7 Things To Do If You Have Bees In Your Wall

Carpenter bee inside of wood

Bees in your house? That’s no good at all. Even worse is have bees in your wall! While it’s quite the situation, it is likely for bees to make their way inside your wall during the warmer months.

The best solution for bees in your wall is to contact a local bee keeper or pest control service where they will remove the entire hive from your wall. If they are honey bees, you can ask to have them relocated to continue their pollination efforts!

Read on to learn more about why bees might be getting into your walls, and what steps you should take if you encounter a bee infestation. 

* This post contains affiliate links.

Why Is It Bad To Have Bees In Your Walls?

With all of the good they do in our yards and forests, you may be wondering what exactly bees could be doing in your house that is so awful?

To put it simply, bees can cause a lot of problems when they enter your home. They can often cause physical damage, pose a threat to your pets, and even attract other pests along with them.

Bees Can Cause Physical Damage To Your Home

As mentioned, bees can be a pretty difficult pest, especially when they are damaging your home.

Although many bees simply find existing spots to nest in your house, there are many species (such as carpenter and mason bees), that will actively burrow holes into wood.

If you have exposed beams or supporting beams within your walls, these species can easily cause expensive damage!

Bees Can Affect Pets

As you may know, when swarming, bees can become very territorial, stinging humans or animals who they believe are posing a threat. 

Although one bee sting may not seem like a lot when there is a nest in your house, multiple bees can easily pose a risk to you or your beloved pets.

No one likes to get stung!

Bees Can Attract Other Pests Into Your Home

In the act of making nests, creating honey, and hoarding food, bees can easily attract other pests such as insects, rats, mice, etc.

Usually, the process of one pest attracting another creates a positive feedback loop, meaning there would be no foreseeable end to pests in your home.

7 Things To Do If You Have Bees In Your Wall

Many working bees on the surface of cells with honey and larvae. Backgound, texture

Now that you know the basics of what may be attracting bees into your house, or even what bees might be finding their way into your house, you can now learn more about what you should exactly do if you find bees inside in out other piece!. 

In a different sense, this article is meant to present you with some options for what you should/can do if you find yourself with bees in your walls instead of just flying around your home.

Now, please note that we do first and foremost recommend you contact a local bee expert if you aren’t experienced with bee removal simply because of the aforementioned reasons.

Below, we’ll go over different options but again, you should contact a pest pro near you as the best and primary method.

One last thing. Honey bees are sooo important for the environment as pollinators. So instead of eliminating bees, try your best to have them removed!

Carefully Investigate The Area Where Bees Are

When you first suspect that you have bees in your walls, it can be helpful to investigate the issue. In looking around for physical hives, you can ascertain if your problem is large, and you can pinpoint the specific location of your problem.

One of the first signs of a bee infestation may be noise. If you near small crawling/scratching noises in your walls, it may be time to investigate. Additionally, bees also make a characteristic buzzing when they are flying or communicating, which can be a telltale sign as well! 

If you are dealing with specific bees such as carpenter bees or mason bees, you may also want to look around for damage in wooden structures, as that is a telltale sign of their presence.

You can read more about the specific sounds and noises that wasps make (similar to bees) here to get more of an idea!

Call A Pest Professional When You Have Bees In Your Wall

Although it may take more time and resources, in the end calling a pest professional is truly the best decision when dealing with most any pest. 

In most situations, pest professionals and bee keepers can quickly and safely assess the severity of your pest problem. In addition to this, they are usually fast with their work, and get rid of your problems for good!

If you need help finding a pest control professional, you may want to use our handy pest control finder!

Again, DIYing bees out of your wall isn’t the best bet, leave it to the professionals with experience.

That being said, there are other things you SHOULD do to help repel and keep bees from coming back once you know that you have them.

Use Scents To Repel Bees From The Area

Detailed view of bumblebee on a flower.

Now, after you’ve called a local professional, you can start repelling bees from the area with scent.

This solution usually works for small populations of bees, however, if you are dealing with a swarm or a nest, you should probably call a professional! 

In general, there are a few main scents that tend to repel bees (and other pests) away for good! Some popular repellent scents include: 

  • Lemon
  • Mint
  • Pepper
  • Garlic

There are a few main ways to use these scents as bee repellents. If you already have bees in your walls, however, two methods tend to work well: spray and cotton balls. 

To create a bee spray, you can simply mix water (and/or vinegar) with a small amount of essential oil fragrance. After mixed, you can shake it up and spray it near the areas bees like to accumulate. 

Cotton balls are another great tactic! For this, you can soak a cotton ball in the essential oil fragrance, and place them around the house to ward off bees.

This most likely won’t get rid of them, but it may help keep them isolated into an area by masking any other attractants.

Ideally, you can spray this around the entry point where they entered your wall on the outside of your home (if it’s visible) to possibly deter them from the hive.

Smoke Can Get Rid Of Bees

Although this method may be a little harder to do indoors, smoke has been an age-old controlling mechanism for bees. For most bees, smoke disorients and irritates them, causing them to be more docile, and more likely to leave the area.

Consult a local beekeeper or pest pro for this method indoors.

Store-Bought Bee Spray Can Help You Out! 

In most big-box stores, you should be able to find some form of bee elimination spray. Due to their chemical properties, these sprays can safely eradicate your bee problems for good.

They are especially useful if you know exactly where the hive is and ideally, is in a wall outside like a shed or out building. They’re best used when you see bees or wasps beginning to make entry into your wall from the outside.

Many people recommend products such as this Raid Wasp And Hornet Spray. To use, you can stand a good distance from the beehive, and thoroughly saturate the area with spray. After waiting a few minutes, you can repeat this process until the bees are fully gone. 

Additionally, for beehives that are a little bigger, you may need to repeat this treatment for days or weeks!

I recommend reading our guide on how wasp spray works before using indoors. Again, if you can’t see the bees in your wall, this isn’t the best method as the residue from the spray will be inside the wall as well, another negative.

So just to recap, I don’t recommend using this inside your living quarters, especially if you have bees in your walls. But it’s great if they’re inside a non-living space wall!

Store-Bought Bee Traps Can Help You Get Rid Of Bees In Your Walls

If you do not wish to spray chemicals around your home, or you wish to keep your distance from the bees, store-bought bee traps may be a great option for you. 

To put it simply, bee traps are little devices that lure bees in through the use of chemical scents and attracting colors. After the bees have made their way into the device, they can’t find their way out due to the design of the trap.

Some traps also have mechanisms that exterminate the bees for good. 

Store-bought bee traps work especially great in outside locations, where bees would be more apt to explore for new scents. 

To use these traps, you can hang them fairly close to the location where the bees are in your house. Over the next few days, a good amount of bees should have found their way into your trap. Depending on the size of your hive, you may need to use more than one trap, or treat the area for a prolonged period. 

Some great options for bee traps include this Solar Powered Trap, and this RESCUE! TrapStik.

The solar powered option could be good if they’re entering your wall from the outside. Ultimately, this is a stop gap solution as the full hive will need to be removed or eliminated to fully solve the issue.

Homemade Bee Traps Are A Great Low-Budget Option

If you like the sound of the store-bought bee traps, yet you don’t have a big budget, homemade bee traps can often be a great low-budget option! 

Similar to store-bought traps, homemade traps usually revolve around the idea of luring the bees in and trapping them inside. 

Here are some steps to create a cost-effective bee trap:

  1. Get a cheap aluminum baking pan
  2. Fill the pan with: 16oz apple cider vinegar, 1 cup of sugar, water, and 1/4th cup of dish soap
  3. Cover the pan with tin foil and make a 2 inch round gap in the middle
  4. Set near bees or wasps
  5. Empty when full

The bees will fly into the small round gap, and then get stuck inside the cover and not be able to get out due to the slippery dish soap and short exit area.

You can also adjust this to use for any sized bottle as well! In some cases, using an old soda bottle works much better.

If you have an outdoor bee problem, you can learn more about where bees go during the day so you can understand when their movement patterns.

What Should You Do After You Have Gotten Rid Of Bees

Carpenter bee in the nature

Once you have fully gotten rid of the bees in your walls, you may be thinking you are good to move on with no risk of future infestation. Unfortunately in most cases, bees and other pests will simply find their way back into your house through similar means they did the first time.

First off, the main thing you should do when you are fully free of bees is to find out the way they got into your house. As touched upon earlier, bees normally get in through windows, doors, sealant cracks, and other similar building imperfections.

After you have successfully found out how bees have gotten in, you can fully seal and protect it. This means that you may have to fill in some cracks or seal some exposed wood.

Some great products to help you with this process are Gorilla White Silicone Sealant and Water Sealers Wood Sealer.

Another thing that you can do after bees are out is make sure that there are no more attractive sources for them.

This means removing any possible food sources (cleaning up around walls), turning off lights at night, and keeping doors and windows closed. Another possible thing you can do to help is installing window screens to prevent them from coming in during the day.

Why Are Bees Going Into Your Walls?

Although the point of this article is to help you remove and deal with bees in your walls, it is also important to know why they got there in the first place. In knowing this, you can effectively block, remove, and repel them from your house for good!

Going along with why bees are in your walls, you also will need to know what bees like to burrow into walls and some common bee attractants.

To answer the question simply first, bees are mainly going into your walls in search of a good place to start a swarm/nest. Some things that may attract bees are warmth and food, as those factors help to support nest building and growth.

You can read our full in-depth guide on why you keep getting bees inside your house here if you’d like the full version!

Bees Are Looking For Warmth In Your House

While we may only think that we enjoy the luxury of indoor heating, it may come to surprise you that a variety of pests, especially insects, love it too! 

In general, bees usually look for places of warmth to be comfortable, especially during the winter months, when a freak storm could injure them. With this, many usually will stay even after winter ends, which can be a big problem! 

In addition to looking for comfort, bees will also look for indoor spaces to start new hives. In normal outside conditions, bees usually go fairly dormant during the winter; however, if they find their way into your house, they can start new hives and stay productive all year round.

Lights May Be Attracting Bees

Similar to other pest insects, bees are fairly attracted to light. This means that bees may be coming into your house and walls if you are keeping lights on late into the night. 

Additionally, this effect should be even stronger in the winter when it is dark, which means you should keep an eye on your light usage as the days get shorter. If bees come to your house and find heat and light, they will likely stay to form new nests.

Plants Or Flowers May Be Attracting Bees

Although this option is likely untrue, especially during the winter months when they are flowering less, plants and flowers can often attract bees.

Bees are prolific pollinators, meaning that they are heavily attracted to the nectar in flowers. This means that having lots of house/garden plants (flowering ones) could attract bees that find their way into your home.

There Is A Food (Sugar) Source Inside

One of the main attractors for bees is food. Food tends to attract bees among other types of insects, as it is a sign of stability within the area. 

When we say food, we specifically mean that of the super sweet, like spilled sports drinks, fruit, or anything edible which will can resemble pollen.

If bees smell/find food in your house or walls, there’s a possibility that they may attract others to the area through the use of pheromones. Once others are attracted, they may choose to start a new hive, which can be bad news for you!

You may wonder what food could be in the walls. Usually, this isn’t your fault, however, often food can get swept under molding and find its way into your walls. Additionally, if you have had other pests such as ants, they could be bringing sweeter crumbs inside your walls to feed, which could increase the attractants for bees. However, flowers lights and warmth are more prevalent of reasons as to why they’re in your wall.

What Types Of Bees Are Attracted To Indoor Spaces?

To preface, most bees are attracted to the things listed above, such as lights, food, and heat. With this, some specific species of bees are more likely to find their way into your house due to their specified living preferences. 

First off, carpenter bees are a species that is commonly found inside people’s homes. This is especially true for cabins, outhouses, and garages which are primarily composed of wood.

As you can probably tell from their name, carpenter bees are specifically interested in wood. In their adult life, mature individuals usually burrow small holes into wood to create brood holes, in which they can overwinter and lay eggs. 

As mentioned, if you are near an area with carpenter bees, you may want to take extra effort in sealing/hiding wood, as most raw wood edges are perfect spots for them to get into your home! 

Another bee species that is a common pest in homes are mason bees. Similar to carpenter bees, mason bees also find/make burrows to overwinter and breed.

If you’d like, you can even use specific essential oils to keep bees away to make your home less attractive to them!

That’s A Wrap!

In the end, bees can be one of the most ornery pests you can deal with, especially when they are within your walls. When inside your house, bees can easily cause damage, pose a threat to you/your pets, and even bring in other pests with them. 

There are a few main reasons why bees may be going into your house. Some of the main culprits are that they are being attracted to a food source, light, heat, or generally comfortable conditions for them to start a nest. 

To sum up, in every single case you should try to contact a pest professional, such as an exterminator. Even if you don’t want to pay them for services, you can still often get good advice to help you along your way. 

As for some individual remedies to bees, you can try to use/make traps, sprays, smokers, and much more. After you have fully gotten rid of them, you should look into how they are getting in, and try to block those in the future! 

References

Seeley, T. D., & Morse, R. A. (1976). The nest of the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.). Insectes Sociaux23(4), 495-512.

Knight, M. E., Osborne, J. L., Sanderson, R. A., Hale, R. J., Martin, A. P., & Goulson, D. (2009). Bumblebee nest density and the scale of available forage in arable landscapes. Insect Conservation and Diversity2(2), 116-124.

Geib, Jennifer C., James P. Strange, and Candace Galen. “Bumble bee nest abundance, foraging distance, and host‐plant reproduction: implications for management and conservation.” Ecological Applications 25, no. 3 (2015): 768-778.

How to pest proof your home in under a day e-book by Zack DeAngelis

Download My Free E-Book!

 Take a look at my guide on Pest Proofing Your Home In Under a Day! I get into the nitty-gritty on the most common types of pests you’ll see on your property including BOTH insects and wildlife, along with the specific signs to look for regarding any pest you have questions about.


Similar Posts

2 Comments

  1. I have had Bees in my bedroom wall for over 10 years. Now the next-door Neighbour is complaining about them as their grandchildren are allergic to bee stings, I do NOT want them destroyed but rehoused in a bee-hive if possible.

    1. Hi Bonnie, you should most definitely get the bees removed ASAP. It is not a great environment for them or you. Contact either a pest control company or local bee keeper for suggestions and assistance. Voice your desire to make sure the bees are rehoused, but keep in mind they should really not be in your wall for a variety of reasons.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *