Under Siege

[The PIT]

Buzz Buzz one swarm of Bees flew into our Garden.

The neigbours legged it. Leaving in the car yet left all the windows open while we calmy shut our windows and waited for them to move or settle.

In the end they decided they liked our apple trees at the bottom of the garden. The Camera came on useful then.

[Brian Ellis]

This is a swarm that hit us last year and settled on our chimney. Thousands of bees flew down the chimney into the house and, believe me, that was not funny. To cap it all, it was on a bank holiday and I was not able to find any of the local bee keepers at home. I eventually called the police and they were on site within ten minutes with three cars and six guys. They scratched their heads and furiously called HQ for advice. One car went off and came back 30 minutes later with a guy who was supposed to be an expert. He braved the bees in our living room, opened the doors of the stove to see that half the swarm was there and shut the doors - fast. He asked for an insecticide spray and sprayed round the stove, of course to no effect. He then told the police he could do nothing and asked to be taken home. At about this time, we saw a couple of bats fly off, disturbed by the unwelcome visitors. More furious radio calls and the police called the fire brigade. The came with two appliances and about ten firemen, after 25 minutes (God help us if we need them for a fire!). They stood and discussed the situation for 5 minutes. Then one of the firemen suggested someone in a village about 15 minutes from here, so he went off in one of the police cars and came back with this guy who did, at least, have the correct clothing, hat, net etc. The firemen erected their big ladder up to the chimnet (estimated 10 m up) and this guy went up. He came down again and reported that the bees are very agitated and he couldn't see the queen, possibly in the chimney. He said that the only thing to do was to destroy them. He prepared a 5 l spray of strong insecticide and sprayed them, indoors and out and up the chimney. It took about 3 days for all the corpses to fall, in and out of the chimney. We just about filled a 30 litre plastic rubbish bag with them. It was a horrific experience and I guess it cost the community about 60 to 70 man-hours (police, firemen and beemen).

[TransformX]

Bees hate smoke.
Filling the house with smoke would make them evacuate ASAP but you'd be stuck with an awfull smell for weeks.
I don't know if there's a way of making an odorless smoke.

[Brian R.]

I bet there is such a thing as odorless smoke (like they use in the movies).

Normal bee smoke is made from burning wood chips. The bees don't run from smoke, it just calms them.

[Brian Ellis]

Smoke only makes them drowsy. The guy up the ladder had his smoke dispenser to ty an calm the buggers down. The insecticide smell was gone in a couple of hours (windows open after spraying was finished)

[Brian R.]

The real question is: How much of the insecticide absorbed into your rugs and furniture and will never totally leave?

[Elie]

Nothing Napalm wont cure, one spray late at night and the whole hive will be burnt to crisp including the bees

[Brian Ellis]

Originally posted by Brian R.
The real question is: How much of the insecticide absorbed into your rugs and furniture and will never totally leave?

If there is a small residual quantity that never leaves, it can't do any harm, can it?

Unfortunately, it is impossible not to use insecticides in this semi-tropical country. There has been a proliferation of really nasty beasties since the whole island was sprayed with DDT 1948-1953 to eradicate malaria. This programme was successful but the whole biotope of the place was drastically modified as a result with many species having disappeared, including mammals and birds (as well as mosquitos). So we live in a cloud of insecticide

[lecter]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
At about this time, we saw a couple of bats fly off, disturbed by the unwelcome visitors.

I'm sure it wasn't funny at the time, though

Here we've got termite invasions every year, it's a lot of fun to see a whole bunch of them near my pillow in the morning.

[Ajax]

Funny this story and this thread would come up at about the same time.

"Everybody had literally thousands of bees on them, in their hats and on their suits," Clark said. "When we pulled the boxes out, big globs of them would fall on us." "The bees were so agitated you could barely see the beekeepers or the wreckage itself, just because of the cloud of bees that were swarming," said fire chief Shawn Christiansen.