joyce
bees in chimney
by
, 09-02-2011 at 04:26 PM (4585 Views)
An acquaintance had a swarm of bees arrive in her chimney last summer. She has a neighbour who keeps bees but he insisted they were not his! Her bungalow has a fairly high chimney but she offered to pay for scaffolding if anyone wanted to try to retrieve the bees. I mentioned around but there were no takers! I suggested that if she wait until the colder weather when the bees were clustering, put a petrol-soaked rag into the top of the chimney and seal it up that might do the trick. Today she is reporting that she had the slaters out and one of them climbed up his ladder as quietly as he could but the top of the chimney has a slate covering it with two small holes and as soon as he tried to remove the slate the bees heard the vibration and noise and came out to greet him. Not a good experience at the top of a ladder! Naturally the slaters are not prepared to return and the slate covering the chimney seems to be fairly well anchored down. It's possible the bees may die out before the end of the winter but she isn't at-all happy at having them in her chimney going into another season. Has anyone got any ideas (non-facetious!) about how to deal with this?