Bee Swarm Relocation Referral Protocol

Purpose

Honey bees are the one stinging insect this shop does not treat by default, and the reason is practical before it is ethical. A swarm hanging on a branch is a transient cluster with no comb, no brood and nothing to defend, and it usually moves on within a couple of days; a beekeeper will take it. A colony established inside a wall is not a spray job at all, because killing the bees leaves comb, brood and honey behind a finished surface, and that residue ferments, seeps through drywall, and draws ants, roaches and wax moths into a house whose owner just paid you to solve an insect problem.

So this procedure fixes one gate and one standing outcome. The gate is a positive identification before any product is opened. The standing outcome on a confirmed honey bee is a referral with the loop closed, not a treatment, and the two kinds of honey bee job take two different referrals.

Scope

Covers calls reported as bees at residential and light commercial accounts: hanging swarm clusters, colonies established in structural voids, and calls that turn out to be wasps.

Does not cover yellowjackets, paper wasps, bald faced hornets or mud daubers, which the stinging insect nest removal SOP owns and which a misidentified call crosses back to at step 2. Does not cover bumble bees in ground cavities or carpenter bees in fascia, neither of which is a swarm, or the structural repair after a removal.

Does not resolve whether you may destroy a honey bee colony. That is set by your state lead agency and by any local ordinance, and some product labels carry pollinator statements that restrict the application itself, so where a customer demands destruction the answer comes from those sources and your supervisor, not from the technician on site.

Roles and responsibilities

Procedure

1. Screen the call into one of two jobs before dispatch. Ask what it is attached to, whether the insects are going in and out of a hole in the building or hanging in the open, how long it has been there, and how high. Acceptance: the ticket says "hanging cluster, no structure" or "traffic into structure," plus a duration and a height. Wrong looks like a ticket reading "bees," and the stop rule is get a photo before a truck is assigned, because the two jobs take different referrals and a roll on a swarm that has already left is a slot the shop cannot resell.

2. Identify positively on arrival, before any product is opened. Honey bees are hairy, amber to brown, and foragers return carrying visible pollen loads packed on the hind legs; their comb is waxy and pale rather than papery and grey. Yellowjackets are bare and hard banded with a fast direct flight into a hole and no pollen. Bumble bees are large, round and densely furred, usually in a ground cavity or an insulation void. Acceptance: you can name the insect from two independent characters, not one. Wrong looks like calling it a bee because it is fuzzy at a distance. Stop rule: if it identifies as a wasp or hornet, close this SOP and run the stinging insect nest removal SOP from its step 4, which sets the escape route and the sting reaction plan before the first application.

3. Separate a swarm cluster from an established colony, because the referral differs. A swarm is a hanging mass with no comb, often on a branch, fence rail or eave face, usually docile because it has no stores or brood to defend, and typically present for hours to a couple of days. A colony shows traffic into a void, comb inside, and defensive behaviour that increases with the age of the nest. Acceptance: you can say comb or no comb, and give the duration from step 1. Wrong looks like a cluster present two weeks called a swarm; by then it has drawn comb. Hazard: do not open a wall, soffit or box to check for comb, because opening an established colony releases defensive bees into your workspace with no escape route set.

4. Do not treat, and do not let the customer treat. Give the interim instruction as three specifics: keep people and pets a stated distance back with the zone physically marked, do not spray it with anything, and above all do not plug or seal the entrance. Acceptance: the customer repeats back the distance and the no-sealing instruction. Wrong looks like a homeowner who has already sealed the entry hole. Stop rule: a sealed entrance is an emergency instruction to unseal it, because trapped bees push through the path of least resistance, which in a wall void is usually a ceiling penetration or an outlet box into the living space.

5. Handle the medical exposure question before you leave. Ask whether anyone in the household has a known sting allergy or carries an epinephrine auto-injector, and if the answer is yes, say plainly that the zone stays marked until the removal is complete rather than until the bees settle. Acceptance: the answer is recorded on the ticket. Hazard: anyone stung with facial swelling, throat tightness, or hives spreading away from the sting gets emergency medical services called immediately and does not drive themselves; a swarm's docility is not a guarantee, and a person standing under an established colony's entrance is in a different situation entirely.

6. Refer from a list you maintain, not from a search. The office keeps at least three current contacts with what each will actually take: swarm collectors who will retrieve a cluster, and removal contractors who will cut out a structural colony and who carry their own insurance for the opening. Acceptance: each entry carries name, coverage area, phone, what they take, and a last-verified date inside twelve months. Wrong looks like one beekeeper's number from four seasons ago, and a list with no verified contact for the job in front of you escalates to the supervisor rather than becoming a treatment by default.

7. Close the loop before the ticket closes. Make the call while you are still on site, confirm the collector or contractor accepts the job with a time window, and tell the customer the name and the window rather than handing them a number to call. Acceptance: a named contact, a stated window, and a follow-up check by the office on the day after that window. Wrong looks like a referral given verbally and never confirmed, which is how a customer with a swarm on a play structure ends up spraying it themselves. Stop rule: swarm work moves the same day where possible, because a cluster commonly leaves within a couple of days and a next-week appointment is usually an appointment with an empty branch.

8. Route a destruction request through the supervisor, never through the technician. Where a colony is genuinely unreachable, where behaviour is defensive to the point of a public safety problem, or where the region has established Africanized honey bees and the state's guidance treats a defensive colony differently, the decision is the supervisor's and it is made against the state lead agency's position, any local ordinance, and the pollinator statement on the label of the product proposed. Acceptance: a documented authorisation naming the basis. Wrong looks like a technician agreeing to it in the driveway. Stop rule: destruction is never authorised without the removal of comb and honey being scoped at the same time, because the residue is the part that damages the structure, and a shop that kills a colony and leaves the comb has sold the customer a worse problem than the one they called about.

The record this produces

One ticket per call, whether or not any work was performed:

• Screen result: cluster or structural traffic, duration, height, from step 1.
• Identification: species called, and the two characters it was called from.
• Job type: swarm or established colony, with comb observed or not observed.
• Interim instruction given: exclusion distance, no spraying, no sealing, and to whom.
• Medical flag: sting allergy or auto-injector in the household, yes or no.
• Referral: contact name, job type accepted, time window, and the day-after confirmation.
• Any destruction authorisation: the basis, the approving supervisor, and how the comb and honey were scoped.

Who reads it later: the office, when the customer calls back because the collector did not show, since the recorded window and contact turn that into one phone call; the supervisor, when the same address calls twice in a season, because a structure that hosted one colony will host another unless the void was cleaned and closed; and the shop, when a customer asks why they were referred rather than served.

Worked pass: a call reported as bees in a soffit

Step 1 screen: the customer describes insects going in and out of a soffit corner, present about three weeks, second storey. Ticket reads structural traffic, three weeks, second storey. That combination points to an established colony, so the office pre-checks the removal contractor's availability before dispatch.

Step 2: from the ground the technician sees returning insects carrying pollen loads on the hind legs, and the flight is unhurried rather than a fast direct line. Two characters, both consistent, so honey bee is called. No product is opened.

Step 3: three weeks with steady traffic into a void means comb has been drawn, so this is an established colony, not a swarm. The technician does not open the soffit to confirm, per the step 3 hazard.

Step 4 fails. The homeowner reports that his son sealed the soffit corner with expanding foam two evenings ago, and that bees have since been appearing in the upstairs bathroom around the ceiling light. That is exactly the failure the no-sealing instruction exists to prevent. The stop rule applies: the instruction is to unseal, and the technician gets the foam cut back from the original entry that afternoon so the colony's traffic returns to the outside face. The bathroom is closed off and the light fixture left alone, the exclusion zone is marked at the soffit end of the yard, and the interior appearances are recorded.

Step 5: the homeowner's wife carries an auto-injector. Recorded, and the zone is held until the removal is complete rather than until things look calm.

Step 6: the list carries three verified contacts for this area, two of them removal contractors who take structural cut-outs. Step 7: the first is called from the driveway, accepts the cut-out, and gives a two day window; the customer gets the name and the window, and the office schedules the day-after confirmation.

Step 8 is not reached, because destruction was never requested and the removal was available. The ticket closes with no application recorded and the referral confirmed. The value of that ticket shows up the following spring, when the same address calls about traffic at the same corner: the record says the void was opened, cleaned and closed by a named contractor on a known date, so the new activity is a new colony finding an attractive cavity rather than a job that was never finished.

References

• Your state lead agency for pesticides and the state apiary or agriculture office, which set the position on destroying honey bee colonies and on Africanized honey bee response in regions where they are established
• The product label, enforceable under FIFRA, including any pollinator protection statement, which governs whether a proposed application is permitted at all
• Local ordinance, where a municipality regulates honey bee removal or keeping
• See related: pestcontrol-stinging-insect-nest-removal, pestcontrol-wasp-nest-removal