Removing Bees From a House On Pilings

Bees like the space between the floor joists on houses built on pilings. On most of these houses there are gaps around pilings and blocking left by the builders. The bees only need a 1/4 inch opening to get into the floor space and start a nest. The bees had gained access through 1/4 inch gaps around the blocking. Blocking is the wood builders place at the outside of the floor joists to close them up and keep bugs and animals out.

You can see the bees going in and out in the closeup picture of the blocking.

On the other side of the support beam you can see where the bees had chewed through the drywall to make another access into the floor space.

We cut the drywall and saw that the bees had built two nests. One close to the support beam and one about 24 inches back from the beam. We had to cut a larger hole on that side.

Once the two nests were exposed we vacuumed the bees off the comb into the bee vacuum. We then removed all the comb. The bees will be placed in a regular beehive and the queen will be replaced with a queen from a breeder of European bees. This will insure they are not Africanized bees.