We get it! Finding a hive of bees in your home is alarming. As cool as bees are, they’re not the best houseguests…. Especially if you or any of your family are allergic to bees.
Your gut reaction is probably to grab a can of Raid and start spraying. If the hive is big enough, you may be even be tempted to hire an exterminator to come out and spray.
But, aside from the fact that bees are an important species that are best removed and relocated, there are some short-term benefits to removing them instead of spraying them.
Here a few reasons to avoid spraying bees!
Dead bees can make a big mess
When someone sprays a hive with pesticides, bees will die off in the hundreds or thousands. They’ll drop from the comb into the nooks and crannies of your home and start to decay.
Large piles of decaying bees can result in foul smells, mold or mildew, and a huge mess you’ll have to clean up later. If the idea of having mounds of dead, rotting bees in your house sounds gross (we think it does!), bee removal is definitely the way to go.
Grown bees aren’t the only things that will decay
Part of a hive is dedicated to baby bees (also called “brood”) who are enclosed in “cells” until they mature and hatch. If all the adult bees are dead, the brood will starve and die in their little rooms. If the brood comb isn’t removed, it will start to decay.
Like full-size bees, rotting brood comb can result in awful smells and a huge mess. A good bee removal specialist will also remove and relocate any brood comb along with the rest of the hive. The baby bees will live, and you won’t have to worry about a disgusting mess in your walls.
Unattended honeycomb can attract pests
Spraying bees in your home may eliminate the potential of being stung, but you may end up swapping one pest for another.
Bees are prodigious honey-makers, and that honey will remain in your walls after the attending bees are dead. While bees are capable of protecting their honey stores from pests like roaches or rodents, unattended honeycomb is freely available to any critter that happens upon it.
Roaches, rodents, ants, and other pests will all be attracted to honey that isn’t protected by bees. They may be killed by any lingering pesticide, which can cause an even bigger mess. Having a beehive removed includes having all the comb removed, too. No unattended honey means no more uninvited pests!
Melting comb can cause sticky situations
Have you ever left a tube of Chapstick in your pocket and put it through the dryer? Or spilled a jar of syrup on the floor? Both make a huge mess!
Honeycomb makes just as much a mess as those two situations — and maybe more.
Comb is messier than you may think. It doesn’t just contain the clear, purified honey you buy at the store! It also contains wax, nectar, pollen, brood, and other materials the bees bring in from outside. If comb isn’t properly removed, those materials can make a huge mess in your home. Especially in Florida, when heat can get extreme in attics and crawl spaces, homeowners have to worry about comb melting and making a mess.
Aside from being a pain to clean up and an attractive food source for pests, melting comb can also cause physical damage to your home. We’ve even seen situations where melting honey has seeped through homeowners’ drywall, resulting in costly repairs.
A good bee-removal expert will remove all comb from your home and relocate it. That saves you a ton of time, mess, worry, and sometimes repairs!
Spraying your home can cause a huge headache
Our first reaction when we find something living in our home is usually to get rid of it as soon as possible. Often, we’ll instinctively reach for a can of bug spray or call the first exterminator we find online. But wait! Think through the repercussions of spraying your home with insecticides before you do anything.
Finding bees in your house is a problem, but spraying them can result in even more problems. Calling a bee removal specialist instead of an exterminator is often less expensive, and you’ll save yourself the trouble of dealing with rotting bees and honeycomb, additional pests, and other problems.
Need a bee removal expert? We can help! Contact us here.
Photo credit: Ed Dunens, "Honeycomb," November 2015, Flickr Commons: Original Image Here
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