There’s a Strange Phenomenon That Happens With Bees and Houses

In What It’s Like, people tell us, well, what it’s like to have experiences many of us have not even imagined. In this entry, we spoke to beekeeper Jon McAdoo, from Plantsville, Connecticut, who specializes in the removal of beehives tucked into the walls of houses. It happens more often than you might think—last month, Dallas influencer Jennifer Houghton found bees in the walls of two rooms in her mansion, documenting the process on her Instagram, @turtlecreeklane. In July, a woman in Alberta made the local news when she found a hive in the wall of her garage. McAdoo wasn’t involved in these bee removals, but he’s seen plenty like them. This summer, he did a removal after a woman was alerted to bees via “vibrating in her bedroom walls,” according to NBC Connecticut.

Bees might be unwanted house guests, but they mean no harm. McAdoo has figured out how to relocate bees safely to another hive where they can continue their pollination duties. This as-told-to essay is based on an interview that has been edited and condensed for clarity.

We average maybe 10 to 15 honeybee removals every year. Most of those are in the walls of people’s houses. I’m sure most home contractors are very good at what they do, but there are a lot of gaps in houses. Usually wasps or yellow jackets will get in and eat away the insulation to make space for their nests. If that’s not repaired properly, the next time the honeybees come by, they’ll take advantage of the gaps. The bees don’t need much. They like to have a sizable space without anything interfering.

The hives in the walls can start small, and people don’t always notice them at first. Usually a hive is discovered because of the buzzing noise. Or someone will notice the bees flying in from the outside and figure out that something’s going on. They’ll put their ear to the wall—even putting your hand to the wall, you can feel the heat of the hive come through. In a good year, a hive can grow to massive numbers. We’ve removed a few hives with 60,000 to 80,000 bees.

I started beekeeping probably 15 years ago, and I’ve been removing bees from people’s houses for the last 10 or 12 years. The removal started one day when a neighbor came over and said, “Hey, can you help me with something?” And one thing led to another. We don’t even advertise, just word-of-mouth. I’m always amazed how people even from other states find us.

I’ve found it to be very important to try my best to save the hives. Bees are important to ecology and every aspect of food production. Their pollinating work is so vital. The quick reaction that most people have when they see a bee is to grab a can of Raid and just spray first. And it’s unfortunate. A lot of people feel that if they see a bee, the bee is just going to come and sting them, but for the most part, if we leave them alone, they leave us alone.

So, how to remove a honeybee hive? My wife and I work as a team. The first thing that we do when we go into someone’s house is set up a plastic tent around where the bees are, to limit the area where bees can escape. Then we just cut open the wall right where the bees are. We suck up some of the bees into the special vacuum that we have. It doesn’t hurt them. They don’t go through the vacuum cleaner, just into a box.

The bulk of the bees are on the honeycomb. Very interestingly, when you cut open the wall and you do it right—you don’t make a whole big mess, but you just cut it open nice and clean—then the bees are very calm. A few of them will fly out to figure out what happened, where’s all this light coming from? But the majority of them stay right on the honeycomb, which is the basic structure of the hive, and keep on working. The young worker bees have wax glands on their body, and when they move, they can excrete wax. It’s amazing how fast they can build. Very intelligent creation.

So we start cutting up the honeycomb and try our best to keep the bees on the comb. To cut the comb, you can use some sort of a knife or a hive tool, which is just basically a flat pry bar and cuts through pretty easily. We have to make sure we keep the comb oriented the right way, just the same way the bees had. That’s because the comb contains the majority of the eggs and what we call the brood, which is the larvae that are in production and will be bees pretty soon. Even though it might not be obvious, you could put the comb into the frame upside down, and the nectar or the eggs could essentially fall out. So we put the comb into wooden frames and just put a rubber band or two around it to keep it from falling out. And then we put those frames inside beehive boxes. On the outskirts of the hive is the newest and the freshest honeycomb. That’s extra for the bees, so that’s what we collect for honey. People love to get that as much as they can.

Working with the bees, there’s an overwhelming wax-and-honey smell. It’s kind of difficult to put your finger on it, but it’s a pleasant smell. Then there are other smells that can happen in a removal of a large hive. Sometimes bees can become exhausted. If they have a stomach full of nectar and get upset and stressed, they can essentially vomit out nectar. That creates its own unique smell, which tells me that the hive is stressed and I need to calm things down quickly.

There have been some hive removals that haven’t been the easiest. It’s all in the process. If a hive is in a very difficult place to get out, a few bees are gonna get squished as you’re cutting it out, and the bees don’t like that too much. Or if a hive is in trouble and doesn’t have a queen, the bees tend to be a little grumpier. They’ll be a lot more in your face and just in the attack mode. They’re on your bee suit veil. They’re trying to get you, basically. And I’ve had a few times where, after a difficult removal, I have a residual effect where their loud buzzing noise stays in my ears. It takes a little while for it to go away.

Each hive has its own personality. We equate that with the queen, whatever trait that she has. Some can be more aggressive; others can be just very calm. Some are very organized, and some are scatterbrained. I find myself talking to the bees when I’m in the middle of it, asking them to move out of the way and relax. It’s funny: You get your head into it when you’re in the middle of removal.

A removal usually results in one to two boxes of honeycomb. Then, once the box is full of frames, I’ll just set it up in an outside location and open its entrances so the bees can explore their new spot. And I’ll open the top, take the vacuum box, and dump the extra bees in the vacuum cleaner on top of the hive. Just throw ’em right on top. It’s chaos for about a half an hour, but in a relatively short period of time, they calm down and they get right back to work.