IMPORTANT: This service has unfortunately been temporarily suspended by Goodfires and hopefully will resume in the future. We can however recommend a bee removal specialist should you have a problem with bees.
Honeybees are a very valuable asset to society and the food that we eat. In fact, every 3rd mouthful of food we eat is due to the humble Bee. So as humans we need to look after them!
They do however have a habit of hiving in our chimneys - especially disused ones! They can completely block chimneys causing major problems in certain circumstances.
There are two ways of resolving this problem.
- Using pesticides to kill off the colony and remove the beehive when all the bees are dead. This is not really advised as the bees will carry the pesticides to plants and other bees killing off more.
- Remove them humanely allowing the bees to thrive in a new location.
Removing bees from chimneys can be carried out traditionally by fitting a temporary hive to the chimney and moving the bees gradually to their temporary home by finding the queen and placing her in the new hive. This can be tricky but is possible. They can also be removed by a specially designed bee vacuum to carefully suck the bees very gently (not killing them) directly into a new hive which can be carried away to another location.
Once the bees are removed, the chimney is scraped from the top removing as much wax as possible to avoid more bees returning to do the same the following year. In certain circumstances the chimney pot can be proofed against bees returning forever (unfortunately this is not possible on all chimneys especially in ones that are used especially for solid fuel).
The bees can then be re homed in an apiary and raised to produce honey or passed on to fellow bee keepers to do the same.