Honey Bees

One of The Critter Guy's best services is our thorough, affordable, harmless, chemical-free, and reliable honey bee infestation removal service. Our experienced beekeeper will perform a live removal of our valued winged friends and handle the clean-up and exclusion work as well. We handle residential, commercial, and government honey bee removals.

The wax and honey left behind can damage your structure and create an awful mess after the honey bees are gone. This important clean-up work is often avoided by regular beekeepers who just want easy cheap or free bees. There are a lot of beekeepers that will just make a grab of live bees, leaving the queen and brood to rebuild the hive. If you call beekeepers to take care of your bees, make sure to ask if they are removing all brood, wax, and the queen. Also be sure they know how to properly seal the entryway to prevent future bees from taking up residence there in the future, use encapsulating paint where needed to cover up attractive odors, and fill voids where necessary.

Spraying or otherwise chemically treating honey bees should be avoided, as it makes clean-up harder and usually does not completely eradicate the bees. In addition, leaving the wax, honeycomb, and brood in the wall or ceiling isn't usually a great idea due to it leading to future infestations, honey leaks, and many other problems.

Swarms vs. Bearding

Sometimes honey bees will swarm and we get calls from people who want us to come remove them. If you have a bee swarm, now would be a great time to immediately call a hobby beekeeper, because they have a good use for bee swarms. The Critter Guy is a beekeeper too, just with more experience to handle more complex removals. Swarms will usually present as a gob of bees on a branch or bush. These bees came from an established hive somewhere, and are looking for a new home. They never stay for long, and will typically be gone within a few minutes up to a few days. We are not usually able to drop everything and come get a swarm right away, so definitely try to find a hobby beekeeper to quickly take care of this.

Honey bees have another behavior which can sometimes be confused for swarming. Bearding is when honey bees appear to be clustering outside of an established hive during a hot and/or humid spell. They fan their wings in an attempt to regulate heat and/or humidity inside the hive. They may be seen on a wall outside of a home or other structure wall in roughly a beard shape. These are bees which are part of an established hive and are not swarming to find a new home. In this case, the bees would need to be extracted from the wall/structure and it is a more involved process than simply dumping a swarm into a hive box and leaving.

Honey Bees vs. Yellowjackets

We often get asked if we can remove other types of bees and wasps. At this time, the Critter Guy is only handling honey bees. Yellowjackets in particular get mixed up frequently, since they also live in wall and attic voids. There are a few differences you can use to identify them. Honeybees have a fuzzy, amber body and dark legs, whereas yellowjackets have a smooth body with bright yellow bands and yellow legs. Honeybees will winter over and remain in the same hive year after year, while yellowjackets abandon their nests in the fall and will not reuse them.

Comparison

Please study the different types of bees in the following photos and take a very close look at any dead bees you may have lying beneath the entry point to the hive. If you have any questions about identifying whether you have honeybees or some other kind of insect, send a text to The Critter Guy at 540-900-1049 with clear photos and/or videos and we'll be glad to help you out.

A close-up photograph of a honey bee — A honey bee. Note the rather fuzzy appearance, dark legs, and relatively dull colors.

A close-up picture of a yellowjacket — A yellowjacket, with bright yellow legs, a mostly smooth body, and a very prominent black and yellow pattern on its back.
Image: Mar S-Hornets and Wasps, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Other Pictures

A bee-covered honeycomb visible through a cut-out in the wall — Honey bees make nests in many strange places, including in various walls.

Photo of a structural gap in a house, with many honey bees and large amounts of honeycomb visible within — Some buildings can have small gaps, which honey bees are prone to exploit to their advantage.

A thermal camera image of part of a house, with a warm spot indicating a bee nest — Honey bee nests create a large amount of waste heat in their typical operation, which means The Critter Guy will sometimes use thermal imaging equipment to find nests.