Ground bee removal - Advice sought - I need to genocide these fuckers asap

[vomitusdeux]

You have chickens, I saw on youtube if you dig up the nest you have chicken snacks with the larvae. Don't do it without a bee suit though, or hire someone.

 

[Baguette Child]

Are you sure they're bees? This sounds more like yellow jackets.

So that's part of what's weird about it, yeah. Behaviorally this sounds exactly like yellow jackets or other wasps; But the few dead ones I looked at last time we had to deal with this were positively bees. Not exactly like the carpenter bees or honey bees we usually get, but definitely still bees.

 

[Bucephalus]

Also get a bee suit off Amazon and return it afterwards or something. We kept ours and it's been very helpful to have. Not expensive at all

You have chickens, I saw on youtube if you dig up the nest you have chicken snacks with the larvae. Don't do it without a bee suit though, or hire someone.

Thirding the beesuit suggestion.

A cheapo chinkware beesuit from Amazon will only cost around $40 if you want to do the "use and return" strategy. There's the risk it's a useless POS and you just get stung through the fabric 200 times, but you get what you pay for.

If you don't consider yourself a gambling man, a durable, high-quality, well-ventilated beesuit (and I cannot stress "well-ventilated" enough - you will be doing physical labor in this, and you do not want to get heatstroke) that's made in America and sold by a specialty retailer should set you back around $200 and last for a couple of decades if you take good care of it. If you consider the extra $160 a "not getting stung by hundreds of angry bees" tax - and you should - you'll be far more willing to pay the premium.

From there, you can just approach the hive(s) and go to town with a shovel. Liberal application of uncalcinated diatomaceous earth to the hive entrances can also work (but it's way less satisfying). If you're going down the latter route, do it at dusk or just after dark, when all the bees are in the hive. The workers will come out in the morning to warm up, track the diatomaceous earth into their hives when they come back, and everybee should be(e) dead in a few hours. Both options are livestock-safe. I don't recommend poisons of any kind because they're not; as the saying goes, don't shit where you eat.

Best of luck. I hate ground bees so much it's unreal.

 

[TheBallPit]

Carpenter bees and honeybees are physically radically different. The former is huge compared to the latter and are almost completely black. Bumblebees also don't have barbed stingers, so they can sting multiple times without fear of having their abdomens ripped out.

I've never heard of "ground honeybees", as actual honeybees need a relatively large void to construct their combs. And honeybees aren't typically aggressive unless they have "hot genetics", like Africanization, or they get grumpy due to environmental or stressful hive conditions (or you deliberately piss them off).

It sounds like you have a species of wasp, as many do make fossorial colonies with ground-level entrances. Wasps also don't have barbed stingers, so they can attack with impunity. Be very, VERY careful if you personally plan to attack whatever these are, as wasp colonies can get huge and will defend their hives to the death. I'd watch a few Hornet King videos before progressing, as it'll give you an idea as to what you COULD be dealing with:

https://www.youtube.com/@HornetKingOfficial

 

[Yugica]

You can get dry ice from a store like your local Walmart or other large grocery store and then use that in combination with a bucket(weigh the bucket down with a rock or something too) to cover the entrance. Be careful to not make a lot of noise or sudden movements around the nest. Slow, methodical movements are ideal when dealing with wasps or bees. If you don't have a bee suit then you can use thick gloves(like welding gloves if you have them, I've used those before for beekeeping) and duct taping towels around parts of your body that you can't cover with thick clothes(multiple layers of clothes can help too), like your face. They'll go for your ankles and where your shoes are too and will crawl into any opening you leave them, thus the duct tape to leave no gaps for them to infiltrate. Avoid bright, unnatural colors as those make you stick out and draw their attention to you.

That being said a bee suit from Amazon could do the trick, but whatever gloves they have likely won't be enough and you could get some padding around your ankles and gloves and use duct tape to keep it firmly in place and to prevent any way for them to crawl in.

It's more than likely that they'll have multiple entry and exit points as well, so you may need to use multiple buckets. You can however get spray foam sealant kits from something like a Home Depot to block up any other holes you find whilst trying to smother them with CO2. It's quick, the nozzles are thin and it's easy to clean up afterwards as once it cures it'll be a solid, dirty chunk. Pic related.



As far as for locating them, you can use honey laid out and follow the returning wasps/bees back to the hive. Even a standing source of water can work as bait though if it's either dry where you live or there aren't any other water sources around(but I doubt it'll work much since you mentioned having livestock). When you lose track of the wasps/bees, simply move the lure towards where you lost track of them and repeat. Any other entry or exit holes are likely to be within view, I'd be surprised if the furthest holes would be greater than 10m apart. I'd bet that their nest would be near a tree's trunk.

 

[alphabetnigger]

Ground hornets are cunts. I wish I had some cool tips. I just want to be tangentially related to killing these fucking bees because they are cunts.

 

[anliteralidiot]

Op, post bees so we can see?

 

[Polyboros2]

Here to second the soapy water suggestion.

Had a hollowed out tree fall over with a nest in it, had an organization that came and saved the queen plus number of drones to recolonize them. They told us to just flood the thing with 2 parts water to one part dishsoap afterwards. used 20 feet of PVC to deliver a 5 gallon bucket's worth.

10/10, would genocide again. Supposedly it just drowns them through their exoskeleton. Didn't get every single one, but the nest was vacant within a week after so many of them died.

 

[Troonos]

So that's part of what's weird about it, yeah. Behaviorally this sounds exactly like yellow jackets or other wasps; But the few dead ones I looked at last time we had to deal with this were positively bees. Not exactly like the carpenter bees or honey bees we usually get, but definitely still bees.

Can you take a close-up photo of a dead one?

And yeah, soap water is the most humane way to genocide them. My wife douses the inside of hives with it if she needs to euthanize a hive for Africanized traits or Deformed Wing Virus.

 

[Sammich]

Might be worth it to find a local beekeeper who would probably gladly remove them. If that's not feasible, or you jsut don't want to, dish liquid added to gasoline and shaken up and poured down the hole you found or whatever would work about as well as anything. Dish liquid will make bubbles and will gum up a bee's wings pretty good. If they can't fly, they can't really fuck you up. Just be careful.

 

[Aero the Alcoholic Bat]

Diatomaceous earth, dump it right around the entrance, probably even on the entrance.

Even if those insects somehow succeed in burrowing through it again, it'll get all over the place, and kill them all.

Dish liquid will make bubbles and will gum up a bee's wings pretty good. If they can't fly, they can't really fuck you up. Just be careful.

I was under the impression that dish soap and water just flat out kills them, especially when you also add white vinegar to the mix.

 

[Sammich]

Diatomaceous earth, dump it right around the entrance, probably even on the entrance.

Even if those insects somehow succeed in burrowing through it again, it'll get all over the place, and kill them all.



I was under the impression that dish soap and water just flat out kills them, especially when you also add white vinegar to the mix.

gasoline + dish soap is pretty much so you can hit em with a home made flame thrower for a bit of fun.

 

[WhatInTheActualFuck]

You have chickens, I saw on youtube if you dig up the nest you have chicken snacks with the larvae. Don't do it without a bee suit though, or hire someone.

I miss Shawn Woods's old Mousetrap Mondays videos, but I guess he's mostly run out of different trap styles to test.

 

[vomitusdeux]

I miss Shawn Woods's old Mousetrap Mondays videos, but I guess he's mostly run out of different trap styles to test.

I thought a lot of that had to do with the fact youtube censorship was calling his videos animal cruelty even when he didn't show the traps being effective. Or am I thinking of a different trap builder?

 

[WhatInTheActualFuck]

I thought a lot of that had to do with the fact youtube censorship was calling his videos animal cruelty even when he didn't show the traps being effective. Or am I thinking of a different trap builder?

Probably a little of both, but he kept going for a while even after they started striking his stuff.

 

[OrionBalls]

You need to get yourself a skunk buddy. They love ground bees and will dig out a whole hive to snack on. That's why I love skunks, and let them eat the outdoor cat food. You can summon skunks with outdoor cat food.