Bees at a seasonal home in Miami while you are away

What scouts find at a shuttered, silent house

A swarm's scouts want an enclosed, dry space reached through a narrow opening. A house closed for the summer has several of those, and nobody around to interrupt the search: no kids in the yard, no mower on Saturdays, no one opening the side gate, shutters locked over the windows. A gap at a soffit, a lifted roof tile or an unscreened dryer vent sits undisturbed for weeks, and that is long enough for a swarm to inspect it, move in and start drawing comb.

The timing works against owners who leave in spring. UF/IFAS puts Florida's swarming season between March and July, and notes that bees can swarm later in the southern part of the state. African honey bees, which have spread into Florida, can swarm ten or more times a year and are content with a cavity of one to five gallons. A colony that arrives the week after you lock up can be months old, with heavy comb, by the time you return. Our guide to scout bees explains what the house-hunting stage looks like, if anyone is around to see it.

The people who see the house before you do

When the owner is gone, the first report almost always comes from someone else: the house watcher on a weekly walk-through, the pool technician, the lawn crew, the air conditioning tech, or a neighbor who texts that bees are pouring out from under the eave. Give each of them one simple instruction before you leave: if you see a steady stream of bees using the same opening, stop work nearby, step back and send a video.

Video matters more than a still photo. Ten seconds of footage shows whether the bees are flying in a tight line through one hole, which points to an established nest, or hanging in a loose cluster on a branch, which is a resting swarm that may leave on its own. Ask them to film from a safe distance and include something for scale, like a light switch or a downspout. That clip is the best place to start a quote, before anyone climbs a ladder.

Handling a removal from another state

You can run the whole job from your phone. Call or text us the footage and the address; the line is answered around the clock, and the response guarantee is 24 hours. Tell us how we get in: a gate code, a lockbox, the name on the guard-house list, or a key left with the watcher. If the colony is in a water meter or irrigation valve box or another ground-level spot, nobody needs to be inside the house at all.

You pay nothing to hear the price, and you hear it before a single tile is lifted. For a nest you could reach while standing in the yard, expect a figure in the neighborhood of $300 to $400. A colony behind stucco, inside a soffit or under roof tile that needs opening and rebuilding can run into the thousands, mostly because of the repair. An after-dark or Saturday emergency trip is billed higher than a Tuesday appointment, so when the bees are not near anyone, letting the visit fall on a weekday keeps the bill down. Our cost page breaks down what moves the number.

Ask for photos at every stage. You will get the open cavity, the comb coming out and the patched surface, along with an itemized invoice you can forward to your property manager or bookkeeper.

Condos, towers and managed communities

If your seasonal place is a unit in a building, the bees are less likely to be inside your four walls than in a planter on a shared terrace, the gap behind a balcony light, a rooftop equipment housing or a hedge by the pool deck. That puts the call in the hands of the building manager or the association, not you, and they will want paperwork before any contractor touches common property.

Our crews carry a license and insurance, and the building's manager can get a COI by asking for one. Pass along the manager's contact and that document reaches the office before the visit, so the front desk is not holding a crew at the loading dock while you wait for an email. Our page on condo and high-rise removals covers access through service elevators and roof hatches, and the HOA and property manager page covers gated communities that log every vendor at the gate.

If you own a house in a community with an architectural committee, ask whether patching a soffit or replacing tile needs approval. It is easier to know before the wall is open.

Hurricane season lands while you are gone

Owners who leave in May and come back for Thanksgiving are gone for nearly all of the six-month storm window, which opens June 1, closes November 30 and tends to peak around September. It creates two bee problems that owners rarely think about.

The first is storm prep. Someone has to install shutters, trim trees and bring in patio furniture, and UF/IFAS lists pruning, mowing and running heavy machinery such as chainsaws among the activities that set off a defensive colony. A crew fastening a panel over a window can be standing beside a nest in the wall. Ask your prep crew to look and listen at each opening before drilling or cutting.

The second is the aftermath. High wind peels back soffits, breaks tile and splits palm trunks, which can leave comb hanging in the open. If your watcher sends storm photos that show bees or exposed comb, read our notes on colonies uncovered by a storm before anyone starts tearing out debris.

Closing the house without trapping bees inside

Before you leave, walk the outside with your watcher. UF/IFAS recommends 1/8-inch hardware cloth or standard insect screen over vents, drains and downspouts, and 100 percent silicone caulk for cracks of 1/8 inch or more. Look at meter box lids, irrigation valve boxes, loose fascia, gaps where a pipe or cable enters the wall, and the hollow spaces in stacked pavers or old planters.

There is one firm exception. If bees are already using a hole, do not seal it. Closing an active entrance pushes the colony deeper into the wall, where it finds another way out, sometimes into the house. The colony has to come out first, and then the opening gets closed. During swarming months, UF/IFAS advises checking weekly, which fits neatly into a house watcher's existing visit.

Coming home to a house that had bees

Removal is only half the job when the comb was inside the structure. Honey and wax left behind in a wall attract roaches, ants, wax moths and the next swarm, and a closed house in summer heat can soften comb until honey seeps through drywall or stains a ceiling. That is why we cut out and clean every bit of comb we can reach. The scraping, washing and drying steps are laid out under comb and honey cleanup.

Patching the stucco, relaying tile and repainting stay in-house: the roofers, painters and licensed contractors are ours, which spares you from vetting a separate repair outfit by phone. If the colony's location was unclear from the outside, thermal imaging lets us read the colony's heat signature through stucco or drywall and choose where to cut. That workmanship carries a warranty, so if bees settle again at the same gap we patched, we make another trip out. Our piece on why bees return to the same spot explains why scent left from an old nest makes resealing so important.

Questions people ask us

Removal pages that go with this article

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