Removing Honey Bees From a Chimney

HONEY BEES SAFELY REMOVED FROM A CHIMNEY

Sometimes you just have to get up there with them! Honey Bees are often difficult to access and require specialist access.

When trying to eliminate honey bees from your chimney, it can be as simple as lighting a fire beneath them or asking a professional pest controller to remove them.

The best option is always to ask a beekeeper to remove them and to make sure they don't just destroy them. Sadly we have encountered a growing number of beekeepers who eliminated honey bees they claimed to have saved for our customers!

How Do We Get To The Bees?

The problem you will quickly encounter is how to get to them. If you live in a brick or stone built property, removal can be complicated, especially at height. It's easy to dislodge chimney pots and other structures while trying to remove bees.

Chimney pots can fall straight through a roof and even kill people below, so before you do anything get professional advice, on the options available to you, and keep things safe.

Cherry pickers like the one we used in the image above are an easy way to get close to the bees, but scaffolding is best – that’s if the scaffolders are happy to get that close to the bees or have the protective clothing to make the process safe.

Will The Honey Bees Become Aggressive?

In our experience, the bees very rarely become aggressive while you are working around them, but you cannot take that chance when working at height.

Your other option is to drill or knock through the wall into the chimney cavity – but this still won’t make life easy to get at the bees.

The truth of the matter remains that honey bees in chimneys are generally viewed as non-viable. In other words, if they are causing a problem, then elimination rather than removal is often the only safe option.

Lethal Bee Control or a Bee Keeper?

We recommend that you contact a beekeeper in the first instance who will likely give you an honest answer on the question of removal, but is liable to sidestep the issue of all-out elimination of the honey bees.

If the beekeeper is unable to safely remove the colony, or provide a solution, then it's time to leave them alone or if you still feel elimination is the best option, call a professional pest control company to destroy the bees for you.

All is not lost though – even at this late stage the pest control expert may know of a removal method that the beekeeper doesn’t and still save the colony – it all comes down to experience and sometimes a little luck.

Please let us know your experiences – what works for you and what does not. Get more help from our Bristol pest control team on 0117 369 2709.

WaspKill UK Pest Control with Simon Berenyi