I have a chair full of bees

Drake Chambers

We have a folding chair on our back porch that has become a nest for what look like standard honeybees. My wife had noticed an increase in bee activity on the porch and in searching for the source I observed half a dozen crawling in and out of the holes on the crossbars of the chair legs.

I don’t want to harm the bees, but I also don’t want their nest on my porch. If I wait until tonight when it’s dark and cool and move the chair to another part of the yard, will they try to kill me?

discrider

I believe you've already seen this, but cross-posting anyway:

jgeis wrote: »

It's a slow day at work and that's annoying and boring but I did stumble across this gem:

https://twitter.com/JordanAGeisler/status/1120791735787933696?s=20

zepherin

They may give you a sting...often times bee keepers will take your bees for free, especially if they are honey bees...they’ll probably want to take your crappy chair too.

Are you sure they are bees and not wasps? Nobody wants asshole wasps.

Drake Chambers

Yeah, they are small but fuzzy I think. I’ll take a closer look before moving it to be sure.

We have yellow jackets around here too and these aren’t those jerks.

ceres

What kind of chair is it?

dispatch.o

If there's a queen and it's honey bees some bee keeper somewhere will definitely want to come get them. They usually have to pay and buy queens every year because some die in winter. You'd be saving them money.

knitdan

You might try looking for “Apiarists near me” and see if there’s someone you can call to come and take them away

(Apiarist is another word for beekeeper)

Drake Chambers

ceres wrote: »

What kind of chair is it?

It's one of these:

You can just barely see the holes in the underneathy part of the crossbar. Once through there I imagine they have access to a lot of cozy chair-tube.

I bundled up with gloves and a hat and watched the chair for a minute. It was after nine, dark and in the low 50's. I gingerly picked it up, rapidly heel-toed it across the yard to put it behind a forsythia bush, then sprinted back into the house. I don't know if they reacted at all but I didn't get stung. That part of our yard should be a much happier place for bees, I'm happy to have bees in our yard, and we'll be able to eat on the back porch without bees getting all-up-ons.

The End.

(Thanks for the ideas!)

JaysonFour

I'd still follow up with a beekeeper- as the colony grows through the spring and summer, how sure are you that they're not going to end up expanding out of the chair? All the new bees need somewhere to go, and as the hive grows, they're going to be needing more space for more bees and more honey and pollen. Not to mention your neighbors might not be so forgiving of an active beehive in your backyard (if you have them), especially if someone's kid gets stung.

Also, you might want to make sure they aren't Africanized, or killer, bees, which would be bad news.

ceres

Hmm. In a space that small, they might not be hive bees. Do you see a lot at any one time, or just one or two? Solitary bees are arguably as important as hive bees, and their nests are incredibly fragile. They tend to lay in long narrow places.

McViking

You definitely don't have honeybees living in a folding chair - it's too small of a space. But this is the time of year for honeybees to be swarming in the US, and when they do that, they'll have scouts out looking for cavities suitable for nesting. You'll see them exploring cracks and crevices looking for something with a fairly large hollow and a fairly small opening. If they are honeybees, they'll surely have been disappointed by your chair and moved on to something bigger :-P

Or they might not be honeybees (like ceres says) - there are lots of species of native bees in the US that don't build large hives. Most are pretty docile.

Cambiata

More likely mason bees in a space that small. They're good, friendly pollinators!

Drake Chambers

Yeah, these guys really aren't aggressive. I was telling my wife about my various plans for suiting up and safely moving the chair and she pointed out that she'd been moving the chair around all afternoon without knowing they were in there and she wasn't stung.

I'll probably do some follow-up with local bee people, mostly out of curiosity and a desire to let these bees do what they do.

ceres

I have a leafcutter bee (okay probably not the same bee the third year in a row). She likes the climber that we have on our little patio and carves out big crescents to make her nests. I was pretty mad at first, but when I learned what it was I was more than happy to sacrifice leaves from my plant. I am scared to death of bees and wasps, but she literally does not care if I'm around doing stuff out there as long as I leave her alone. We can work in relative harmony two feet from each other.

The only thing is that those nests are so damn fragile that if that's what they are then moving the chair around a bunch is going to wreck a lot of hard work.

This is the video I took, there are a few main varieties and this is the palest. Leafcutters are native to the US, I think just about everything else was introduced at some point or other. Full screen for best results.

https://youtu.be/JZEe2hoODvc

Hahnsoo1

Off-topic, but it's questions like this that make me love H&A.

Arch

As a lot of people have said, probably not honey bees. I'd need a picture to be sure- they could be anything from mason bees to some pseudo-solitary sweat bees.

My recommendations are call your local entomology or university extension department to see if someone can come and get them (if they are honey bees) or if they can suggest control strategies if they aren't honey bees.

Or, just let them have the chair, I guess?

Drake Chambers

Oh yeah, the chair is theirs now.

zepherin

Drake Chambers wrote: »

Oh yeah, the chair is theirs now.

Have your wife move it one more time.

MegaMan001

Hahnsoo1 wrote: »

Off-topic, but it's questions like this that make me love H&A.

Just to jump on the feel good in this thread - just today I had to explain that I learned how to strip and refinish my cedar deck, build my gaming PC, and got great suggestions of what to do in LA for 72 hours all from the same place.

forums.penny-arcade.com

ceres

Since we were talking about this here and the OP seems awesome about bees, I figured I'd post a video that SciShow published today about the importance of preserving not just honeybees, but other pollinators as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhJ1-CRL1Ow

I love SciShow and I love leafcutter bees so this made me happy, although frankly I can take or leave alfalfa so personally I'd rather see that dude's efforts spent elsewhere. :P

Echo

Hahnsoo1 wrote: »

Off-topic, but it's questions like this that make me love H&A.

That, and topics like "I have a chair full of bees". It's pure poetry.

Cambiata

I can't find the specific video I'm thinking of, but there are lots of DIY tutorials out there to show how to make homes for solitary bee polinators. Like so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zaQzJxSheQ

The video I'm thinking of is way more detailed and explains how to clean out your nests year to year to keep it a healthy place for bee friends. If I find it I'll post it as well.

Edit: This one is more detailed but also a bit more work. Still not the video I'm thinking of, though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9-gJuDgKnU

mts

yea if you search DIY bee hotel you get some good tutorials.

roseheadley

Hi, I’m a beekeeper in Pa, I have been searching the web for reasons why a few of my honeybees are going in and out of the holes in the metal tubing of my outside furniture. That being said, I am 100% sure these are my Italian honeybees. My hives are in my back yard that overlooks a creek, and if you aren’t a beek (slang term for beekeeper) you would probably think they were ‘building a nest’ in there, but what I’m 99% sure they are doing, is going in the tubes and gathering all the pollen that ended up gathering in there carried by the wind. There is a pretty steady ‘flow’ of bees, it’s about 6 that are trading places from in the tubing, back to the hive. If you can see bees leaving the holes, try and see where they go, they will all be heading in the same direction to the hive, I suspect that’s what they’re doing in your furniture too. You can wait til the sun has set, bees are all back in the hive at night, and put a few pieces of tape over the little holes, they will forsake the spot when they can’t find a way back in. So to the person who moved the chair suited up at night, u most likely carried an empty chair out to your yard for the bees, and also, the bees will continue to go to the spot where the chair sat while they were going in and out of it, because honeybees have a seriously amazing navigation system built right in. They may or may not find the chair depending on how far away it is from the initial location, and where their hive is, but they may! Hope this little ramble helps someone lol