Bee Removal Cost Calculator

About $1,000 to cut an established honeybee hive out of a first-floor wall, and $1,475 at a second story or in an attic, because the comb has to come out and the wall has to be closed up again. A swarm with no comb built yet is $305 to capture and relocate. Reported figures are $300 to $1,500 for a hive in a first-floor wall, $1,500 to $2,200 for an attic or second story, and $100 to $800 for a swarm — though many swarms are collected free by local beekeepers.

Often, if it is a swarm. A swarm is a loose cluster hanging in the open with no comb built — a colony in transit looking for a home, and unusually docile because it has no nest to defend. Local beekeepers actively want them, so call your state or county beekeepers' association, which almost always keeps a swarm-collection list. Many swarms also move on by themselves within a day or two. What nobody collects free is an established hive inside a wall, because removing that is construction work rather than beekeeping.

Comb, and about a thousand dollars. A swarm is bees clustered in the open on a branch, fence or wall with nothing built — temporary, docile and usually gone within a couple of days. An established hive is inside a cavity like a wall, soffit or chimney, with wax comb holding brood and honey, and bees using the same small entrance hole for weeks or months. The swarm is $305 and often free; the hive is $1,000 because the cavity has to be opened, every piece of comb removed, the space cleaned and the wall closed again.

Because killing them is the most expensive thing you can do, for reasons that have nothing to do with sentiment. A mature hive holds tens of pounds of honey and wax, and with no bees to ventilate it summer heat melts the comb so the honey runs down inside the cavity — staining the drywall, leaving a smell that is hard to locate and impossible to clean behind plaster, and drawing ants, roaches, wax moths and rodents. Within a season or two another swarm moves into the same cavity, because it still smells like home. You end up paying for the extermination, the cut-out anyway, and the repair of what the honey ruined.

The actual job when bees are in a wall. The wall or soffit is opened up, every piece of comb is removed by hand, brood comb is mounted into frames so the colony survives the move, the bees are gently vacuumed or coaxed into a hive box, the cavity is cleaned of wax and honey residue, the entrance is sealed permanently, and the wall is closed and finished. It is most of a day for two people plus materials, which is why it costs about $1,000 — it is a small construction job with bees in it.

It should, and you have to ask, because some operators remove the bees and leave an open hole. The figures here include closing up — drywall or siding materials and the labor to do it — but "finished to match" is a further question worth settling in writing, especially on painted interior walls or on siding where a patch will show. Get the repair standard in the quote rather than discovering the difference after the bees have gone.

Four things get called bees and only honeybees need this page. Honeybees are fuzzy and golden-brown, about half an inch, work flowers rather than your food, and build wax comb in a cavity. Bumblebees are big, round and very fuzzy, nest in small numbers in the ground, die off each winter and almost never need removing. Carpenter bees look like bumblebees with a shiny black abdomen and drill neat round half-inch holes in wooden fascia and decking — a wood problem. Yellowjackets and hornets are smooth, shiny and narrow-waisted, and are much cheaper and treated differently. At a wall entrance, honeybees come and go steadily carrying pollen on their legs; yellowjackets move faster and carry nothing.

Not the same colony, but a new swarm will try if the work was done badly. An emptied cavity that still holds wax and honey residue carries scent that is strongly attractive to the next swarm looking for a home, which is why the cleaning and the permanent sealing of the entrance matter as much as getting the bees out. Ask whether the cavity is being cleaned, what the entrance is sealed with, and whether there is a guarantee against reoccupation and for how long.

A swarm capture is often under an hour — the cluster is brushed or shaken into a box, which is then left until dusk so the flying bees join the queen, and collected. A cut-out from a wall is most of a day for two people, and longer if the hive is large or the access is awkward. Second-story and attic work takes longer and costs about 45% more, because the materials, the comb and the bees all have to be moved up and down a ladder.

In most of the United States there is no outright prohibition on a homeowner dealing with bees on their own property, though some states and many municipalities restrict it, and several require that removal be attempted before extermination. The more practical constraints are that many pest control companies will not treat honeybees as a matter of policy, and that doing it anyway creates the melted-comb problem described above. If you are in Africanized honeybee territory in the southwest, the calculation changes: those colonies are genuinely dangerous, relocation is usually not offered, and a licensed operator is the right call.