at least 8 feet long, 2 feet wide and 3 feet thick.

http://www.9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=c32fed15-0abe-421a-002b-5acc612692c6&TEMPLATEID=0c76dce6-ac1f-02d8-0047-c589c01ca7bf
 
My in-laws had a problem similar to this but with wasps. They built a big nest in the attic right above the baby room on top the dry wall. The ceiling became so thin, you could see wasp legs poking through the drywall paper. Very scary.
 
I had bees build a nest in my fireplace chimney several years ago. They were near the end of their life cycle at the time of discovery...they would very lazily come out of the fireplace and float around the living room and crash on the floor. In a day or two, there were hundreds of dead bees all over the living room carpet. What a nightmare. :eek:
 
There's always a market for honey! They should count their blessings. Or just get a bunch of hippies to go up and smoke a few keys of weed, subdue the queen and remove her to the woods, the workers will follow her anywhere.
 
A very scary situation. I wonder with that massive removal process it the family will get the honey? My only personal experience is that I've been stung a couple of times. Can't really even imagine the experience of such an invasion. :eek:
 
jsarrasinjr13 said:
We found this nest in the walls in my house.
Beehive
Click to expand...

Now you have to tell us the story… Bees or wasps? Were they still there? Did you get them all out? How much was the repair? Anybody stung? Did they get into the living space?


My mother-in-law was watching my daughters one day last summer and had a scare with some wasps--my girls' cousin got stung, but not my girls. The girls and the cousin were jumping a large backyard trampoline and they discovered that wasps had colonized the hollow of the pipe looping around the trampoline (as well as the hollows of the pipes running along the top of the nearby chainlink fences). Ballsy little buggers.
 
wow, i've had a few little nests show up every summer at my moms house in the gutters that i'd have to go clean out with bee spray. the scariest thing was this one time... i had gotten onto the roof and sprayed the nest down good when a couple bees came chasing after me. so i'm running around the roof spraying the bees while they're giving chase. luckily i got them before they got me. but yeah i've been stung plenty of times in my day. :p
 
jsarrasinjr13 said:
We found this nest in the walls in my house.
Beehive
Click to expand...

Wow, to think something could develop to a size like that and not be noticed!!!

When I was a kid (8yrs old) I used to catch bees from the flowers on the shrub in our front yard. Grabbed them by the wings and put them in a jar to study for a while. Got stung about 3 times as I remember, in the palm of my hand. It smarted a bit but I guess I'm one of the lucky ones who are a little tolerant of bee stings.
 
jsarrasinjr13 said:
We found this nest in the walls in my house.
Beehive
Click to expand...

Did it take a beekeeper to get rid the the bees? Did your family get any of the honey?
 
jsarrasinjr13 said:
We found this nest in the walls in my house.
Beehive
Click to expand...
Gah, I actually like bees (they make honey! How could you not like them!), but that gives me the willies just thinking about it.

Although I have a bad feeling the inside of my house's walls are the ant version of that--every winter, they pour from every crack at the slightest sign of food and have no qualms about colonizing my plants. I hate killing things that're just trying to avoid the rain, and I try not to, but it's hard when thousands of the little buggers just won't give up, and they swarm the counter every time you spill a blob of chilli.
 
Makosuke said:
Gah, I actually like bees (they make honey! How could you not like them!), but that gives me the willies just thinking about it.

Although I have a bad feeling the inside of my house's walls are the ant version of that--every winter, they pour from every crack at the slightest sign of food and have no qualms about colonizing my plants. I hate killing things that're just trying to avoid the rain, and I try not to, but it's hard when thousands of the little buggers just won't give up, and they swarm the counter every time you spill a blob of chilli.
Click to expand...

Well, sure, who doesn't like a fluffy brown-with-a-gold-spot honeybee? It's all the others that are dislikable.
 
Bee followup

It was in my fraternity house, we tried to spray them from the outside last summer and we probably killed about 1000 bees, but that didnt even make a dent. We cut through the wall recently and sprayed it all down as we did it so nobody got stung again.

The Orkin guy wouldnt even go near it.
 
I'm absolutely terrified of bees and other flying insects... I keep my distance, which is probably why I've only been stung twice in my whole life.

But I've got a pretty good bee story. Here goes....

My boyfriend and I were trying to sell this old Ford Explorer last summer. It had been sitting in the parking lot of our apartment for several months without being driven or even opened. Some guys came to look at it and we soon discovered, much to my horror, that the whole car was basically infested with bees - nasty yellowjackets, too. They had built about a dozen nests the size of baseballs (some bigger) all along the doors and in the gas cap. The guy who was interested in buying the car opened one of the doors and a bee immediately flew out and stung him right on the head! He freaked out and a big welt broke out on his head. My boyfriend then proceeded to go to the store and buy several cans of heavy-duty wasp killer. We doused the truck from a safe distance, and the next day there were hundreds of dead bees all over the ground... and more live ones flying in and out of the car. A second dousing got rid of them.

Needless to say, the guy didn't buy the car.

ND
 
I had an old van that I would use for hauling. One day I decided to clean it out. Well, it had a couple of wasp nests in it. I was lucky, I only got stung once, in the corner of my eye.
 
Nanda Devi said:
Some guys came to look at it and we soon discovered, much to my horror, that the whole car was basically infested with bees - nasty yellowjackets, too.
Click to expand...
I had an experience rather like this when I was young; there was a basketball sized paper wasp nest on a neighbor's house, and for some reason the wasps decided to assault me for absolutely no reason--I wasn't even near it. Got stung probably four or five times all over the place as I ran frantically from the small swarm.

Aren't yellojackets wasps, not bees, though? I've always made the distinction that bees are "friendly" (compared to wasps, anyway) orange and black things that make honey, while wasps are yellow things that make paper nests or burrows, and assault people and animals for no readily apparent reason.

Then there are those pesky bumblebees that fit in the middle...
 
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