Moses - that sounds like a horrific situation. :( I'm glad you're alright. You really (as you know) should have called 911...but you weren't thinking correctly.

Bumblebees can be quite small. There are many, many types of bumblebees. What I did when I had bees under my stairs was to capture a bee in a little container and take it to a farmers' market and asked a bee guy selling honey. He said the bee was a bumblebee (it was quite small). So I left them alone, and they were fine. If it's a relatively harmless type of bee it would be best to leave them alone, since bees are doing so poorly in the world.

I can really understand Moses' point of view...it's too traumatic for him to have bees on the property.

Good luck with whatever your choice is. :)

Carol

We have those same kind of bees and I have always heard them called yellow jackets. They are very aggressive and will attack as a hive just as Moses has stated from his experience. My daddy was mowing a fence line and didn't know there was a hive of them in the ground and got too close and was attacked and stung by close to a hundred of those little bastards, it made him very sick.

These bees are not your friends and I wouldn't feel guilty for anillating their hive. I doubt very seriously they are honeybees and I would hate for you to be attacked by the hive. Good luck in getting rid of them. It might be safer to get an exterminator.

I suggest a slow and cautious approach. I do not know the types of pollinators in your area, but your description does not really sound like honey bees What it may be is a small native bee. In general our native pollinators are far more endangered than honey bees because of a loss of habitat. You may have very beneficial pollinators living in your garden that will pose no threat to you or your garden. I would try and take a picture of one of these bees away from the nest and then look at some of the very good internet sites with pollinator identification photos.

There are some aggressive bees that perhaps would need to be destroyed, but nothing you have said makes me think these bees have been aggressive. We keep honey bees on our farm and they do not act aggressively unless there is something actually attacking the bee boxes. We live in harmony with them even with all the human activity on our farm no one has ever been stung. We also work hard on providing habitat for the native pollinators and while we have a lot of bees in our gardens there really is no risk to us. The only aggressive "bee" we have is called a yellow jacket and it has a more hornet appearance. It has a ground nest and can be aggressive late in the season. Even with yellow jackets we only destroy nests that are close to where people work because the risk is high of us accidentally inciting a stinging swarm. We leave the nests in the remote areas of the farm areas to prosper.

Please don't try and kill these unless you know for sure what they are and know that they are a risk for you or your family. With the health problems in honey bees we need to be sure our native pollinators are protected to ensure our food supplies.

I'd think at this time of the year the hive would be about to shut down on its own anyway.

Can you post a picture of them? Do they look like this?

My DH dealt with ours, but even after he poured poison down the nest, and dumped dirt into it, they were back a week later. He tried again and it finally worked, but I did not work in that area for months. And this was 1 foot from the sidewalk!

Jackie

Kate, try to ID them, but most of them die over the winter. You know where the nest is so just keep an eye on it when you get close by.

Here's a bee thread maybe yours looks familar to one of these...

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/3985909/share-bee-pictures

They are good at killing other garden pests (insects) so they do have value, and generally are not aggressive unless you disturb the nest although I have occasionally been stung if I disturb something they are eating in my garden. This is why I said we only kill the nest where we are likely to run farm equipment over the nest or if it located where we might walk on it.

Kate .. They move their nest every year. It's just about time for them to shut down for the season. If the nest is not near a path and you really don't need to work in that area of the garden. You really don't need to take any drastic measures. It's the end of the season.

The queen will relocate and over winter in another place and start a new nest.

It is wise to watch that location every spring and take action if you see in activity early in the year, if you don't want them there. Often they will return to a site where they have nested in the past.

Because it seems like a nest of many, rather than the usual solitary ground bees it sounds like a yellow jacket or wasp colony. Mike McGrath from You bet your garden has a very good remedy. They become less active at night when it becomes colder. If you can reach the area safely, put a heavy glass or ceramic bowl over the entrance. They cannot burrow out and will die. a good no chemical solution. If you can't reach the area, he has another suggestion using a shop vac or bag less vacuum. You bring the vacuum to the area, and turn it on. They attack it and are sucked up.

At the arboretum we have an area in the lawn where ground bees appear every year. Physically, they fit your description. I have found them to be completely non-aggressive. The entrances of their many little burrows look exactly like ant holes. We find we can still work in the tree ring nearby and not be bothered at all.

There are many kinds of bees and wasps that are not dangerous, and play a vital part of the natural order.

Hope your bees are the friendly kind.

Sorry the beekeepers weren't much help; their knowledge may limited to one kind of bee which was imported from Europe. They may never have encountered your local native bee. Not all bees behave as they describe.

Bumble bees (some are small) live in small groups, where the queen is the only one that lives through winter. They can sting if you step on their nest or pick them up (like I did picking a dandelion and not seeing the bee on it). So they could be small bumblebees.

Carol

So many wonderful responses. Sorry I didn't get back here sooner--got busy and forgot to check.

Still don't know what to do, but your individual experiences are very helpful in "educating" me on the topic.

I'm thinking perhaps I should call an exterminator. I have breathing problems--COPD--and am on oxygen. Have to carry my portable container around with me as I work in the garden. I hadn't thought about the possibility of getting stung and my breathing being affected.

I will try to get a picture of my bees tomorrow (or have my son shoot one)--if the bees will stop moving long enough to snap a pic. Whatever kind of bees they are, they seem to be perpetually in motion flying in and out of the ground hole leading to their hive. The hole, if I remember correctly, was about a 2 inch opening.

As to how aggressive they are, I worked fairly close to their ground hive one day--they kept flying over my head--just a few at a time--and then heading back to the ground hive. Then a few more would fly over my head for a minute or so and head back to the ground hive. I thought they were clearly communicating to me that they wanted me to go away (they weren't just being curious about who I was), but when I gently waved them off a couple times, they backed off for a few minutes, but then resumed the circling over my head ("go away, intruder")--so I left before they decided to get mad.

The other day I showed the ground hive to my lawn guy, hoping he knew something about bees. He didn't know much. We were standing back about 4-5 feet, and the bees just kept up their usual comings and goings out of the ground hole. Yesterday I moved a bit closer and kind stretched out to get a better look more directly over the hole. That's when I realized there were guard bees just inside the opening. They made an almost instant appearance. I repeated that stretching over the hole about 5 minutes later, and instantly those guard bees showed up. It was about that time that it occurred to me that perhaps I shouldn't push them too much, and I came in the house to research bees on the bee-keeper's forum and then to this forum.

I'll try to post some pics tomorrow and then see if anyone has additional advice. I'm pretty sure they are not bumblebees--don't all bumblebees have those darker/black markings, regardless of whether the bumblebee is larger or smaller?

Thank you, everyone, for sharing your experiences.

Kate

Hey Kate,

We have tons of honey bees here...especially in the fall, when a local bee keeper brings boxes of them to our pasture for the goldenrod. I have never been stung by one. Lots of bumble bees, too, and only been stung once when I accidently stepped on one barefoot. I've even stuck my nose in a bloom multiple times that had a honey or bumble bee on it without initially knowing and not gotten stung. Not so with yellow jackets. They are much more aggressive (or feel threatened more easily). I've been stung many, many times by them without disturbing their actual nest...if you have something they want, they will fight you for it, if you scare them, they will sting you, if you make them mad, they will chase you. If you have breathing issues, I would definitely be leery of leaving a yellow jacket nest close by. We have lots of carpenter bees here, too. In the spring, they will let you know if you are too close to their "nest" (holes they dig through wood), but I've not been stung by them, either. Carpenters are easily confused with bumble bees, but I don't know of another bee that really looks like a bumble bee. From a distance, honey bees and yellow jackets can look similar, but as already mentioned, yellow jackets are more "waspy". I took these pictures yesterday thinking each bloom had a honey bee on it, but after uploading them, I believe the bee on the left is a yellow jacket and the bee on the right is a honey bee. The yellow jacket made no effort to attack me even though I was close...but if I had an ear of corn or a sugary drink in my hand instead of my camera phone, that might have been a different story.

What I really want to know is the name of your gorgeous rose! :)

Hope for a visit from a skunk. I have had nests destroyed in a couple of nights by skunks. They'll dig up the nest and eat the bees. Skunks are good for at least one thing.

That's Valencia which was new to my garden last year. Big, beautiful, fragrant blooms on a fairly compact plant, but not as bs resistant as the newer kordes roses. Aardvark, I didn't know skunks ate bees. I think i'd rather take my chances with the bees, though. One of my dogs got sprayed last summer and one this summer. Takes months for the stink to completely go away no matter how many baths with messy concoctions and commercial de-skunk products

I love Valenciia - and yours looks wonderful!

Carol

Pat--wonderful pics of Valencia--one of my favorite HTs. And after examining your very informative wasp and honeybee images, I'm inclined to say that my ground bees do not look waspish, but rather more honeybee-ish.

Where's a skunk when you need one?

Sorry I didn't get back sooner to all the posters on this thread. I couldn't get a decent pic of my bees to show you.

I've also decided to do nothing for the time being--mainly because I can't think of what to do and hope by next spring they just disappear. I may try the heavy glass container over the hole treatment recommended above--next spring, maybe.

You have all been wonderful with your responses. I really appreciate the input.

Kate