Lazy Pest Controller?

[PaleoPerson]

Got called to friends house as he 'possibly had bees' in the roof. They were also entering a bedroom from 'somewhere'.

Initial inspection confirmed that they were indeed honeybees and that they were in the side of a dormer. The property was rented.

I said that I would help under the following conditions:
1/ The company that handled the rental had to authorise a builder to carry out the work.
2/ The builder would provide me with safe access to the area where the bees were
3/ I was employed by the builder to complete the work
4/ The builder was to be responsible for and to repair any damage to the property caused by the extraction.

This was all agreed by the rental company, so work commenced. The builder gained access to the roof/dormer and removed tiles, it was then discovered that there was only about a dozen or so bees in the colony, but a huge amount of comb. Removed all tiles, timber etc to gain full access, removed all comb (60lb of honey). Filled void with insulation and made good.

The owner of the property arrived to oversee the proceedings and stated that a pest controller was called in about 18 months previous and "destroyed the wasps in the roof" by spraying.

Great, they were not wasps, but honeybees, the comb had been acting as a bait hive and regular swarms inhabited the comb only to die over the next day or so. Also, all the stuff that I had collected was contaminated and had to be destroyed including my buckets just as a safety measure.

Bloody pest controllers not doing the job properly!!!!

 

[VEG]

report the pest controller how many hives could this have affected locally with robbing out?

 

[Poly Hive]

Let's not be over optimistic. Report them to whom?

They were cheap.

PH

 

[PaleoPerson]

Let's not be over optimistic. Report them to whom?

They were cheap.

PH

Defra would be the place, but due to the timescale may argue that they were wasps and the bees inhabited after he had sorted them. My bees are a quarter of a mile away and indeed could have been affected, but no wholesale losses that I know of.

Cheap, they were not and were acting for the rental agent not the owner.

A link that I found shown below, but I have heard of others.

http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/approvals.asp?id=2399

 

[Andre cardona]

just a job to them wot a shame

 

[viridens]

PaleoPerson

You are not the only one who has had to sort out problems left by cowboy so-called pest controllers who turn a quick profit by labelling everything as wasps and zapping them with a quick spray.
At least you have now sorted things out properly, and you say you were paid for your work.
It's a shame about the honey..
60 lbs is a lot of honey to write off. Logically, that honey must have been collected and capped while the colony was healthy and before the colony was sprayed. Also you say that there were live bees present on the comb.
In your position I wouldn't want to eat the honey, but I think I would be tempted to test it to see if it could be fed back as winter stores.
Wasp spray poisons usually act pretty quickly. Maybe confine a few bees for a few days with some of the honey as stores to find out what happens?
- And now I'll open my armor plated umbrella..

 

[the beehive lodge]

 

[merylvingien]

I have to laugh at the knee jerk reaction that people have displayed here, without knowing the full facts.

Could it have been that bees were present originaly and the colony died off, wasps made a nest and were treated and then bees reinhabited???

Or is that too much a stretch of the imagination?

Anyway, the law states that when honey bees are treated, all entrances must be blocked afterwards.
Any self respecting pest controller will know this and abide by the law to save his business.
If things went down as described in the original post, then i would suspect its a man with a can type setup. Probably a window cleaner...

 

[PaleoPerson]

Additional info:

There was no extra space for wasps to inhabit. All available space was full of comb.

The access points were not sealed

They were a "supposedly" reputable company.

I will not take any chances that could backfire on my reputation. Contaminated honey/comb is just not worth the risk for me.

You could see from the condition of the dead bodies (piles of them) which were old deaths and which were new ie last years vs this years. The live bees I think were the remnants of a recent swarm that had flown in.

There was no brood.

 

[milkermel]

The two situations you are refering to are totally differant one was in a roof and the other was in a tree.

"Mr Allison had used a bendiocarb containing insecticide ‘Ficam D’ to kill feral bees nesting in a tree. However Mr Allison had not notified local beekeepers about the application prior to treatment and bees belonging to local beekeepers had accessed the treated area and had died.
The court was told that the manner of the operation was “a good example of how not to carry out a pest control treatment”. In particular Mr Allison, had at the time had no training, had not carried out a risk assessment, did not wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and used the wrong application method during windy conditions. As a consequence the product was blown into the surrounding area and all over Mr Allison.

It is the legal duty of anyone using pesticides in the course of their business to be trained in the safe use, including preventing risks of non-target creatures, and preventing exposure of humans"[/I]

he in effect treated the area not just the nest. And was not qualified in the use of the perticular poison

the chap that did the roof was also possibly not a qualified pest controller and no doubt was a cheap option. Not enforcing that the roof needed to be removed to remove old comb etc etc.

So lets not just jump on the all pesties are evil band wangon please. Maybe we need to be out there teaching the community more about this sort of issue when we are selling our honey and at shows?? so that people know what they should be looking for when having treatments done.

 

[PaleoPerson]

So lets not just jump on the all pesties are evil band wangon please.

The title is in the singular and the reference used was a response to PolyHives post to show everyone who you should report to if someone does cause problems for beekeepers with poisons.

We have a few pest controllers in our local association. I do not have a problem with them or any other pest controller who does a competent job.

My comments are targeted solely at the lazy sod who did the original job. I have the facts, some details omitted as they would not serve any purpose on this forum and were the timescales shorter between spraying and my call out, I may well have reported them.

My main issues were with ensuring that the chemicals used could inflict no further damage to any feral, mine or other beekeepers bees.

As a side note, it killed all the wax moth attracted as well. quite a few dead moths yet no trace of any larvae in the combs.