Can I treat honeybees?

Insecticide treatment is often carried out by pest controllers as a last resort to dealing with a bee problem.

But it doesn’t need to be a last resort as there are other options available. There are many codes of practice to follow when insecticide is used and there are only a few compounds that can be used to treat bees legally within a void space. This is something that would need to be done professionally by a certified pest controller. A list of certified pest controllers can best be found on the British Pest Control Association website.

The problem with spraying bees is that it is often ineffective because the treatment will perhaps kill that colony off but won’t stop other bees from going in and foraging on the comb. We often find that even if people attempt to seal off the entry points, two meters over where there may be another gap under the tiles which is impossible to seal off and bees still manage to sneak in.

One of the biggest issues with using an insecticide is that other foraging bees from other local beekeeping hives and wild colonies will come and steal the contaminated honey from the hive and fly it back to their colonies. This introduces the insecticide into beekeeper’s hives and wild hives. The problem with wild hives is that the bees eat the honey and unfortunately they die and there is a snowball effect. The second problem is bees taking the honey to beekeepers hives then unknowingly introduces the insecticide to that honey which is harvested, put into jars and sent out for human consumption. Insecticide then gets spread on people’s toast it gets eaten by humans which is not safe. Insecticide, when used greatly risks contaminateing the human food chain.

We had an interesting call once from a customer who had bees in the chimney of her home. She wanted to deal with the issue quickly and economically as she was severely allergic to bees. We suggested a cut-out (removing the honeybees alive and the comb) which needed scaffolding and some building fabric to be removed and reinstated. At the time she decided to get the bee sprayed by someone else as it was cheaper and quicker. The hive was about three meters in height and when the bees were sprayed it pushed the honeybee colony down the chimney into the living room. Approximately 50 000 bees were inhabiting that hive at the time and as a result, she has thousands of bees in her living room.

Spraying or treating the bees made the problem worse. All those bees that were on that honeycomb died but then she had hornets and wasps and other honeybees from thousands of other local hives foraging on that honey and they were then in turn also dying and falling down the chimney. We ended up removing the honey, supplying the scaffold and putting the building back together and bee proofing the area to stop any other bees from coming back.