We love bees, but we also know that they can sometimes be a nuisance.
We can help with that.
How we work
Our role is to solve your problem. Quickly, safely and transparently.
Every year, a colony of honey bees will start looking for new homes in sheltered, elevated spaces that are the right sort of size and easy to defend.
Often, they’ll find homes high up in hollow trees or in cavities in cliffs. But, to a honey bee, a roof- or chimney-space can seem just as attractive.
That’s usually fine – roof spaces are often out of the way of people so honeybee colonies can live in our homes for years without anybody noticing.
Sometimes, though, their paths will cross ours. That can often happen when building work is started, for example, but when it does, then the honey bees can become a problem. Although they’re usually gentle creatures, they can become defensive, and their chief defence is their sting.
If bees do become a problem in a building you own or manage, then please contact us.
In the first instance, we will undertake a comprehensive site survey, to locate the bees and devise a plan that’s suitable for you and the bees.
Guiding you through the process
Removing a honey bee colony from a building can seem a daunting process. There may be tens of thousands of honey bees involved, each with its own little sting, and because they don’t live in the open, it’s likely that some building work will be involved to access the space they’re living in.
Happily, we have years of experience in exactly this sort of work, and once we have a plan, we can work at pace, including making everything safe and tidy afterwards and “bee-proofing” the space for the future.
And our work doesn’t stop there, as we’ll then take the honey bees to a suitable hive where we’ll check its health and help it re-establish itself.
Meet our team
Our key people are all experienced bee-keepers, each with at least ten years experience of relocating colonies.
Sharon Bassey
Founder
Luke Whyatt
Operations Manager
Simon Wilks
Keeper of the Books
FAQs
How do I know if it’s honey bees?
This is a good question, especially if you can’t see them clearly. In general, honey bees are about the size of wasps, being fairly thin, and not rounded like bumble-bees. They are furrier, though, and usually more of an orange-brown colour than the black-and-yellow of the wasp. If you can see them from a distance, then they way they fly can help – they trail their little legs and, more obviously, tend to fly in straight “bee-lines”.
It used to be that bumble-bees in England didn’t often live in buildings, but in recent years the Tree Bumble-Bee has arrived in the UK and, though it’s very fond of bird-boxes, it will sometimes take up residence in cavities in buildings. In general, bumble-bee colonies are much smaller, amounting to a few hundred, rather than the tens of thousands that honey bee colonies can maintain.
But we’d be happy to hear from you if there’s any way we can help, even if you’re not sure what you’ve got.
Do you only deal with honey bees?
Most of our work does involve honey bees though we have relocated bumble-bee colonies, too. There are a few different species of bumbles, though, each with different requirements and all with very fragile nests, so it’s not always easy and, because bumble bees don’t stay in their colonies all year, it can sometimes be more practicable to wait for them to move themselves and bee-proof the space after that.
We can also deal with wasps, if that’s what they turn out to be. But we’re not quite so gentle with those.
Can’t you just poison honey bees?
No. But that’s not just because we love bees. That’s because poisoning bees, though it’s legal as a “last resort” creates three additional problems.
The most obvious is that a full-size colony – tens of thousands of bees holed up behind a series of wax-and-honey barriers – is quite hard to get poison into, especially as they’ve each got a pair of wings that they’ll flap to drive any poison out.
The second problem is that, if you do manage to kill all the bees, you’ll end up with a roof space containing perhaps fifty pounds of honey and wax that will, if it’s not looked after, melt and leak and seep and rot and attract every bee and wasp and flay and mouse within sniffing-distance.
The third problem is that any half-poisoned bees may well leave the space and join another colony nearby. That’s not just bad for neighbouring bees, but if any of them are managed colonies, it’ll get poison into honey that people may eat.