Inside the Hive: The Real Buzz About Live Honey Bee Removal By Delta Pest Control – Coventry’s Ethical Bee Relocation Experts
- Dave bird
- Aug 26
- 4 min read
Inside the Hive: The Real Buzz About Live Honey Bee Removal
By Delta Pest Control – Coventry’s Ethical Bee Relocation Experts
So, you’ve got honey bees buzzing around your chimney, loft, or wall cavity — and you're thinking, “They'll buzz off eventually, right?”
Nope. If they’re coming and going with little yellow pollen sacks on their legs, they’re not scouting. They’ve moved in.
And whether you like it or not... congratulations — you’re officially a beekeeper.
At Delta Pest Control, we’ve spent nearly a decade rescuing and relocating honey bee colonies from just about every awkward space you can imagine. We’re not talking about nicely placed hives on garden sheds — we mean chimneys, cladding, soffits, air bricks, roof voids, and behind walls. If it’s hard to reach, bees will find it. And we’ll be right behind them — in full bee suits, on a 30-degree day, with a vacuum in one hand and a hammer in the other.
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🔊 The Call-Out: It Always Starts the Same...
Most honey bee removals start with the same sort of call:
"We’ve had bees coming in and out for a while… but now they’re inside the house, and honey’s dripping from the ceiling.”
Ah, the sweet (and sticky) signs of a well-established colony.
What a lot of people don’t realise is just how quickly a small bee presence turns into a massive, multi-generational hive. A single queen can lay over 2,000 eggs a day. Within weeks, you can have tens of thousands of bees working around the clock, building comb, raising young, and storing honey. Give them a couple of months, and they’ve built an entire city in your wall cavity.
Give them a couple of years… and now you’ve got up to 80lbs of honey, a chimney full of comb, and a home buzzing with activity — and not the good kind.
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🧰 Smoke, Sweat & Strategy: How Delta Does It
Step one: Suit up. Our bee suits might look cool (they don’t), but inside they feel like portable greenhouses. Imagine climbing up scaffolding in full kit, dripping with sweat, while trying to gently remove bricks or tiles — all with 50,000 bees watching your every move.
We always begin with cold smoke to calm the bees. It blocks their alarm signals and helps prevent mass stinging. Then we carefully expose the colony, brick by brick, cladding panel by cladding panel. It’s not just about removing bees — it’s about doing it without damaging your home.
Once we reach the hive, we’re greeted by one of nature’s most beautiful sights: golden honeycomb, stacked row after row, vibrating with life. It’s hard not to be in awe — even when you’re melting inside your suit.
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🐝 Bee Vacuum? Yep, It’s a Thing
This isn’t some DIY hoover job. We use a specialist low-pressure bee vacuum, designed specifically to gently collect bees without harming them. It’s precise work, often taking hours. But this is a live removal — not extermination. Every bee we remove is one more that gets a second chance.
We also carefully collect and inspect the brood comb, checking for any signs of foulbrood or other diseases. Thanks to our DEFRA-approved bee health training, we know exactly what to look for — and what shouldn’t be moved. Only healthy colonies make it to their new homes.
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🏡 Relocation: From Chimney to Countryside
After the removal, our colonies don’t get dumped in a box and forgotten. We hand them over to our trusted partner, Mick the Beekeeper, who rehomes them to peaceful rural apiaries in the Coventry countryside.
Mick monitors the bees closely during their transition. It’s not just about survival — it’s about helping them thrive in a new environment. New hives, new queens if needed, and a proper introduction into established colonies. It’s bee rehab — done right.
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🧽 The Aftermath: What You Don’t See on Instagram
You might see a lovely “job done” photo on our page — but what you won’t see is the clean-up that follows.
Removing the bees is only half the job.
We:
Remove all honeycomb, wax, and residue
Clean and sanitise the area to stop future infestations
Seal the entry points so no new colony can move in
Repair and restore whatever we had to take apart
Sometimes that means retiling a roof. Sometimes it means rebuilding part of a chimney or applying protective mesh to future-proof the area. It’s hard, messy graft — but we take pride in leaving your home better than we found it.
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😓 The Hard Truth: It’s Not Glamorous Work
We’re not going to pretend this is a clean, quick job.
It’s long days in the heat. It’s wasp stings in awkward places. It’s honey in your socks.
It’s crouching in crawl spaces with a head torch and a smoker, wondering if this is the swarm that finally makes it personal.
But when the job’s done — when the bees are rehomed, the mess is gone, and your property’s safe again — it’s one of the most rewarding feelings in the world.
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🕐 Why You Shouldn’t Wait
Too many people wait too long. “We thought they’d move on,” they say.
They won’t. And the longer they stay:
The bigger the colony becomes
The more honey they produce
The more risk of damage, infestations, and stings
Early intervention saves you time, money, and hassle — and it saves the bees too.
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🐝 Trust Delta Pest Control – The UK's Bee Removal Specialists
We’re not just pest control. We’re passionate about bee preservation, professional about property care, and proud of the work we do.
Whether your bees are in a chimney, loft, wall cavity, roof space, or behind your cladding, we’ve got the tools, training, and experience to get the job done — safely, legally, and ethically.
📍 Based in Coventry – Covering homes and businesses nationwide
📞 07543 741433
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Delta Pest Control — Giving Bees a New Home, and You Your Home Back.
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