Kendall Bee Removal for Lawn Boxes, Soffits and Dadeland Stores

About 16.6 square miles of South Dade carry the Kendall name, stretched between US 1 on the east and the Homestead Extension of the Turnpike on the west, yet there is no mayor or city hall; it is an unincorporated census-designated place that Miami-Dade County governs directly. Before the 1950s the land was mostly pine rockland broken up by fields and groves. Then the houses came, in a 1950s building boom, and as growth shifted west through the 1970s, 80s and 90s the name Kendall moved west with it.

That history shows up in the bee calls. A suburb that replaced orchards still has plenty of fruit trees, hedges and flowering shrubs, so foragers have food most of the year. What swarms need next is a dry, dark hollow, and a neighborhood of aging roofs, attic vents and buried utility boxes offers thousands of them. Kendall was also severely damaged by Hurricane Andrew in August 1992, and rebuilt walls and roofs from that period are now old enough to have gaps of their own. If a cluster of bees is hanging on your fence today, our swarm pickup page explains what happens next.

Six places a Kendall swarm moves in

From the Metrorail end to the Turnpike end

• Dadeland

  The business district of Kendall, built around Dadeland Mall and served by the Dadeland North and Dadeland South Metrorail stations. Expect busy parking lots and property managers who will want a certificate of insurance before work starts.

• Kendall Drive

  Southwest 88th Street, signed as State Road 94, is a major east-west arterial through Kendall, with Baptist Hospital of Miami on its south side. If your yard backs onto this corridor behind a tall hedge or fence, an entrance on that side can go unnoticed until the colony is large.

• Snapper Creek canal

  Snapper Creek runs through Kendall on its way to Biscayne Bay, and the Snapper Creek Canal carries on about 10 miles farther inland. Bees collect water as well as nectar, using it to cool the hive and thin stored honey, and a canal is a source that seldom runs dry, so houses with a canal-facing yard should keep an eye on eaves and back fences.

• Along US 1

  The eastern edge of Kendall follows US 1, past The Falls, an open-air shopping center south of Dadeland. Commercial roofs and landscaped medians here need daytime work scheduled around traffic and shoppers.

• Around Killian High

  Miami Killian High School opened on SW 97th Avenue in September 1965, roughly a decade after Kendall's 1950s building boom began. On a house from that era, check the roof edge and soffits each spring before swarms start moving.

• The Turnpike side

  Kendall's western edge is the Homestead Extension of the Turnpike, where the CDP meets The Crossings and Kendale Lakes. If your subdivision has an HOA, find out what approval the board wants before any wall is opened; a certificate of insurance is available on request.

A suburb built on old grove land

The orchards that once covered Kendall are gone, but the planting habit stayed. Fruit trees, flowering hedges and big shade trees are common yard plantings, and the county's Kendall Indian Hammocks Park sets aside a 32-acre nature preserve. For honey bees that adds up to steady forage and lots of natural hollows. It also means a swarm leaving one colony in spring has dozens of choices within a few blocks, and the attic vent on your house may be one of them.

Scout bees inspect a cavity again and again before a swarm commits to it. If you see a handful of bees inspecting the same gap over and over, read what scout bees are doing and close the gap before they bring the rest. If a colony already moved in and was removed once, why bees come back explains the scent trail left in old comb.

Houses that came through Andrew

Hurricane Andrew destroyed many homes and businesses across Kendall and the rest of South Dade in 1992. Houses repaired or rebuilt after that storm are now more than three decades old, and a single street can mix original roofs, patched sections and newer replacements. The seams where old work meets new are exactly where bees find a way in.

Storms still matter. A strong blow can peel back a soffit or split a tree and leave comb in plain view, and the post-storm field guide explains the next steps. If you are buying or selling a Kendall house and an inspector notes bee activity, this guide on bees during a home sale covers how to keep the closing on track.

Pricing and repairs, in plain numbers

A Kendall lawn box or a waist-high hedge, reachable from the grass, usually costs about $300 to $400. Comb inside a wall or roof, especially behind stucco or tile, can run into the thousands because the opening has to be made and then rebuilt. Closing that hole again falls to the same company: the roofers, painters and contractors who do it are licensed and on our payroll. Saturdays, Sundays and late-night emergencies carry a higher rate than an ordinary weekday booking. Ask, and the paperwork includes photos plus a line-by-line invoice; what drives each figure is laid out on the cost page. Thermal imaging finds where hidden comb ends, and how thermal imaging reads a hive shows what that scan reveals.

How a Kendall visit runs

1. Send the picture

   A photo of the entrance, with something nearby for scale, helps us judge whether this is a swarm resting on a branch or an established colony inside the structure.

2. Find the comb

   On site we scan the wall, soffit or trunk with a thermal camera to map the colony, and we check HOA or plaza rules before cutting anything.

3. Take them out alive

   Nothing gets sprayed. Comb is cut out by hand with the bees still on it, brood comb is kept intact, and a beekeeper takes the whole colony.

4. Seal and rebuild

   Once the cavity is empty, our own tradespeople patch the stucco, soffit or box lid and shut the gap. That work is warrantied: if a new swarm settles at the same sealed spot, we come back.

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Questions people ask us

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