Help needed - honeybees in the house !

[Humpty]

We seem to have a number of honeybees living under our bathroom floorboards.

They have made their way in through a hole around a badly fitted pipe, and have taken up residence.

We aren't at all bothered by bees per se, and wouldn't object to them being under the floorboards. However, there are two issues.

The first problem is that their exterior entrance hole is just above our sitting room window, on our little veranda. This means that if we open the window, the bees fly into the room. If they don't get rescued in time, they die. It also means that anyone sitting on the veranda is on the direct route for large amounts of honeybees, which might be rather nervewracking for guests. The bees don't seem very good at avoiding people and have a tendency to crash into you.

The second problem is that large amounts of bees are getting from the floorboards into the upstairs of the house, where they either have to be rescued or they die. (Once they get through the floorboards, they can't work out how to get back under them.) We are scooping numerous dead bees off the carpet daily, and encouraging live bees out of the window (it takes ages to get 15 bees out of a small window). We're off on holiday soon, which means that all the bees coming through are going to be trapped and die.

If it wasn't for these problems, we really wouldn't mind about having bees in the house!

It also seems to be that a lot more of the bees are dying than should be (we really do have a lot of dead bees on the carpet / ground) - I'm wondering if this particular colony has colony collapse disorder?

So, I've got a few questions.

First of all, what are the bees doing? Are they actually nesting under our floorboards, or is it a temporary home before they go off somewhere nicer?

Does it sound as though the bee colony are in serious trouble? Are they just going to die off anyway?

Any ideas about how to move them on? We don't know where they are under the floor, so lifting floorboards isn't going to be very practical - they might be under a couple of different rooms, or even under the bath or loo.

We're very happy to have honeybees living in the garden, so if they could be persuaded to move into a nice place in the garden, that would be the best solution for us.

We'd be very grateful for any help.

[Jon]

Are you sure they are honeybees? Can you post a picture of one or if not give a description.

When did you first notice them? Were they there last year or have they just arrived?

[Humpty]

Thanks Jon - we are pretty sure they are honeybees (my husband used to keep bees at school, and there is no shortage of corpses to examine).

They just arrived about 9 days ago.

[Jon]

Oops. Hands up the Cambridgeshire beekeeper who lost a swarm 9 days ago!

They will be difficult to remove as they have taken up residence and will have brood by now. You could try and seal up any cracks where bees are getting into the house. If you could fit some sort of screen in front of the entrance hole it would at least force them up and over the patio.
Maybe a beekeeper could check if it is possible to access them from inside the house. If there is easy access to the brood nest it can be cut out and the bees relocated to a hive. These cases are rarely easy though.

[Humpty]

If the Cambridgeshire beekeeper with a missing swarm would like to come and pick them up again, perhaps giving us a pot of honey for rent, they are more than welcome!

Will the swarm stay with us for just a year, or have they taken up permanent residence?

I can see that a 'bee baffle' might well be the short-term answer on the outside - the hole is under a little veranda roof, so I can construct something that allows them to get to their hole without going near the window or the garden bench. An old sheet will probably do the trick.

[Jon]

A swarm takes up permanent residence and when numbers build up it will swarm with half the bees which leave with the old queen. A number of queen cells are left behing and one of these will produce a queen which will take over the colony. It will probably be next year before it issues a swarm or two assuming the colony survives the winter.
Swarms like this rarely last more than a year or two as they succumb to varroa and associated viral diseases. (cue Gavin with his talk of surviving feral swarms)
If the bees die out, you will nead to seal up the entrance hole as a new swarm will be attracted in by the smell of wax and any honey stores.

Last June I collected a prime swarm and a cast a week later which came from a colony behind a fascia board. The house owner told me the other day that the colony had not survived the winter. I advised hime to clean out any debris if possible and to seal up the entrance hole. The two swarms I collected are still going strong. (They were treated for varroa unlike the bees which remained in the roof)

[Chris]

It is nice to hear from people who seem fairly happy to live alongside bees. Normally people come on here asking for ways to kill them, even before seeing 'how the land lies' and living alongside them for a while.

Note that feral colonies tend not to survive too long without the guiding hand of a beekeeper. They might not get through their first winter - less likely that they will get through a second winter. You can get a lot of bee pupae dying in a colony which isn't cared for by a beekeeper - on account of a bee parasite called the varroa mite.

Give the bees an aiming mark to more easily identify their entrance hole, like a thumb-sized blob of paint, or you could maintain a chalk mark there. Make the mark after sundown and when the bees aren't flying. Any reflection from windows might be confusing them a little, and young bees, especially, might get lost from time to time.

These honeybees have set up home. I can only suggest that you give them only one entrance hole to and from their nest, and to try and block up all other access points into the interior of your house. Could you not seal up holes and gaps with wood filler or mastic or something? Any light into their nest and they might see it as an entrance to the open, or they might use it to 'post' dead bees and other rubbish from the nest through.

I would suggest you see how the situation develops. It's not as if they are going to damage your home in any way, but you might get periods when the bees are a bit 'touchy', and where the likelihood of picking up a sting might rise. And the colony will most probably grow somewhat, before shrinking in late summer.

I can't see exactly where these bees are nesting, but it sounds very likely that a beekeeper wouldn't be able to remove these bees without dismantling a good part of your house. So, if they must go at some point, you will need to contact a pest control company and have them killed in a professional way which doesn't pose a risk to neighboring bee colonies. There is a beekeeper and bee colonies not very far away from you, possibly only a stone's throw away.