I don't know anyone who has kept bees for more than a year or two who
will remove bees for free. Folks think they are doing beekeepers a favor
by asking them to invest travel time, gasoline expense, equipment
expense as well as several man hours without compensation. Then the
homeowner finds out he will be left with a large hole in his wall that
he must pay to have repaired, and the anger kicks in.

It's been my experience that there is no such thing as free bees. Unlike
free kittens, bees require quite a bit of real work to remove. When you
tell somebody that you want to be paid for the work, they respond as if
you had insulted several of their family members.

I am reminded of a family nearby who called an exterminator when they
discovered bees in the wall of their house. The exterminators did a very
thorough job of killing the bees in the wall, handed the homeowner a
bill and left. The following summer, the family called a beekeeper to
come tear open their walls and remove the melted wax and fermenting
honey that was seeping through their walls. The beekeeper did so, and
charged several hundred dollars for the work.

The old saying, "You get what you pay for," applies to bee removal as
everything else. I do not know a single person who is willing to do that
much work without pay, except under extraordinary circumstances. It's
not that we are greedy. It's just that folks should understand that it
costs us money, too, and we expect that our work is worth something.

Mike

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