How to Remove Bees from a Wall

...long as they aren’t stinging anyone there’s not really any harm in having bees in a wall. Cutouts are very hard on bees and there’s maybe a 50/50 chance that the hive will survive, but at least it’s better than calling an exterminator and spraying poisons. Exterminators often don’t know what they are doing when it comes to bees and will not properly do any preventative measures to keep another hive from just moving in again. In short, when you’ve...

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How to Remove Bees From a Tree

...day the arborist will (carefully!) cut above and below the cavity with the bees. You’ll end up with a log with bees in it. This can then be taken to someone who wants to host a log of bees or back to the beekeeper’s apiary to do a trap-out under more controlled circumstances. I hope you can see how the best option for the bees is to do nothing. Unfortunately, some people are just way too afraid of “bugs.” If only we’d look up from our screens occa...

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How to Remove Bees From a Tree

...ext to the exit the beekeeper places a hive box with some brood comb (baby bees) in it. The worker bees leave but can’t get into their old home. They take up residence in the new box and make a new queen. If all goes well the beekeeper comes in six weeks and takes away the box. I took bees out of a kitchen vent this way and wrote about it in a blog post. Know the difference between a swarm and a beehive. Swarms are how bees reproduce. Often they w...

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Boozing Bees

...uitive ways, as Berenbaum showed in a study that proved that even fungicides, thought to be safe, can impact bee colonies. In over a hundred years of tinkering with chemicals and bees we’re still making stupid mistakes. In addition to that whiskey there’s a lot of other things we shouldn’t be dosing bees with....

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Radical Apiculturalist Michael Thiele

...a word that suggests living with bees rather than keeping them. Feral honeybees as well as the bees of natural apiculturalists, after all, keep themselves and seem to be doing better without all the intervention. The same goes for the word “worker.” Thiele suggested that when we use this kind of 19th century industrial language we’re thinking more of our own desires than the true nature and health of the bees. The bien Thiele wants us to think of...

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