Though many people are aware of the important role that honeybees play in the ecosystem, hives found in or near homes or offices could be frightening and risky for residents or employees. Today the majority of bee removal services have to be experienced with the life cycle of bees, in addition to other factors, to be best equipped to handle the hives with the least harm and stress to the bees.

There are essentially two kinds of insect removal services in the U.S., those that kill all the bees and then remove the hive, and those that take all possible precautions to preserve the lives of the bees, even while helping residence and office owners purge their buildings of unwanted pests. Environmentally conscious citizens usually select the eco-friendly bee catcher businesses, who after extraction will either give away or sell all hives to beekeepers so the insects can be returned to the fields to pollinate vegetation as soon as possible.

Honeybee life spans differ based on a number of factors including:

•    the role every bee plays in keeping a hive healthy and functioning
•    the environment where the hive is built
•    time of year when bees mature and start to carry out active roles in the hive

These roles include the queen who is responsibile for laying the eggs for the entire hive; the drones whose job is to impregnate the queen; and the worker bees who have responsibilities ranging feeding the queen, looking after newly hatched bee larvae, collecting pollen and protecting the community. Queen bees could live to two years, drones live long enough to mate with the queen; and a worker bee’s life ranges from 40 to 140 days based on the season.

In the spring, summer and fall worker bees are incredibly active, primarily by gathering pollen for the creation of honey to feed the younger bees. A healthy queen can produce up 2000 eggs each day, which means the workers must tend to all of those eggs to guarantee a healthy hive. It’s not unusual for worker bees to actually be worked to death in these active months – resulting in a limited life cycle of only about 40 days. A few bees can be seen walking about on the ground due to beating their wings to pieces, so the worker bee is unable to return to the hive.

During the wet, cold months of winter, some bee hives show a certain level of stress brought on by a shortage of incoming sustenance–since flowers and crops are no longer providing pollen. A weakened or failing queen who has decreased brood production can also produce stress in a community as workers lack enough to do to keep them busy.

Proactive beekeepers will do all they can to help hives thrive during the cold months so they can start the new production year with a healthy and vital hive. Failing queens are usually replaced with a healthier queen at this time of year. Even healthy queens need to have their diets supported, because the honey is taken for sale. Queens and workers both are often fed sweet syrup to keep her productive and the workers busy. Bee containers are occasionally covered to keep them temperate, dry, and free of ice. Since workers are not out foraging for pollens, winter born bees usually have a much longer life span than workers born in other times of year. Different bee species do better in cooler weather than others do. Beekeepers usually move their hives to other locations for overwintering and keeping them as strong as possible for the  spring crop months ahead.

Beekeepers who are educated about the life span of bees and the requirements of particular species will have a better understanding of how to handle an undesirable hive found in someone’s home or on business property, regardless of the time of year it is found. By handling the bees in a manner that does them no harm, a productive hive can be put to use in a different location, creating an environmental benefit for the community at large.