Thousands of honey bees and massive hive removed from Atlanta home

By ALLEN DEVLIN

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    ATLANTA (WGCL) — A massive honey beehive consisting of thousands of bees was finally removed from a vacant property in Atlanta after weeks of terrorizing nearby neighbors.

“I’m afraid to come out the house sometimes,” said Matthew Sease, who lives right next door. “I never went by the house because I was afraid of the bees and getting stung.”

Sease says the bees first moved onto the property in the Spring and the hive has been growing daily ever since. Today, it consisted of multiple different “pockets” on both the interior and exterior of the vacant house and the entire yard and neighboring yards were filled with the bees as they swarmed the area.

In Georgia, as in most states, it is suggested that you do not kill honey bees as they are both endangered and a vital part of the ecosystem; pollinating plants and accounting for about one third of our agricultural production.

“The honey bee population has been struggling in recent years so that’s why it’s more important that we’re doing the right thing for the honey bees and that’s not killing them if we do run into problems,” said Director of the Metro-Atlanta Bee Keeper’s Association Dave Marshall. “Somebody could try and kill them on their own but it’s really not a good idea you know, you want to have the experts come out and check.”

“You can go from not having a hive one day to having thousands of bees there within a day and they can get to work pretty quickly,” Marshall added.

The property owner hired a bee removal service to come out Thursday and safely remove the bees from the house, clearing up what Sease says is “98%” of what was originally present.

Experts will continue to watch the home to ensure the remaining bees do not attempt to reconstruct a colony.

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