Honeybees sometimes set up home inside the walls of houses, and when they do, the colony can grow for years without anyone seeing more than a few bees at a crack in the brick. In late September 2018, beekeeper David L. Glover, who runs a live honeybee removal and relocation service called The Bartlett Bee Whisperer, was called to a brick house in Germantown, Tennessee, a suburb of Memphis. What he found behind the bricks became one of his most-shared jobs ever.
Glover's business covers West Tennessee, North Mississippi and East Arkansas. Instead of killing unwanted colonies, he cuts them out, straps the combs into hive frames and gives the rescued bees to local beekeepers who have lost colonies. He photographed every step of this removal and posted the album on Facebook, where it drew tens of thousands of reactions and shares within days. The pictures below follow the job from the first thermal scan to the empty, wax-stained cavity, with notes on what each stage shows about how honeybees live and how a professional removal works.
Finding the hidden colony
Before touching a wall, Glover checks that the insects really are honeybees. Homeowners often confuse them with wasps or yellow jackets, which are handled very differently and are not rescued for beekeepers.
Glover's Facebook post opening the album, shared on 29 September 2018. He explained that removing bricks is the job he dreads most, because mortar can crumble, bricks can break and combs can be damaged, but that this time the result was spectacular. The post later passed 68,000 shares.
The side of the house before any work began. Nothing about this wall suggests a large colony inside, which is typical: bees need only a small gap to reach a dry cavity, and the nest itself stays hidden.
Glover's note on how the bees got in. They used a weep hole, a small gap left in brick walls so moisture can drain out, and a second gap where the bricks meet the window frame. Weep holes are one of the most common entry points for bees in brick homes.
A closer view of the brickwork under the window, with the darker entrance area near the bottom of the frame. Foragers come and go through gaps like these all day, which is often the only clue a homeowner gets.
Glover explains the thermal image that follows. The hottest area marks the brood nest, where bees keep developing young at a steady temperature of about 35 °C (95 °F), and a thin warm line shows the route from the weep hole.
A forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera shows the colony's heat through the bricks. Thermal imaging lets removal specialists open only the part of the wall that holds the nest, instead of guessing and causing unnecessary damage.
Opening the brick wall
Glover describes his first steps: smoking the entrances, then spraying a bee repellent called Honey Bandit into a small drilled hole. The repellent encourages bees to move away from the spot being cut, so fewer are crushed or agitated when the hammer drill starts.
Glover, in a full bee suit, drills into the wall beside the window. Protective clothing matters here; a disturbed colony of tens of thousands of bees will defend its nest vigorously.
A brief update: more smoke before going further. Smoke masks the alarm pheromone bees release when threatened and prompts many of them to fill up on honey, which tends to make them calmer.
Work continues at the corner of the window as Glover chips out mortar. Removing bricks individually, rather than smashing through, means the wall can be rebuilt with the same bricks afterwards.
Glover reports that the first brick came out whole. That small success mattered, because it showed the mortar was releasing cleanly and the rest of the opening could be made without breaking bricks.
The first glimpse of the colony through the gap: pale wax comb and bees just behind the brick face. The comb was built in the narrow air gap between the outer brick and the inner wall of the house.
Progress note: two rows of bricks removed. Each row reveals more comb and gives a better idea of how far the nest extends.
Glover works along the second row, with a dark band of comb now visible beneath the window. The camera stayed fixed in one spot, which is why the photo series reads almost like a time-lapse.
Progress note: five rows out. At this stage the opening is large enough to see the full width of the colony.
The opening now spans much of the space under the window, with bricks piled at the foot of the wall. The comb hangs in one broad sheet, an unusual and welcome sight for a removal specialist.
Inside: a giant comb and thirteen queen cells
Glover's explanation of why he called the job awesome. The comb was barely attached to the bricks and was, in his words, one of the largest single pieces of comb I've ever seen
. Apart from a few narrow honey combs at the top centre, the nest was built as two large, flat sheets.
The fully exposed nest beneath the window, a golden wall of wax covered with bees. Honeybees build their combs parallel and spaced about a bee's width apart, and in a cavity like this they fill whatever shape the space allows.
Glover notes that five of the colony's 13 capped queen cells sat at the bottom edge of the front comb. Colonies raise new queens in these large, peanut-shaped cells when they are preparing to swarm or when they need to replace a failing or lost queen.
A close-up of the lower edge of the comb, with bees clustered over capped brood and cells along the bottom. Queen cells are usually built on comb edges like this, hanging downward so the developing queen has room to grow.
Moving the brood and the bees
Glover describes cutting out a slice of brood comb holding seven queen cells. He also found a patch of dead bees on the left side, which he believed was where a pest-control company had tried to poison the colony; the wax appeared to have kept the pesticide from spreading. It is a reminder of why honey from previously sprayed hives is never kept.
Kneeling beside a white hive box, Glover lifts comb from the wall. Brood combs are fitted into empty wooden frames and held with rubber bands; the bees later attach the comb with wax and chew the bands away.
Progress note: the second brood comb is being rubber-banded into a frame. Brood is the most valuable part of the rescue, because it holds the colony's next generation of workers.
Glover, in green gloves, places comb into the hive box while the open wall waits above. Buckets beside him collect honey comb, which can be harvested only if the colony has never been sprayed.
Glover notes that the combs became tangled at the vertical midline of the nest. Where two building fronts meet, bees often join and bridge combs in irregular ways.
Work slows in the central section of the cavity. Untangled comb has to be cut piece by piece so brood is not crushed and bees are not trapped.
Glover describes the middle combs as completely interconnected and tunnelled, and jokes that the cluster of bees on his shoulder was not an angel. Clusters like this form when bees gather around their own scent and, sometimes, a queen.
Glover reaches deeper into the cavity as most of the comb comes out. The nuc box on the ground is filling with frames of brood and bees.
Glover remarks that the bees were extremely calm for a colony without a laying queen. The many queen cells fit that picture: a colony that has lost its queen urgently raises replacements from young larvae.
Bees swirl around Glover as he bends over the hive box. Bees left behind on the wall are collected with a gentle two-stage vacuum and added back to the new hive once it is settled in its new yard.
Cleaning up and catching the foragers
Progress note: cleaning up. Removing every scrap of wax and honey matters, because leftover comb attracts pests and can lure a new swarm into the same cavity.
The emptied cavity, dark at the top and tan below, as Glover scrapes the last wax away. Thousands of foragers were still out in the field and would return looking for their home.
Glover explains that he set the nuc box into the opening while he packed up. Returning foragers find the familiar scent of their comb in the box and walk in, so they are not left behind.
The white nuc box sits in the hole in the wall, gathering bees as they come back. Once the stragglers are in, the box is closed and carried to its new location.
Glover's closing note. He points out that the tan stain on the inner wall was left by the feet of countless bees walking in and out over the years, joking that their mothers would not have approved.
The finished job: an empty cavity with a dark upper band and a pale, bee-worn lower area, ready for the bricks to go back. The colony that lived here now has a second life in a beekeeper's hive.
If honeybees move into your walls
Honeybees are important pollinators, and in recent years American beekeepers have lost a large share of their colonies each year, with surveys reporting annual losses of around 40 percent or more. That is one reason many beekeepers prefer live removal to extermination. A few practical points:
- Identify the insect first. Honeybees are fuzzy, golden-brown and focused on flowers; wasps and yellow jackets are shiny and more aggressive around food.
- Avoid spraying a colony inside a wall. Dead bees and abandoned honey can rot, attract other pests and seep through drywall, and as this job showed, poison may not even reach the whole nest.
- Call a beekeeper or live-removal specialist. Local beekeeping associations often keep lists of people who do cut-outs.
- Seal entry points afterwards. Screening weep holes and gaps helps stop a new swarm moving into the same space.
For another close look at nature in an unexpected place, see A Tiny Lizard Resting Inside a Rose.
Sources: photographs and notes by David L. Glover, The Bartlett Bee Whisperer on Facebook (29 September 2018); thebartlettbeewhisperer.com; Wikipedia: Honey bee (colony life, swarming and colony losses).
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