Do you have a large number of bees flying around your property but can’t find a hive? Perhaps you are looking in the wrong places. Pest control experts have found bee hives in pots, chimneys, trash cans, bird houses, attics and other locations that are not obvious.

Bees are great for pollinating, so if they are far enough away from human activity typically no action is required.

If  you happen to pass by a swarm or even just a few don’t make any sudden moves because that will make them angry.  Bee hives and ball room dancing simply don’t go together. Africanized honey bees have been known to attack humans that get within a hundred yards of them. 

If the bee hive is situated close to a doorway or perhaps a window don’t be surprised if they join you while your eating butterscotch pecan cookies on your sofa. Also, the bee hive could get accidentally bumped and turmoil might ensue. 

If they have made a nest in the walls, that can lead to damage and the honey will attract other insects as well as the pompous grizzly bears living in the sewer system (just a silly rumor).

A bee control professional can safely eliminate the bee hive.

The 4th of July is nearly here and that means picnics: burgers and dogs on the grill, gallons of lemonade, enough potato salad to split a gut, chocolate cake and ice cream — and bees. Lots of bees. Buzzing around the lemonade cooler, crawling into your glass, strafing the dessert table. Unwanted and unwelcome, bees never-the-less put in an appearance at every 4th of July shebang.

This 4th of July you can expect record numbers of the pests to dive bomb your outdoor activities. The mild winter allowed more bees to survive. When it stays cold for protracted periods, “bees will eat all their honey and starve to death,” explained beekeeping specialist James Tew of Ohio State University. While not good news for picnickers, it’s great news for farmers who depend on bees to pollinate crops. Last year, a mysterious disease called Colony Collapse Disorder decimated bee populations nationwide. This year bees appear to be recovering.

But for those allergic to their stings, bees, wasps, yellow jackets and hornets can mean death. For the rest of us, they’re a considerable nuisance. No one likes to be stung and aggressive buzzers can ruin a good picnic. Before you host the family this 4th of July, check the overhangs and eaves on your house and outdoor trees for hives. Wasps can build huge paper hives between the branches of evergreens. If you find a problem, call in the bee experts at Stern Environmental Group. Bees turn angry when their hive is disturbed and angry bees go on the attack. This is one for the pros!

Recently a bee keeper removed thousands of bees and buckets of honey from inside the walls of a home in Elk Grove, California. At first the homeowners thought the buzzing might be an electrical problem but soon feared bees had moved into their bedroom walls. “I heard the buzzing, louder than my electric toothbrush,” homeowner Jennifer Ferkel told the local CBS news station. “I turned it off and then I heard the drones.”

An estimated 40,000 honeybees were found living behind the dry wall and insulation of Ferkel’s home. Honeycombs built between the wall studs yielded about 5 pounds of honey. Let than a month old, if left untreated the bee colony would quickly have doubled in size.

The Ferkel’s problem isn’t as rare as it might seem. Ten years ago, honeybees found their way under my neighbors’ siding in Chicago with similar results. My neighbors not only had to replace the siding along one side of their home, but also the wallboard in two rooms that had become soaked with honey. It took much longer to completely remove the sickening smell of fermented honey that permeated their home for months.

If you hear buzzing in your walls or ceiling or start finding bees in your home (they can  enter through electrical sockets), call a pest control professional immediately. Click here for more information on bees and wasps.

Spring brings sunshine, warm breezes, blooming posies — and bugs. Insects are at their most prolific and most active when the weather heats up. Ants, bees, hornets, wasps, roaches and bed bugs are gearing up for summer and your home may be party central. If you’re not keen on sharing your domicile with a host of creepy-crawlies and their friends, you may need to call in a pest control professional to handle the evictions. How do you decide when to call and who to call? This week we’ll share tips on hiring a pest control company.

First you have to decide what’s eating you. The problem may be obvious. You may see a trail of ants across your kitchen floor. You may glimpse something scurrying under the fridge when you turn on the light. You may see fat bees buzzing around the eaves or spy a wasp nest under construction. But what if you suspect a problem, but can’t figure out the cause? Even worse, what if you wake up with itchy red welts? How do you figure out what’s biting you?

Try putting heavy-duty double-sided tape or glue traps on kitchen countertops, under sinks, and around windows, doors and headboards to see what sticks. Zip your catch into a plastic bag or dump that mystery bug into a small jar of rubbing alcohol. Take you catch to your local cooperative extension office or a pest control company for identification. They can tell you what you’ve got and how to get rid of it.

Hundreds of flighty Bee-listers swarmed the Upper East Side of Manhattan yesterday causing havoc at 75th and Second Avenue. But it wasn’t a low-budget film run amok that had people buzzing. This was a weird freak of nature more appropriate to the deep woods than a city sidewalk.

Frantic phone calls to 311 reported a cloud of bees swarming area bus shelters and creating general panic along sidewalks. Spectator Bill Orfanon described the noisy swarm “like debris, floating around in a whirlwind. It was pretty amazing.” 

Police contacted the Bronx Zoo for help which sent bee-keeper Jim Fischer to the rescue. Garbed head to toe in protective gear, the bee-buster arrived with a smoker box to calm and contain the bees. When finally under control, the tightly-packed colony covered the entire side of a newspaper box. “It’s how they reproduce,” Fischer explained. “Somewhere around here there’s another hive of bees. This one broke off and followed the queen.”

While bees are beneficial to nature, a swarm can pose a serious danger to humans. If bees are buzzing you, contact a pest professional for safe removal.

The south can be a harsh place insect-wise. You could be walking around on a rare cool day bare-foot when you feel an immense burning feeling. You were just wanting to enjoy the day, but an extremely tiny fiend decided otherwise. The culprit is none other than the notorious fire ant. Oh man, those little buggers hurt! If you have a fire ant problem, you need to seriously be careful because a thousand of those little pinches and you could be a gigantic meal.

The fire ant’s bite is filled with venom, and this venom can do some nasty things. A fire ant bite causes a little red bump which can then turn into a white postule. Besides being very ugly in appearance, these bumps can eventually form scars. That’s only if you aren’t allergic, if you are allergic, then the venom can cause anaphylactic shock, which, when not immediately treated, can cause death. No joke, fire ants are not the bug with whom to mess around.

One way to keep them away from your home is by baiting. Baiting provides a food source that is everything an ant could want, plus a little surprise, toxicants. Baits will keep the ants away for a while, but they need to be replaced, every now and then. You can use pesticides on local ant hills that seem to be forming around your abode.

You just have to be careful around ants. They may look small, but they pack a powerful punch that could very well knock you out.

Not all bugs are bad. Some, in fact, are essential to our well being on the planet. One of these is the honey bee, which pollinates tens of billions of dollars worth of crops across the US. Without these insects we would have no oranges, almonds, and many of the other fruits, nuts, and vegetables we eat every day, not to mention a lot of flowers that help to beautify our homes and gardens.

Only a few years ago, something ominous started happening. Honey bees would leave their hives to gather pollen and then never return, leaving the other adult bees and queen so starve to death. Bee keepers who would transport their bees around to different orchards to pollinate the trees were finding that a within a relatively short period many of their hives, sometimes up to 70% of them in a single season, were being abandoned. No one knew why.

Some speculated that cell phones or magnetic fields were mucking with the bees’ ability to navigate and that they would get lost trying to make it back to their hives from the flowers. Thanks to molecular biologists and geneticists, we now know that the cause of this devastating crash in the honey bee population is due to a virus.

Scientists found this out by comparing the bee genome (the arrangement of genes in honey bee DNA) of disappearing bee populations with those that were not having the problem. Turns out that the bee populations being compromised were infected with a virus that was first found in bee colonies in Israel in 2002. It is a close, probably mutated, version of the Kashmir bee virus.

Yellow jackets are one of August’s more unpleasant pests. These aggressive predatory wasps are most numerous in late summer and early fall. They live in massive colonies of 4,000 to 5,000, building their nests in the ground, in trees or shrubs, and in protected places around your home, like eaves, attics, sheds, etc. A single yellow jacket is capable of stinging multiple times. If their nest is threatened, they will swarm out and attack aggressively.

In Cowpens, South Carolina a man died this past Saturday from yellow jacket stings. Michael Goodwin, 52, ran over a ground nest while mowing his lawn that morning. Within an hour he had died of anaphylactic shock which caused his airway to swell, effectively suffocating him.

Goodwin had been stung before with no severe reaction, but that’s the problem with yellow jackets and, in fact, most bees and hornets. Repeated exposure to venom can result in dangerous, even fatal, symptoms, despite a lack of previous problems. Goodwin worked outside and according to his son, John, “He’s been stung probably a hundred times in his life, and it never flared up like that.” Over time, sensitivity to venom can increase to dangerous levels.

As summer barbecues give way to fall tailgate parties, watch out for yellow jackets zeroing in on sugary drinks, ripe fruit and overflowing trash cans. Insect sprays and powders can be used to control nests in lawns, but anyone who is worried about a nest or who is planning a large picnic or outdoor wedding should consult a professional exterminator.

Avoid yellow jacks when possible. If one flies near you, do not strike at it or run rapidly as quick movements will provoke an attack. Although humans can outrun the wasps, which have a top flying speed of 6 to 7 mph, you could suffer more than a dozen painful stings triggered by your movement before you could run out of range. Don’t strike or crush a yellow jacket against your body. This releases an alarm pheromone that can incite a frenzied attack. If yellow jackets are bothering you, your best defense is to cover your face with your hands and back away slowly, making sure not to step on a ground nest. Move indoors if at all possible.

There is nothing like a few unwelcome guests invading your home to make life miserable. Occasionally insects or wildlife may decide to come calling and, charmed by your gracious hospitality, decide to stay awhile. Stern Environmental Group provides expert residential pest control and pest management services guaranteed to send such unwelcome guests packing in a hurry.

Your home is one of the single largest investments you’ll make in your lifetime. Protecting it from the destruction and health hazards caused by invading insects or wildlife is a job for the experts at Stern Environmental Group. Utilizing the most effective products and methods available, our highly trained and experienced professionals will ensure that your family and home are safe and secure from unwanted pests.

Stern Environmental Group provides bed bug extermination, carpenter bee control, nuisance wildlife control, capture and removal of squirrels, raccoons, skunks, feral cats, and many other insects and nuisance urban wildlife. If it creeps, crawls, skitters, scampers or slinks, we can get rid of it for you. We are a member of the New Jersey and New York Pest Control Associations and provide insect and wildlife control and management services in most of New Jersey, all of New York City, most of Long Island, and parts of New York State and Connecticut.

Visit our website for complete information on the services we offer. Click the post title to learn more about our residential services. We also provide commercial pest control and pest management services. You’ll sleep well tonight when you get “Stern” with your pests!