Bees play an important role in our ecosystem. Their job is to pollinate, and they are masters at what they do. But what happens when those bees interrupt your workday?
It happens a lot. Now most of the time when we get a call for service, it’s usually a homeowner calling to report bees at their home. The second most common caller is the owner of a workplace. Most of these calls happen on a Monday morning.
You see, the weekend has just passed, and employees returning to work will find that bees have set up shop while they were away. Although we get calls from all types of workplaces, the most common workplace that seems to attract bees is the construction site.
There are many places bees can disrupt work at a construction site. Here’s a short list of some of the places we have found bees at a job site:
1. During a remodel and/or new home construction. Like a finished home, bees will invade the roofs, walls, and chimneys of a home that is under construction
2. On construction equipment: boom lifts, scissor lifts, steel and wooden beams, and other machinery.
3. Office trailers and conex storage boxes. Most often the bees are usually underneath the trailer or conex box.
4. Under stacks of wood and other construction material. Bees love to burrow underneath piles of stuff. They also like building hives under wooden pallets carrying construction materials.
5. Wooden spools that hold wire and cables. The bees often build hives in the hollow center of the spool.
So what can be done when bees invade a construction site?
Most of the time we can remove bee swarms live, and relocate the colony to our bee clinic. The live removal will usually need to be done after hours, when the crew is off the job site.
If an elimination is required for safety, we often recommend the area treated be avoided for at least 24 hours.
Take a look at the clip below: It’s a video of a live bee removal that was performed on a construction site in Lemon Grove, CA. The bees were later relocated to our bee clinic.
