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Welcome to another episode of Peskies Pest Control podcast here in Birmingham Alabama with Michael and Travis. We do this podcast as a community service for Birmingham, Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, Helena, Pelham and all other surrounding areas!
Michael Wienecke
Hey. So on this podcast, we always like to talk about relevant things that are happening here in fescues pest control and we have seen a huge uptick in honeybees, a lot of infestations around chimneys, infestations in attics, some just swarming around the house in general. So Travis, kick us off with honey bees.
Travis McGowin
Yeah, I’ve actually got a customer over in my area, who often on for the last several years, has had honey bees in one of their walls is the big industrial building. Outside of the building is actual plates of metal sheet metal screwed on to the frame. And then the inside has plywood walls in between. So the bees have kind of leverage their way up into that area. And typically, the customer knew about it, and has never indicated that they were really concerned about it. Although I did bring it to their attention previously, until the other day. They do a lot of woodworking. And they’ve got some very large roll up doors there. And so they had the doors open because it’s been really warm out. And they had a large swarm enter their warehouse area of their building. It kind of, I guess freaked them out for lack of a better way to say it. They ended up with a really big ball of honeybees inside the building. And so they did call us and we were able to make it out there. But at that time the honeybee swarm was gone. But it did kind of push them in the direction of trying to alleviate their honeybee situation in their walls. So they are out and about right now. Don’t be surprised if you’re walking through the woods or on the side of your house. If you see just a large clump of honeybees. I am Michael, why don’t you tell the listeners why that is what what they’re actually viewing there.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, so a lot of times when you see just a ball of honeybees on a branch or a tree or something like that they’re resting to get to their their final destination where they’re heading to. So not something to be alarmed about. Really, you know, I do a lot with honeybees and bushes and stuff like that while we’re either inspecting or looking around. And I’ve personally never been stung by a honeybee. They’re extremely docile insects. So definitely not something to worry about there. Another thing here at pesky is we don’t we don’t want to hurt the honeybee. So we always call a beekeeper. We have multiple beekeepers on standby that are more than willing to come out there and either get those honey bees or figure out, you know what we should be doing with those honey bees.
Travis McGowin
And I’ll tell you this, too. So two instances where they’ve caused issues we did we had if you remember a former technician of ours, who has a two story house, and the honey bees, an actual big ball of honeybees landed on side of their house and actually went in through a gap, a very small gap on that side of the house and got into the wall, actually behind his son’s headboard of his bed up in the second floor bedroom where his son sleeps at night. And you know, I said at one point it sounded like the wall was going to take off because they were just so loud. And so the wall Boyd. And so you know, the other thing that I’ve had is I had a customer that had honeybees leave and you know, they’ll leave for various reasons. You know, whatever the reason was, the honeybees had left. But they had gotten into a void space there in the wall. And they left all of their their nests, their Honeycomb, all of that inside the wall, which was then busted open by insects, they got into the wall. And I received a phone call asking what he could do about a very nasty mess running down the sheetrock and his dining room. So I would always recommend to the customer. If you end up with a honeybee problem, it may seem harmless enough, you may think that you’re doing a good thing. But at the point when the honeybees leave, or relocate for whatever reason, you can be left with a pretty nasty mess that can be pretty expensive to fix. So always the best idea, in our opinion, to call an AP or call a pest control company that can get you in touch with an apiary that can solve your problem before it gets worse and then before it causes damage to your home.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, because that Honeycomb, like you’d said it’s going to rot. You know if the homeowner takes care of himself, which we find that a lot where they’ll you know, spray something in there and just kill all the bees. And they think that they’re they’re good to go. And then you know, a couple weeks month later they they’ve got this stinking ball of Honeycomb that just rots and smells absolutely horrible.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
