If you’ve ever heard a faint buzzing coming from your walls or noticed bees hovering around your home, you’re not alone. For years, I’ve received countless calls every spring from frustrated homeowners asking, “Why are bees nesting in my walls?” or “How do I get rid of bees in the wall cavity?” It’s a common problem that can become an overwhelming nuisance if left unchecked.
Bee infestations in walls usually happen when a colony is not managed properly, leading to swarming. These swarms of bees seek out ideal nesting spots—like the hollow cavities of walls—to build their hives. If you live in an area with African or Africanized bees, you may notice even more swarming activity in the spring and late summer, making it essential to understand how to handle these situations.
Before you panic, many people confuse yellow jackets with honey bees, so it’s important to correctly identify whether you’re dealing with bees or potentially more aggressive yellow jackets. While beekeepers like myself can help you safely manage bee colonies, yellow jackets often require professional pest control. Pest control companies deal with yellow jackets. Beekeepers deal with bees.
Signs of Bees in Your House Walls
- A loud Buzzing Noise coming from inside the walls
- Bees Entering or Existing the walls through cracks, crevices or holes
- Honeycomb or wax buildup on the wall or in a nearby area
- An increase in bee activity in the area around the wall
- Small piles of sawdust or wood shavings near the wall, indicating the presence of wood-boring bees
- Finding Dead Bees inside your home (especially on carpeted areas)
How To Tell If You have a Bees Nest In Your House Wall Cavity?
The first telltale sign that there are bees in your walls will be that they will be flying consistently in and out of a hole, or gap. There will be at least a few bees per minute when it is warm. If the hive is big there will be a constant stream of bees in and out. The bees flying in will be laden with pollen. The picture below shows pollen on the legs of the bee.
If the insects flying into your wall don’t have pollen on their legs they may be yellow jackets.
If we have ascertained that it is a swarm of bees in your wall, you will not have to go about getting the bees removed.
3 Main Reasons Why Bees Keep Entering My House?
1. You Have A Swarm Of Bees In Your Walls Or Roof
If this is the case, sometimes bees will see lights in your house at night and try to fly towards them. You will find that the bees cluster around the lights and get tired then fall on the ground and crawl around.
Bees nesting in house walls is particularly problematic in bathrooms, as many people leave bathroom lights on at night. Half-dead bees on towels still sting and they can results in all sorts of stings in painful places unspeakable places. This can bring a whole new meaning to bee-stung lips.
2. A Nest Of Bees Is In Line Of Sight Of A Light In Your House
If a bee are nesting in a house wall within line of sight of your house and can see lights, some of the bees will fly to these lights at night. In this case, you may need to close your curtains, turn off the light at night, close windows, or get the bees removed.
3. Sugar Or Honey Is Open and They Are Finding It
If the bees find a pot of open honey or sugar syrup in your house they may come and try to take it away. You can end up with a lot of bees stuck on windows, and a huge mess when this happens. It is better to always close the lids of honey and syrup jars.
3 Best Ways to Get Rid of a Bees Nest in Your House Wall Cavity
Typically a beekeeper can perform a bee removal operation but sometimes you can do it yourself with a bit of knowledge and preparation. To do this there are a number of options.
Self Removal Using Peppermint Oil or Smoke
If the bees have only just started to swarm into the space and have not setup any hive structure, you may be able to convince them that this is not the best place for them to stay. This can include adding a little bit of smoke into the wall if you have access to the cavity from the outside, but a more effective method is to use Peppermint Oil. Bees hate the smell of the peppermint oil (which to us smells alot like minty fresh toothpaste) and so will move on from your home if they have only just arrived. Note, do not use any other scents such as lemongrass as they are actually attracted to some like this.
To execute on this method, you will need some pepppermint oil (about 10ml), a spray bottle (around 5L) and some water with a bit of dish washing soap in there. The dish soap acts as a suffactant to allow the oil to mix into the water as an emulsion and spread around otherwise it will simply just sit on top of the surface and you won’t be spraying anything except water.
Once mixed up, you will need to get access to the cavity area by either climbing up into your roof (note, wear some protective clothing if you are about to annoy the bees) or by finding their entry point from the outside. Once you have access, spray the area liberally with the peppermint scent to move the bees on by themselves. Sometimes it can take a couple of hours for the bees to get the message, so feel free to come back and re-apply every half hour or so.
If this fails to move the bees on to a better hive location, then they likely have setup some of the hive comb and are in for the long haul. That means it is time to move onto the second option of calling a bee keeper for an open wall removal.
Open Wall Removal by a Beekeeper
In this option, you have called in a professional, the wall is opened up, the combs are removed and the bees are taken away. Sometimes beekeepers will use a bee vac – a vacuum cleaner that sucks up bees and does not hurt them. Once the bees and combs are removed, the beekeeper leaves and you now have to get a trade in to patch up your wall cavity again unless you are able to do this yourself. It really pays to spend alot of time cleaning all of the comb and honey left over from the wall as much as you can otherwise next season the bees will detect the sugars and return to the same place.
While it is a good business model for the beekeeper, it is an expensive excercise for the home owner. If you have gone down this road, then you should skip to the next section on how to stop more bees from returning and making the same mess again.
Screen Cone Removal/Bee Valve Removal
In this method, the beekeeper places a beehive box close to the entrance of the bees going into your wall. We then place a large sheet of wood with a bee valve, or a cone of wire mesh with an open end, over the hive entrance and seal all the gaps.
Bees leave the hive in the wall, then go out and forage and when they come back, they join the other beehive at the entrance. Because there are forager bees, they are laden with pollen and full of nectar. The guards at the entrance accept these bees into the new hive and they join the workforce of the queen in the box.
After three to six weeks, most of the bees inside the hive will have been transferred, and the bees inside the wall are weakened. I normally then remove the sheet of wood with the bee valve and allow the outside hive to rob all the honey out of the wall hive.
The box of bees is then removed at night. For some reason, these hives can be quite aggressive.
How To Stop Bees From Returning To A Place They Have Nested Before
After you have removed bees it is important to make sure that another swarm does not move back into the cavity.
I have had thousands of cases where I take bees out, tell the house owners what to do to prevent bees returning, and a year later I get a call “your bees came back”.
Fill The Cavity
Bees are cavity-nesting animals. If you fill the cavity, they cannot move into it. I find polyurethane expander foam is an excellent way of preventing them from returning. Fill the cavity where they were with expander foam.
Seal all cracks in the wall around there if you so wish.
Catch Boxes to Prevent Bees Nesting in your Walls
The chances are that if the bees found one place in your house that they liked, that there are other places too. They chose your neighborhood for a reason. Good flowers or something made it nice to them. Other swarms will make the same decisions.
If you place empty beehives which have been baited by a beekeeper to attract swarms inappropriate places around your property. These catch boxes will mop up swarms that are in your neighborhood.
There are Bees Swarming Around My House
If you do find a bee swarm in the early stages of setting up a hive (or looking for one), the best way to gently move them on is again to use a Peppermint Oil spray solution. Bees hate the smell of Peppermint and so a solution of 10ml Peppermint oil, a generous dash of dishwashing detergent (to allow the oil to mix into the water) and then about 5L of water will give you plenty of ammunition to send them away.
Once mixed, simply spray the outside surfaces of your house where there are evidence of bees, and this will stop the bees from making a nest in your wall cavity. As a side note, your whole house will smell minty fresh like toothpaste, but if you can catch them in the early stages of hive development, then this is a really simple and effective way to move them on gently.
We hope this article has helped you solve your bee problem. If you liked it please share, and remember, if the bees move into your house they are telling you to become a beekeeper.Read more about: When To Add Supers To Beehives?
Dr. Garth A. Cambray is a Canadian/South African entrepreneur and beekeeper with 28 years of experience in apiculture and specializes in adding value to honey. His Ph.D. research developed a new advanced continuous fermentation method for making mead that has resulted in a number of companies globally being able to access markets for mead. His company, Makana Meadery, exports honey mead to the USA where it is available to discerning connoisseurs. He has also developed technologies to commercially manufacture organic honey vinegar in Zambia for export globally. He holds a few patents globally in the ethanol industry and believes in technology and knowledge transfer for human development and environmental sustainability. One of his proudest achievements is the fact that the wind farm he started at one of his old apiary sites has essentially made his hometown carbon neutral.
