…what?
he obviously wasn’t a garderner, I’d feel rich if a swarm like that moved in on us. They are now rare in my neck of the woods. I would judge that as a sin against nature for sure. at best. 
A monument to unthinking, unbridled fear.
djm
..
I can’t believe that it’s me that’s going to add an intelligent comment to a thread. My best friend had to deal with bees in his house. This is what my best friend told me. It’s more complicated than you know. He always had a couple of bees flying around a corner of a house that he bought. Once he looked at things more closely, he saw there were bees going in and coming out. He called up an exterminator. At least in WV, it’s against the law for an exterminator to kill bees. He would need a beekeeper to remove the bees. A beekeeper determined that he had a beehive in his house that completely filled the space between 3 of the wall studs. He actually had a small fortune in honey inside his walls. Here were all of his options:
- The nicest solution was hiring a beekeeper and a carpenter who would agree to work in unison to open either the inside or the outside of his wall, gently remove the swarm, harvest the honey, and get the carpenter to close things up. Since the hive was so big, there were major costs involved by removing the oustide siding. There were also serious personal risks if they went through the drywall and the swarm escaped into the house. He couldn’t coordinate this effort, so this was out.
- He could personally exterminate the bees himself and probably not get in trouble. But he’d have to keep his mouth shut. But if he killed the bees and there was still a lot of honey in the wall, then insects and rodents would overtake this house.
- After the first frost, he could plug the hole in the oustide of his house. The bees would be trapped inside the house all winter, they would eat the honey and eventually starve to death. He just had to watch that the bees didn’t have another way to get out of the wall. At some point, once he was sure that the bees were completely gone, he could remove and replace the drywall to get all the wax out of his wall.
I like bees, and this video would have been more interesting if they had taken on a hive of yellowjackets using the same techniques. Those critters wouldn’t just sit and take it, I’ll guarantee. Bees are valuable and still scarce around here for reasons no one understands. If given the opportunity, I would have discouraged these guys from doing this.
It’s just that I also understand the value of a good gratuitous explosion.
T
And don’t forget the hurled trailer hitch.
No “in the mortuary” shots either. They really lucked out; you can’t tell the difference just by looking at a swarm, but the way the bees will react is far different.
And non-Africanized bees can still be quite dangerous in their own right.
–James
Well, I thought that just went without saying.
T
This is sad…we are actually suffering from a major bee shortage in California, so much so that some thieves in the Central valley have recently been STEALING swarms of bees to sell to farmers.
A waste of good bees…
J.
I am usually prone to give other creatures a break. A few years ago when I walked on my deck and a couple red wasps buzzed me I just ducked, went into the house, and let them be. I figured live and let live. But when I saw the number of wasps on my wall near the deck had grown to around 500 I became concerned. My little grandson could walk across the deck and be seriously injured. I filled a bucket with at least one half gallon of gasoline and in one great wave covered the whole mass. Dead wasps dropped like rocks. From that time on every time I saw a wasp flying around my deck I got out the flyswatter and immediately killed it. No more wasp problems. 
We found something similar when we were restoring an unused upstairs room in our old house. Built in the days before 16" standard spacing, the space between the studs was much more. And, there between two was a paper hive reaching from the ceiling almost to the floor. Thankfully, the hive was long empty. We would have been a-hurtin’ otherwise.
Anyone else think the word “hive” is ominously creepy?
“Beehive” is ok–it’s got plump little guys with fuzzy butts that visit flowers and make hunny.
“Paper hive,” however, steps across the line. Now we’re into the realm of carnivorous things with triangular faces that may reproduce by, oh, paralyzing their victims so that their young can eat them alive. From the inside.
Brrr!
Please! It’s plump little girls !
The _guy_s don’t visit flowers or make hunny…they’re tedious and boring, well known for droning on and on.
yeah, yeah…take it to the piper forum… 
rimshot!
That’s amazing that you can’t exterminate bees in WV. I never knew.
Every year, for the past three years we’ve gotten hives in the yard. The first year I used gasoline and burned them out. I felt horrible about it.
The last two years I’ve used soapy water. Just pour plain water mixed with dish soap into their hole in the ground and directly on as many bees as possible. It works like a charm. It works on ant nests too.
The truth is I really don’t like killing them. I don’t know what else to do when they are right in the middle of the yard.
Man, call a beekeeper. If I were any closer, I’d come get them myself.
Man, call a beekeeper. If I were any closer, I’d come get them myself.
..
We had a honeybee hive in our living room ceiling above the TV. We decided to spend the money and have them removed properly.
I stapled a plastic curtain across the living room and hired a beekeeper. He tore out a 3 x 6 section of our ceiliing and removed around 30,000 bees and several pounds of hive. It took him about 8 hours and charged us $100. Plus he got to keep the bees. We got a quart of honey.
It cost another $100 to repair the (plaster) ceiling.