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This may be long, but it's well worth reading, trust me...
I first noticed bees in the eaves of my house near my front door late
last year, and figured the winter would wipe them out. But they were
back this summer, and the number of bees was increasing, and it was
becoming a nuisance.
So I sprayed Raid Wasp & Hornet killer, which had no effect, to my
surprise, because that stuff kills wasps on contact, so I tried another
bee spray, which also had no effect at all. Then after I thought the
bees were all outside the hole, and I caulked the hole closed using
caulk gun on a pole, but they tunneled right through the caulk.
Then I found a powder called "Seven", which kills like 100 different
insects, but I didn't see "bees" on the container. When I read the
little booklet, I noticed a warning about not using it in areas with
bees because it would kill them. BINGO! But, you have to shoot it
into the hole, and since i'm allergic to bees, and there were even bees
outside the hole at night, I was hesitant.
So when we had a party at our house and I had to tell everyone to NOT
use the front door because the bees were swarming all over, that's when
I declared WAR.
I took a bug zapper we had from our previous house, cleaned it up, and
took the bottom cage off, to make sure they would get close to the
zapping part. I mounted the zapper unit UPSIDE DOWN on a 2x4 board so
that I could lean it against the house and put it right up to the hole
in the eave, and I set it in place one night.
The next morning, I plugged it in, and immediately began to hear
non-stop zapping and frying. I watched as the bees swarmed and tried to
attack the zapper. It was awesome.
So I figured that night I could safely put the Seven powder into the
hole, after getting rid of their air force, but when I got home from
work that day, I still saw 2 or 3 bees, so just to be safe, I continued
to plug in the zapper for a few more days. After that, we didn't see
ANY bees, and still have not. Not one.
When I finally put the zapper back in the garage, a lot of bees fell
off, but I never actually took the zapper off of the board until this
past weekend. When I did, I noticed a big clump of dead bees on the
zapper, so I removed them with a broom. I couldn't believe how many
there were, and, counting in groups of 10, I estimated well over 200
bees. And that's not counting the ones that had already fallen off.
But, when I picked up the zapper, I noticed that it sounded like some
dead bees were inside the plastic housing where the electric stuff is,
so I turned it over and began to shake it, and dead bees fell out
non-stop for 5 minutes, many more than I had cleaned off with the
broom. (And they weren't inside the housing before I started, because I
had opened it up to clean it.)
So now I've 500-600 dead bees on my garage floor, maybe more.
Initially I had thought we had 20 or 30 bees in the house at the most.
I''m still amazed. I still plan to put the Seven powder in the hole,
though, and seal up the holes.
I think what helped was that the zapper was right under the hole, and
when they would drop out of the hole to start flying, they would get
zapped. And it seems that all the bees inside the plastic housing
crawled in while they were swarming and trying to "kill" the zapper.
The holes in the housing were too small for the bees to fall into them
after being zapped. That's amazing to me too, that hundreds of bees
would land and crawl inside, only to become trapped.
I know a lot of people do not like to kill bees, for various reasons,
but you feel very differently about them when your children and your
health are threatened by a hive INSIDE your house.
Well, now i'm figuring out how to rid the world of mosquitos. Wish me
luck.
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Bee Wars - How I Won the War
