h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Great entry!

Incidentally, i've had a hive of honey bees in my flat for years, They nearly died out last year, we were down to just a couple being seen coming in and out now and then...

Yesterday, we had a cloud of very active honey bees about four feet accross buzzing around the entrance (which is above a window and means we cant have the window open in the sun )

So, anyone want some healthy honey bees???

P.S. The bees aren't four feet across, the CLOUD of them was!

And no, they weren't swarming, they did that about three years ago and have been rather quiet since.

I would love to keep them, but unfortunately my garden is quite in appropriate. One day though, one day...

A beehive in your flat, Robyn? Extraordinary! How did that come about and how does it work alongside your domestic arrangements? Do they have an expansionist policy at all - attempting ever to invade other parts of your flat? Are they child, pet and guest-friendly? Do you open up the hive to check what they're up to? Sorry for so many questions but - well, how fascinating

And yes. I do want some bees. I wonder how much Royal Mail charges for bee delivery

Good luck Vip! I hope you find a place for some bees

Hi Robyn.

Yes, I'd love to have your bees. My wife and I are newbie () beekeepers, and we've got all the gear, but no bees yet.

If you're serious, where do you live?

Roger

They are a nuisance as they require regular hoovering up if we want so much as an inch of open window (they tend to come in and die a lot or so it seems...)

their honey dripped down onto the windows two years ago. It's a very old house, Georgian at least, and has thick walls with deep window recesses that are wooden-panelled. The hive/nest is accessed through a crack in the rendering in the top left hand corner of the window outside. I'm not entirely sure where the hive is but I suspect mainly around the large rounded bay across the front of the house (it's sort of a large turret/bay) above the windows, I think the roof is too far away for it to be in there. (it's one of those houses that has a mainly a flat roof with eaves on top of each room...)

They haven't stung anyone yet and seem reasonably benign however I suspect they could be causing damage to the building. Also, if one gets in, it waits till you're all settled in the evening and then gets itself stuck inside one of the glass globe-shaped wall lights and buzzes really loudly.

hi Roger, I'm in Bristol...

The main problem is how to get them out, do you have very long ladders?

I dont know how bees are removed from awkward places!

(third floor of a house where the average room height is around 14'! and the access to the hive is a crack in the external rendering with no internal access...)

If you've got any ideas, let me know!

Hmmm... I think that would likely be a job for an experienced bee keeper (with a really big ladder!).

If they are ensconced in the walls or partitions, it seems more like a job for a demolition expert!!!

Sorry, but I don't think I can help. The other bad news is that because bees are suffering so much these days, some councils will refuse to destroy colonies or swarms.

You may be stuck with them for some time.

Oh, I've been living with them for nearly five years and it's not my house so I dont care. I worry that when they replace the hideously leaky roof this summer, they might use it as an excuse to kill them. I'll contact the beekeepers organisation if I get the chance and give them an opportunity to come and remove the hive once they open the place up, if they!

(you're right, the council are not interested, they aren't harming anyone and as they are honey bees, they are considered somewhat protected... not that I mind, I dont want them killed!)

Ah, so the bees are a sort of cavity wall insulation then. A few years ago I couldn't work out why my bathroom and back bedroom always had half a dozen or so dead wasps around the windows, how ever often I cleared them up. It turned out there was a nest in my roof. Wasps aren't such a problem though, because they die each winter and the queens start their new nests somewhere else.

In addition to wax and honey, bees make a thing called 'propolis', from any kind of resin they can get locally - like sticky buds or sap escaping through tree bark. Although some beekeepers sell it (it usually gets made into health products), most just curse it. It's extremely sticky and dries to a rock-like hardness. It's what the beekeeper's main tool (the "hive tool") is made for. They gum everything up with it. They use it to fill in holes, secure the frames to the supers and brood boxes - and if say, a mouse, gets into a hive and dies (which apparently happens a lot) they'll coat it in propolis and that stops it decomposing messily and filling the hive with bacteria and a bad smell. All the beekeeper finds is a mummified mouse. The point I'm getting at is, your bees may be doing all in their power to hold that old house together. Perhaps that is what's holding the house together

The local BKA might have the equipment to get a newly arrived swarm out of your wall. I've only seen it on telly. It looks a bit like a vacuum cleaner that they suck the bees out with. But if they've been established in there for years, there'll be comb and propolis stuck everywhere. And when the builders come and start threatening their brood, your nice friendly bees are likely to get very angry.

Good luck Robyn!

Well, as they'll probably be removing the roof, they'll put us in a different flat while they do the work... I would like to try and get them removed rather than destroyed though, so I'll keep an eye on things and try and get some dates!

Thanks for your replies, it's been really helpful and has clarified things in my mind Not to mention the new info which is always interesting!

You're very welcome

I've been reading about getting swarms out of awkward places, like the middle of prickly hedges. In that case, they try to tempt them out with a frame of honey comb. If they can get a couple of the bees interesting in the comb, these bees will stand on it and fan their wings towards the rest of the swarm, and the scent should tempt the swarm out of the awkward place and onto the desirable new food/home. But that method is for a swarm that's already looking for a new home. The other thing is that beekeepers puff smoke into the hive to calm the bees, so they can handle them without getting stung. But what's really happening when they smoke the bees, is that the bees react to the threat of fire. What they do when the hive (which would probably be in a tree or something like that, in a state of nature) is at risk of burning, is they gorge themselves with their honey store, ready to scarper and find a new home. When they're full of honey, they can't bend their abdomen enough to be able to sting. So I wonder, if you contact your local beekeeper association (you should be able to find their number on this list: http://www.britishbee.org.uk/local_associations_about_us.php) they could get them to swarm by blowing smoke into the wall, then tempt them into a new hive containing some drawn comb coated with honey. That might save most of them. Perhaps. Possibly...

i'll get in touch with them and see what happens. You never know i might get a bottle of mead for my tip-off

hi tibley, robin...

what finally happened here?
i am really curious...
and something similar happened to a friend a while back
ha ha actually, me too!
one flew in my ear !!!
not fun!
if i had remained calm it might have just found its way out...
but
i didnt
it died and i wound up with a swollen and sore ear

anyway... please tell me what happened here
here's a spare head net (or whatever u call it)

Yep. I'd like to know too

Doesn't look as though Robyn's been around for a little while though.

I've heard of the bee in the ear horror before, quite recently... in a pub garden. Bet that hurt

happened so fast it wound up being funny, actually
i will elucidate when i am off this itouch and on my computer with real qwerty

robyn has a new account u14926292
i found that in our search after searching entries by then searching for friends down below the results ...she is the one who is 'back again'

BOO!

Did I scare you?

Helloooooo. I am back. Again.

Bees! No new roof, it's been patched up again so the bees are happily droning away above the ceiling and probably, yes, holding the house together. Wish they'd use their gum to fix the leaks on the other side of the roof. Alas we have to have humans doing that bit.

Hope you are well?