Bellwether Bee Co. · Nettleworth & the Charm Valley · Live removal & relocation since 2012
Every swarm on your property leaves it alive.
Swarm season runs May to July — a hanging cluster stays calm for a day or two while scouts find a permanent address. Call before they choose your wall: (555) 036-4821.
Live removal only
What we take, and how it leaves
Three situations, one rule. A hanging swarm is a one-visit collection at dusk. A colony inside a wall or eave is a surgical cut-out — comb framed, bees hived, cavity cleaned and closed. A standing hive you cannot keep is a live pickup, whole, to the sanctuary apiary above Nettleworth. Nothing we collect is ever killed, on your property or afterwards.
Hanging swarms
A queen and ten thousand followers resting on a branch, a fence rail, a mailbox post — full of honey and famously gentle, because a swarm has no brood or stores to defend. Collected at dusk into a nucleus box in a single visit, and the branch is yours again by dark.
Cut-outs from walls & eaves
Siding opened along the joint, combs cut whole into empty frames, the bees brushed and softly vacuumed into the hive box with their queen. Brood and honey leave intact, the cavity is scraped, filled and bee-proofed so the next travelling swarm finds a closed door.
Live pickup & sanctuary hosting
A hive you no longer want is taken at dusk when every field bee is home, moved whole to the sanctuary yard, and given your name on the box. Hosts of new yards get June pollination and a share of the August honey — the only barter we still honour at printed rates.
Swarm collection, same week$185 flat
Dusk visit, nucleus box, branch handed back
Cut-out, siding or eavesfrom $640
Comb framed, bees hived, cavity cleaned and closed
Structural cut-out, chimney or roof deckfrom $1,150
Ladder or scaffold crew, masonry made good
Comb & honey removal$9 / sq ft of comb
Cavity scraped to bare wood so nothing bleeds through paint
Cavity fill & bee-proofing$12 / lin ft
The closed door the next swarm checks first
Live hive pickup & relocation$0 — donation
Your hive to the sanctuary yard, named and kept
Printed rates
The removal card
Every line is a live outcome — the colony re-hived with its queen and brood, or the visit is free. The $185 swarm collection is credited in full against a cut-out if the scouts beat us to your wall, and no keeper quotes a cut-out without opening it: the comb map decides, and it is photographed before the first nail moves.
LADDERS UP AT SEVEN · THE BOX SITS AT THE FLIGHT PATH UNTIL DARK
The day of a cut-out
07:00
The arrival
Ladders up, beesuit zipped, neighbours warned and offered a jar for their patience. The colony is read before it is touched — how many combs, where the brood sits, how the cavity runs behind the siding.
Morning
The comb
Each comb is cut whole into an empty frame and banded in place. Brood combs are the colony’s future and travel in the hive box in the order they hung; honey combs follow, and nothing that feeds the next generation is left behind.
Midday
The bees
A screened intake vacuum with a dial, built at the yard and nothing like a shop vac, takes the field bees gently into the box. The queen is found, marked and caged on the frames before the last pass — find her, and the job is done.
Afternoon
The close
The cavity scraped to bare wood, residual honey bound out so it never weeps through paint, the void filled, and every seam bee-proofed along its length. The siding goes back in the order it came off.
Dusk
The stragglers
The hive box sits at the flight path until dark while the foragers walk home into it. Then the drive to the apiary above Nettleworth — and your wall goes back to being just a wall.
Where they all go
The sanctuary apiary
Twelve yards across the Charm Valley, each on a flowering rotation and none within foraging range of a sprayed orchard. A colony cut from your eaves in April is a named box by May, a honey crop by August, and — if you ask — the jar with your house number on the label.
The creed, in writing
Every removal carries a live-outcome promise: the colony leaves your property intact, re-hived with its queen and brood, and the cavity it left is filled and sealed. If bees re-enter a cavity we closed within two years, we take them out again for nothing — and if a colony we cut out fails to survive its first winter in the sanctuary yard, the collection fee comes back.
The creed rides on the truck the same way it heads this page — one sentence, in ink, countersigned on every work order: every swarm leaves it alive.
The valley says
Two houses, two letters
The swarm arrived on the Friday of a birthday weekend and hung off the plum tree like a prize. Bellwether came at dusk, set a box under it, and I watched a keeper in no hurry convince ten thousand bees to walk uphill into a lid. Branch, tree and party survived. The jar in August had my name on it, which the children considered the best part.
Bees in the bedroom wall of a 1904 farmhouse — two companies quoted spray and a drywall patch, and neither would say what a poisoned colony does inside a wall by July. Bellwether opened the clapboard on a Saturday, took the colony out in frames like a library book, cleaned forty pounds of comb from the cavity and filled it. The wall is quiet, and the paint does not weep.
Fair questions
Before you call
The four swarm season asks we hear by nine in the morning. The fifth is always about honey — that one is answered by the bees, in August.
A cluster of bees is hanging on my tree. Are they dangerous?
A swarm is the calmest a honeybee will ever be. It has no comb, no brood and no stores to defend — just a queen and her followers resting while scouts look for a cavity. Keep the dog and the garden hose away from it, put nothing at it, and call: a hanging swarm is a one-visit collection, and the clock that matters is the scouts’, usually a day or two.
Bees or wasps — how do I tell?
Honeybees are fuzzy, amber-brown and rounded, and they either cluster in a hanging ball or fly in and out of a wall seam in a steady line. Wasps and hornets are shiny, brighter yellow-black, and nest in paper combs under eaves or in holes in the ground. If it is wasps, we say so on the phone and point you at a licensed wasp crew honestly — we are bee people, and we do not spray anything, hornets included.
Can’t I just spray them?
You can, and it usually costs more than the removal. A colony poisoned inside a wall dies across the cavity it never leaves: the brood rots, the honey ferments and bleeds through paint, and the smell recruits mice and every scout bee for a mile. The spray never reaches the queen anyway. A live cut-out takes the comb, the honey and the smell out with the bees, and closes the door behind them.
Will they come back?
The colony itself, never — a hived swarm does not return to the branch. The cavity, possibly: swarms scout the same good real estate year after year, which is why every cut-out ends with the void filled and every seam bee-proofed, and why that work carries its own two-year re-entry warranty in writing.
How long does a cut-out take?
A wall colony is one long day, seven to dark. Chimneys and roof-deck colonies run to two, because the masonry goes back slower than siding. Nobody leaves a cavity open overnight, and nobody quotes a cut-out without opening it — the comb map decides the number, and you see the photographs either way.
Report a swarm
A photo tells us everything — cluster size, height, how long it has hung. If they are already inside a wall, say when you first saw the flight line. Swarm hours are May to July, dawn to dusk. queen@bellwetherbee.example