How to identify and treat honey bees

When anyone mentions honey bees, it's hard not to imagine their delicious honey, their impactful role in pollination, and the environmental problems that threaten their existence.

And yet, when a honey bee colony gets established inside the walls of your home, those good feelings seem to vanish. You want those bees out now!

Honey bees are an integral part of our agricultural system and help us produce the fruits, vegetables, and food necessary to eat the way we eat. The products they produce, including honey, beeswax, and propolis, are very beneficial to our needs. However, no one wants a beehive inside their home.

Every year, bees send out scouts to find new places to build their next hive, and it just so happens that our homes are full of warm, sheltered cavities that make the perfect hive. An existing hive will swarm with its old queen and half the hive in the spring. The swarm can be as big as 5,000 bees up to 20,000 bees. The swarm will usually move to where they can hang out while the scout bees look for a new home.

The swarm can look intimidating, but European honey bees are very gentle and calm during this stage of life and aren't likely to sting unless attacked. However, Africanized bees are a little more aggressive when it comes to swarming.

Bee scouts will look for an empty cavity for their new home with a volume between 4-9 gallons, an entrance around 9 feet up in the air, and easily defendable.

You can identify honey bees by their fuzzy, golden-yellow bodies with black stripes and their buzzing, busy behavior around flowers. If you look close enough, you can also see a stinger at the end of their abdomen. Additionally, if the bee has been out foraging, you'll see balls of yellow pollen on its hind legs.

An infestation of bees in your home might occur if you notice an unusually high number of bees flying around your property, see bees entering a specific part of your home, or find a honeycomb structure in or near your house.

How big are honey bees?

Honey bees are about ½ inch long.

What other insects look like a honey bee?

You might confuse honey bees with wasps, yellow jackets, or even hover flies. Wasps and yellow jackets will not be fuzzy and will have a sleeker body type. They will also be more aggressive and more likely to sting you. Hover flies only have two wings, no hairs on their body, and will have a flattened abdomen that they move up and down.

Honey bees are found throughout the United States. They thrive in gardens, orchards, and anywhere there are flowering plants. Wild bees like to make their nests in hollow trees or abandoned manmade structures.

If they decide to make a nest in your home, look for them in wall cavities, attic spaces, or even under roof tiles.

If you suspect you have a honey bee colony in your home, only a few options are available.

First, if it's just a swarm, it's best to leave it alone, and the swarm will move on to a new location. You could contact a local beekeeper, and they can take the swarm away for you.

Second, if you see bees coming in and out of a hole or crevice in your home or hear buzzing from your walls, then you probably have an established hive inside the walls of your home. That presents a bigger issue. The honey produced in the hive can damage your home, invite other pests to enter your home and stain your walls.

If you have an established hive in your wall, it's best to contact a trained specialist to help. The colony can either be killed with pesticides or removed entirely. Either way, that will require the wall to be opened up, the bees, comb, and honey to be removed, and the wall to be rebuilt.

This will require either a skilled beekeeper in both bees and carpentry or a pest control company specializing in this kind of work.

The best route is to prevent bees from establishing a hive in or near your home in the first place. Sealing up entry holes, crevices, or entrances into your home will keep scout bees from finding an ideal place to build a hive.

Check out Pestie's easy-to-use pest control solution that conveniently arrives at your home when needed. You'll have access to pro-grade solutions without the added expense of an exterminator.