Sunday, September 13, 2009

A bee problem

Bees of some sort (yellowjackets probably) have built a nest entirely inside the eaves at the corner of my house, and when I say entirely inside, I mean you can't see any sign of the nest whatsoever except for all the bees going in and out.

I had a couple of half-empty cans of bee nest spray, which have worked for me in the past, so I gave that a try; however, with the cans half-empty I didn't get as much range as I expected so much of the spray didn't hit the eaves and what did wasn't anywhere near enough.

So I bought a full can and then unloaded it entirely into the eaves, completely soaking the whole area. For a few hours afterwards, there was a frantically large amount of bee activity around the nest. But this morning, I find the bees are back to business as usual. I guess I can't get enough of the spray into the eaves through the drainage holes to do the job; most of it was wasted on the walls, I suppose.

So how do I deal with the bees now? I can't very well get up there to open up the eaves (assuming I can even figure out how to do so) and spray from up close, at least not without a bee suit. I don't see any other way, though. Is this situation dire enough to require paying a professional, or is there a trick I'm not thinking of?

4 comments:

Tyler said...

Could there be a way to lure them to move to a starter hive you place elsewhere, or would that just split the colony?

drscorpio said...

If they are honey bees, I beekeeper might come and retrieve them for you.

If they are wasps, you may have to take some wood down after it gets cold. You can kill the nest if you can't saturate it with spray. We had to take our eave apart to solve our wasp issues.

Hawthorn Thistleberry said...

It's actually vinyl siding, but how do I take any of it down without getting stung a billion times?

drscorpio said...

I can't imagine a way to deal with the problem until after the weather gets cold enough for them to become dormant.