To be annoyed that killing things is so much more cost effective?

Post on local community group. A beekeeper will happily come and take them off your hands. A friend has five swarms in his hives this way. Didnt cost the person a penny.

I find it strange that the previous poster states that they are trained in ecology yet views invasive species as "ok to leave to get on with it". Baffling.

The honey and wax are being kept cool by thousands of bees continuously fanning it during the day. Honey gets much runnier when hot, so of course it will leak through. And attract vermin. Wax melts and greases. It doesn't take much of a search to come up with evidence.

Another thing I've learned is that an empty hive easily attracts new scouting bees. Pheromones are left behind and can last quite a while.

Honey bees in brickwork also don't go away on their own. Once a swarm gets too big it splits (with a new queen) and only part of the swarm leave.

Some of us in the real world have had to deal with this recently, have spoken to beekeepers, pest control and their variants.

Honey will not leak out of your walls if you kill the bees. What shit stephen king fanfiction are some of these posters writing.

The faster you do it the better.

If there's anything lift in the chimney, being as it's a chimney, you can pay somebody to sweep it. Which won't cost 2k.

I don't know how any of the posters have survived the real world. Either DH or DDad probably come and sort their issues. I bet they still think their childhood dogs went to live on the farm.

Sadly I agree. A few years ago I would have probably been able to find the £2k so save them. Now I just couldn't stretch to it!

@Pepsipepsi

Besides I stand by my point that just because several posters on this thread hate honey bees doesn't mean the bees in the chimney don't have a right to life. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Yes I'm one of those that values all lives of living things, not just humans who are similar to me. ☺
You clearly have no idea how conversation works.

Invasive or overrun species decimate notice wildlife. Feeling sorry for something that is decimating native and important species is NOT how conservation is undertaken. It's what bleeding heart people with no idea of the dangers of invasive species say.

@Pepsipepsi what about the Asian Hornet specifically?

No it's not

I have very recently had honeybees removed.

A couple of things.

Firstly, no beekeeper or swarm collector will touch them. Swarms which are gathering outside somewhere are different to what is now an established colony. They're simply not insured to deal with opening up brickwork.

Secondly, under no circumstances should you simply kill the bees if you value your property. My colony was established for only around 3-4 weeks and the hive was already massive. Shitloads of wax and honey. The former can and will melt and come through your walls as greasy stains when it gets hot, the honey left behind will not only slowly seep through your walls, but also attract predators or other vermin. Fancy cockroaches?

Thirdly, to all those who say just leave them/ be kind/ whatever. My honey bees were very aggressive even without being provoked. I couldn't go anywhere near the entrance in my garden - anything in a 1.5m radius and they'd start attacking. They stung the guy in his protective suit multiple times when they were being removed.

@Gotabadfeelingaboutthis Sorry to say you'll have to keep ringing around. You're not too far away from my guys, perhaps they'll make the trip, but they, too, took a few weeks before they could come. Much, much cheaper than the 2.5k you got quoted, though (unless this also involves building materials); mine got removed from a space underneath my floor boards in the end and it only cost around £250.

They're not my bees! As plenty of people have said there's plenty of people that would do it for free or cheap you just got to put in the effort to find them.

I only commented because I'm sick of the attitude of mumsnetters attitude to inconvenient wildlife and trees. Every thread goes 'if it's a slight nuisance just kill it/chop it down'. It's not something I live my life by. I'm fricking taking bugs out by hand out of my house into garden whenever I see them. I don't even let my husband kill spiders, he has to relocate them to the shed. My point is I don't kill small wildlife just cos it's a mild nuisance. There's other humane ways of dealing with stuff. Not my fault if anyone is too lazy or tight to deal with it humanely. ☺ In fact that was the point of the op's thread - it's cheaper to kill than relocate wildlife and it bloody shouldn't be!

And to the other poster @cinnamono , I'm well aware of the problem of non native species. If it's a plant get rid of it. If it's an animal I understand the need to eradicate it but you won't catch me killing grey squirrels etc because it's against my morals and it's not their fault they happen to be introduced by humans to the wrong habitat. I just help the native stuff by planting and encouraging more native stuff to thrive. Humans and their actions on a global scale have far more blame on this ailing planet, than non native species moving around.

I'm literally a trained and experienced ecologist. It's painful reading people's ignorance about nature on the Internet. So I decided to stick my 2 cents worth in on this thread.

Just to say, we have bees in our cavity wall near the roof and they are swarming right now - it all looks super dramatic (but they stay high up and don't bother us unless a ball of them leaving rests in the garden for half a day) but for 361 days a year you wouldn't know they are there unless you stood watching the airbrick they use with binoculars. It may not be as much of a disaster as you think (though ours don't get into the house unless we open the windows nearest their base during a swarm, I'd definitely investigate further bee-proofing on the fireplace if they are getting into the human areas that way).

Roughly where in the country are you? I know quite a few beers keepers scattered around the place that would come out to look at how accessible they are (free).

Have you tried father Christmas?

I think unfortunately it's going to be a case of killing them, if you can't afford 2k to remove them then there's not a lot of choice

I’d try this.

Sorry op, sounds awful.

We had this

none of the local bee keepers would go up a height to get them (understandably)

we couldn’t afford to pay for a specialist removal firm

they were coming into the house, on and an even in the children’s beds , one of my daughters got stung and got an infection in her leg

we tried smoking them out for days but they just kept returning

local bee keeper did put a trap on the garage roof near the roof with the chimney , they ignored it

after a few days of hell, a local beekeeper said she wouldn’t blame us if we killed them

in the end we killed them and had fine wire mesh put over the chimney (we don’t use it).

🤣🤣🤣

Bees! Fire! Ladders! It's all there.

They won't have honeycomb they are displaced meaning the swarm is currently just trying to protect the queen as they are out in the open.

If they do have any honey (which I highly doubt) the amount will be minute.

Does the £150 quote include removing the honeycomb so you're not killing all bees in a 3 mile radius of your house?

If the bees are causing a nuisance and need to be removed, the traditional method is to kill them with an insecticide smoke bomb. If this is done it is vital that the honeycomb is also removed. The insecticide kills the bees and contaminates the comb. Bees are notorious thieves and will steal any unguarded honey and take it back to their nest. As bees forage up to three miles from their hive, any colonies within this distance can steal the contaminated honey, feed it to their grubs and chums with devastating results. One carelessly used insecticide bomb can severely damage or destroy other colonies in a three mile radius. Removing the comb will mean breaking up about 60 pounds of the stuff, sealing it in bee proof containers and incinerating it. A very sticky job. The chimney also needs to have an insect proof cap fitted so prevent bees picking up any residue.

Oh god I feel so sorry for you. We had this last year and it was horrendous.
Whole house was shaking with the buzzing there were thousands of them
Insurance and pest control companies refused to help out.
In the end a fantastic beekeeper came ( my husband found him by googling said what others have said that they are not protected and are detrimental to other nectar reliant species. He said the issue is caused by amateur beekeepers who aren't skilled enough to look after bees.He said they were really looking for a new home hadn't formed a hive as that takes several days and he got in touch with the beekeepers association who came and got rid of them.
I really hope you can deal with this. It's actually hard to imagine what it's like.

Absolutely do not light a fire, there's a risk of the beeswax igniting...

Even if you get them killed you will still need to have your chimney cleaned out and the chimney pot bee-proofed with gauze, as bees will be attracted to the redundant hive, plus the aforementioned fire risk. So you'd need scaffolding up anyway, which is probably a large part of the £2500 cost of removal.

If it helps, someone in a group I'm in was quoted £8000 to have his chimney hive removed.

This. It's all about access. An easily accessible swarm will be collected for free by a beekeeper. A chimney cavity is not easy to access to collect bees but easy enough to spray with insecticide.

AHH so you like killing the world with tons of processed food wrapped in shit loads of plastic, support poor farming practices like almond milk (Google what the almond industry is doing to domestic bees!) and probably don't eat honey but waffle down some agave because fuck bats in particular.

Our neighbours had them removed humanely. I don't know by whom, or how much it cost, but they came with a giant hoover and knocked them into boxes to take away. They definitely didn't kill them. This is rural though.