North Miami Beach Hives: Block Walls, Carports, Maule Lake Condos

North Miami Beach began as Fulford, incorporated in 1927, and took its current name in 1931 when a new charter annexed beachfront property. That beach strip now belongs to Sunny Isles Beach, across the Intracoastal Waterway, so the city you live in is mostly inland, much of it on the coastal ridge and cut east to west by the Snake Creek Canal.

That shapes where bees settle. West of Biscayne Boulevard are streets of houses from the 1950s and 1960s, many enlarged since with closed-in carports and added rooms, and every seam between old work and new is a place a scout can test. East of the Oleta River bridge, Eastern Shores packs condos and deep-water houses onto filled land, with townhomes on the south and west sides of Maule Lake. Add a mobile home park at the city's southeast tip and a medieval stone monastery on West Dixie Highway.

Where colonies move into North Miami Beach buildings

Neighborhood notes, east to west

• Eastern Shores

  Filled former mangrove land bounded by Maule Lake, the Intracoastal and Dumfoundling Bay, behind guardhouses. Houses with deep water access sit west of NE 35th Avenue, condos and apartments east of it, plus townhomes on Maule Lake's south and west sides. Give us the gate details when you call.

• Skylake

  North of Miami Gardens Drive between NE 18th and NE 22nd Avenues, with some of the city's larger lots and early-1960s houses, a few fronting the lake itself. The city line zig-zags here, so over half the homes are in unincorporated Miami-Dade; that changes nothing about the visit.

• Sunray East and Sunray West

  Compact 1950s houses on lots roughly 50 feet wide, reaching from the Snake Creek Canal east toward Greynolds Park. Enclosed carports and add-on rooms are common, so the first look goes to the line where each addition meets the original roof.

• Windward

  Wider 1960s lots along the Snake Creek Canal, where a typical three-bedroom house came with a Florida room and a carport. Those two attachments, plus the canal-side eaves, are where the crew starts looking.

• Uleta

  One of the biggest neighborhoods, west of NE 6th Avenue and hemmed in by I-95, built up in the 1950s with houses, duplexes and triplexes. In a duplex both units can share one wall cavity, so both households should know the plan before anything is opened.

• City Center

  The old core along the Snake Creek Canal: City Hall, the library, historic homes, the 1920s Fulford-by-the-Sea fountain and the stone monastery on West Dixie Highway. In any older house, patched stucco and aging wood trim give scouts more to probe.

• Highland Village

  The lowest ground in the city, at its southeast tip, known for a mobile home park, with some apartments and a few blocks of concrete block houses. Skirting, sheds and utility enclosures are the spots to check here.

A beach name on ridge ground

People searching for help here sometimes picture a waterfront city. Mostly it is not. The sand that gave North Miami Beach its name now sits in Sunny Isles Beach, and what remains is a grid of houses on ridge ground, a canal through the middle and a strip of bay-facing land around the Oleta River. North Miami lies to the southeast, Miami Gardens to the west and Aventura to the northeast.

So the problems split two ways. Inland, the colony is in a house: a wall, an eave, a carport ceiling or a meter or irrigation box in the yard. East of Biscayne Boulevard, condo living adds balconies, roof rooms and dock boxes to the list, with a building manager in the loop. Big green space sits at the edges too, with Oleta River State Park covering 1,033 acres on the bay, so a resting swarm on a fence or sea grape is part of life. A swarm usually moves on. A colony that has started building comb in your structure will not.

Mid-century block houses and their seams

Much of the single-family housing here dates from the 1950s and 1960s. Owners since then have added rooms and closed in carports, and each change left a joint where two eras meet. Those joints are prime entry points.

Because block cells are hollow, the entrance and the comb are not always in the same spot. Thermal imaging picks up the warm mass of the colony through stucco or drywall so we open only what is needed. Honey and wax leave with the bees, since leftover comb draws fresh swarms and pests, as our note on returning bees explains. After that, the patching is done in-house by our licensed contractors, roofers and painters, who fill the block, rebuild the soffit or replace the fascia, and that repair is warrantied: should bees ever reoccupy the sealed spot, a crew returns. Block cores get their own write-up under wall colony removal; rooflines are covered in our eave and soffit page.

On price, a low swarm or a hive in a ground-level box sits around $300 to $400. A deep wall colony, a full Florida room ceiling or a condo facade that needs real repair can reach into the thousands, and calls at night or on a weekend are billed higher than a regular weekday. The cost page breaks it down.

Condo boards, guard gates and mobile home parks

Eastern Shores and the buildings around Maule Lake add paperwork. A board will typically ask for a COI before anyone opens a shared wall or goes on the roof, so we email it to management in advance. The condo and high-rise page and property manager page explain scheduling, and owners who leave for part of the year should read the seasonal home guide first.

A mobile home park poses a different access question. The colony is often under the home, so the crew works low, numbering skirting panels and refitting them at the end. For duplexes and rented park homes, our renter and landlord guide helps settle who makes the call.

How a North Miami Beach visit runs

1. Call, text or form

   Tell us the neighborhood, whether a guardhouse or association is involved, and where the bees are flying. A phone photo of the entry helps us bring the right ladder or lift.

2. Gate and manager sign-off

   For Eastern Shores, another guarded street or any condo, we confirm the gate list and send insurance paperwork. In a park or duplex, we make sure the owner has agreed to openings.

3. Locate, open, collect

   The camera finds the comb, the crew cuts in only as far as needed, and the colony is lifted out live and boxed for a beekeeper to take.

4. Seal, repair and clean up

   Our crews close the cavity, patch stucco, block, soffit or skirting, and haul the comb away. Photos are yours on request, and the sealed spot stays covered by our warranty.

Matching removal work

Questions people ask us

Places next door