How to get bees out of a chimney?

Posted by Jon on Jul 29, 2010 in Swarms & Nests | 2 comments

Wow – this is a bee week for me. I’ve tried to help out with a couple of bee problems already and have another one waiting in the wings. They’ve all been different with differing levels of success and lots of learning along the way. The great thing to hear is that there is a real desire to help the bees and not simply destroy them.

So, bee problem no. 1 this week was a really tricky one. A house being restored nearby had a buzzing chimney which was causing concern to the builders. The owner is focused on hitting the completion date so time was of the essence – the chimney needs to be capped so we had to get the bees out. Now, I know from previous experience that chimneys and bees are a bad, bad combination but the desperation of the builders to save the bees persuaded me to go and have a look (I know I am a soft touch!). Several other beekeepers had refused to even visit so they were at their wits end to try and recover the bees rather than kill them.

The chimney is on a 2nd storey roof  at about 8.5m up but the roof was sturdy and the slope not too great. We were also able to access it up other roofs so so far, so good. The chimney itself was divided into 2  internally which then divided again, and the one with the bees in had had a 20cm metal flue inserted recently. The fact that this flue had been inserted without any comb or honey falling suggested that the nest itself was not in that part of the chimney although there was definitely a large ball of bees at just over a metre down.

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Examination of the outside wall showed bees entering and exiting around a loose stone further down so it became clear that the nest was in a void between the chimney wall and external wall. The inside of the loft had been recently plasterboarded (with no space between the board, insulation and roof) and there were no bees inside at that stage so it didn’t appear to be exiting internally. However the external stone looked as though it may have been moved in the past so I wonder if previous owners had removed a bees nest and this was a re-population of an old nest.

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We talked to the owner about the need to dismantle the section of the outside wall to reach the nest itself but he felt this wasn’t an option at this stage. So there was nothing that I could about the nest itself. All I could do was hoover out the ball of bees to help the workmen cap the top of the chimney safely.

Knowing that I was potentially looking at a nest a metre or more down, I had added a section of hose to my beevac and increased the suction accordingly. Strapping the beevac hose to a bamboo pole meant that I had more manoueverability, and a halogen lamp showed the way down the chimney. There could only have been about 2,500 bees in the ball, presumably bees  who had been dislodged by the new flue being pushed through, blocking the internal nest entrance.

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So what to do with the bees? Clearly I had no queen or brood so there was no hope of them surviving on their own. The only thing I could do was to add them to one of my weaker hives in the hope that they transferred in successfully.

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I went through all the possible options to get the bees out with them, including coning, so I’ve left my number with them and hope that they call me when they want the nest removed. Hopefully, when the outside wall is repointed they will leave the external entrance open, or call me in when the scaffolding is in place and the masons are on site. It’s always frustrating to leave a job half done!