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This Bee removal took place at a condominium building near Bernard Bayou in Gulfport Mississippi. The management there is getting very familiar with me by now. For the past three years I've been out there twice a year. Each year they've had a near miss with a swarm landing on and fence or building and then leaving before I could get there. The first year I caught one of their swarms by the pool. I'll link that video at the end of this one. The past two years I've done hive removals. You can pretty well see what is happening with this one except that you may not be able to see clearly where the bees are entering the building. Their entrance this time was at the top right corner of that back window. Typically that would have meant a hive in a wall which I would have preferred because it is easier work. But alas they were in the ceiling. The unit owner kept peeking in checking progress and asking "how did those bees get in there". I think he was heavily medicated. The voice you heard talking with me in the room was the contractor for the condo association.
Last time I did a bee removal at this property the hive was in the floor framing of a back deck as I pointed out in this video. What you couldn't see is that the deck framing is covered with plywood to make a ceiling for the downstairs unit. With that colony the condo unit owner actually watched the swarm move in so they knew for sure when they arrived. I was called immediately and was on the property within a couple of hours. In an effort to not do any demolition of the ceiling and the crazy amounts of trim with all kinds of Christmas lights and cable TV cords stapled everywhere I drilled a hole to try and smoke the bees out. I had my bore scope and FLIR with me so I knew exactly where the bees where and where to smoke but they weren't moving are responding to the smoke at all. We smoked them hard and used repellent on them for a good half hour. The smoke wasn't coming back out of the ceiling though. I couldn't detect any smoke coming out of the building anywhere at all so I assumed it must have been drafting up between the brick veneer and sound board and going out an attic vent somewhere. I couldn't have been more wrong. If the downstairs unit owner had been home she could have told us that you couldn't see more than a few feet inside her master bedroom and bathroom and that the rest of the apartment looked like there was a grease fire in the kitchen. I guess the vent fan in the master bath was ducted to that deck framing and the apartment somehow had negative air pressure. Every bit of smoke I blew in that deck was sucked into the apartment through the master bath vent fan. Thankfully we were able to gain access and open the doors to try and air it out but the place still smelled like a camp fire. The lady who lived there was super nice though. She did return home while we were airing out her place. She friended me on Facebook and gave me some coupons to her dad's restaurant. The Dirt Rooster can do no wrong. LOL
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