Thank you to all who commented or gave suggestions on the problem of
bees in chimneys.  I thought you might be interested in what happened
over the weekend.
 
The problem with my own chimney, which is blocked off at the bottom
apart from a small ventilation grill and difficult to access by ladder,
was easily sorted out one evening using a whitefly smoke.  The only
problem I have is that a swarm will inevitably be back in a year or two.
I guess, if I want to avoid that, I'll have to borrow some scaffolding
and go up there to fit some mesh some time before next spring.  Thanks
for the tips on mesh sizes.
 
The nearby house was a completely different story.  I'd never been there
before.  When I got there I found it was a large expensive house full of
beautiful furnishings and surrounded by tall trees on a 20 acre site.  I
was envious!  The owner said that he knew where the bees were and
pointed up to a very inaccessible chimney.  There were quite a lot of
bees flying around it.  Since I couldn't safely get at them from the top
I decided I had to use the whitefly smoke method again and kill them.
Although there were fireplaces present, I didn't want to try to drive
them out by lighting a fire and then catch the resulting swarm because I
thought it likely that they'd hang up high in one of the trees where I
couldn't reach them.  If that happened they'd more than likely return to
one of the other chimneys.
 
Unfortunately, the chimney stack contained five flues.  I could see
right up one and hear the activity up two more.  They all had a few bees
in them but not enough to make the characteristic hum, so the colony had
to be in one of the other two flues which had metal plates fitted inside
to block them off.  By this time the owner was listening to my chatter
about bees and entering in to the spirit of things by starting to act as
my assistant, so when we went to the first of the blocked flues in his
bedroom he offered to remove the plate.  He gave the plate a good push
and out it came - followed by a torrent of dust and soot!  The carpets,
the bed, all the furniture and my "assistant" were covered in dirt.  At
that point his wife came in, wondering what was going on.  I won't
repeat what she said!  Anyway, after listening it was clear that the
colony wasn't up that chimney either so it had to be the other bedroom.
We opened up this one too making even more mess but at least this time
we had put down plenty of newsaper and dust sheets.  Unfortunately, the
bees weren't up there either!
 
We went outside again and I looked up.  There was another chimney stack
at the other end of the building and there were bees flying around this
one too.  What seemed to be happening was that some of the flying bees
were disorientated and returning to the wrong chimney stack.  They then
circled it for a time before, presumably finding their real home.  I was
just able to reach the top of this chimney using a ladder.  The flue
they had chosen had been capped off in the past by cementing two large
tiles over it, leaving a small gap.  Of all the chimneys on the house it
was definately the best from a bees point of view - dark and reasonably
dry.  Once again I decided I had to kill them for which I used a powder
supplied for killing wasps which I puffed into the entrance gap.
 
The lesson is to always check ALL the chimneys before doing anything.
 
--
Malcolm Roe                                Phone  :  +44 1442 345104
Crosfield Electronics Ltd                  Fax    :  +44 1442 343000
Hemel Hempstead, Herts. HP2 7RH, UK        E-mail :  [log in to unmask]
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