How far would you go for free honey

[mmntech]

OWEN SOUND, Ont. -- A Varney, Ont., woman didn’t realize the extent her little house has been taken over by bees until cracks appeared in the ceiling and honey began to drip about two weeks ago.
“We don’t hear them buzzing or anything. It’s just the crack in the ceiling. Like you’re standing in the kitchen and you get honey dripped down your hair. It’s not pleasant,” Loretta Yates said Saturday as she and her husband Kevin prepared to rid their house of the unwanted pests.
“Until we’d seen the massive honey dripping and stuff, I didn’t know what we were really dealing with was as big a problem as it’s turned out to be,” Yates said.
The bees are between the main-floor ceiling and the floor of the upper level over the kitchen and living room. Both ceilings have cracked and are leaking honey.
Upon closer inspection, the kitchen light cover was half filled with honey, she said. An Elmwood, Ont., beekeeper who was called in to investigate figures Yates could have 2,000 pounds of honey up there.
She has two colonies of up to 180,000 honey bees and a nest of nasty yellow jacket wasps, he believes.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2012/07/29/20041126.html

 

[highland145]

2,000 pounds of honey up there.

Dang. That would be quite the haul at the local market. A friend of mine got ~100 lbs oft of his 4 hives.

 

[Anubis]

how the hell could not hear that you had 180k bees in your walls/ceilings

 

[sdifox]

the buzzing should have been deafening.

Oh and that is bulk honey.

 

[lxskllr]

I wouldn't want to be there when the ceiling gives way. Getting hit with a ton of honey, and confused irate bees makes for a bad day.

 

[Krazy4Real]

LOL! You had to of been able to hear that.

 

[SandEagle]

Dang. That would be quite the haul at the local market. A friend of mine got ~100 lbs oft of his 4 hives.

2,000 lbs. figure she could make 50k+ on that

 

[edro]

Worst photos for a cool story, evar.

 

[vshah]

i'd call up the local bee farms

 

[Oyeve]

how the hell could not hear that you had 180k bees in your walls/ceilings

Its a cement house. Probably not a house in the traditional sense. My aunt had a similar incident in her apt in NYC. Bees were living in the wall from the outside and when they patched the hole outside they could only come inside. It was nuts! No honey tho but thousand of bees. The cement wall was pretty thick so we never heard any buzzing.

 

[EagleKeeper]

2,000 lbs. figure she could make 50k+ on that

Honey does not sell for $25 / lb

 

[highland145]

Honey does not sell for $25 / lb

Called the sis in law. $15 to $20/quart so ~$10K. Might be enough te get rid of the bees and repair their house.

 

[MisterJackson]

Oh bother!

 

[SSSnail]

These are not the kind of honeys I was expecting...

 

[HydroSqueegee]

These are not the kind of honeys I was expecting...

you expected a 2000lb honey?

 

[HardcoreRobot]

the buzzing should have been deafening.

Oh and that is bulk honey.

new definition, more or less than one ceiling-full

 

[SandEagle]

Honey does not sell for $25 / lb

maybe not the walmart variety, but there are several types of honey that sell for that on some go for over hundreds per pound. i've bought orange blossom honey before that was closer to $20/lb.

 

[Puppies04]

maybe not the walmart variety, but there are several types of honey that sell for that on some go for over hundreds per pound. i've bought orange blossom honey before that was closer to $20/lb.

How much does ceiling honey usually go for?

 

[lxskllr]

How much does ceiling honey usually go for?

I bet $100 a pound easy. That has to be rare. I've never seen it, even from specialist producers. Btw, one of the best honeys I've had came from some kind of plant I can't remember the name of, but it tasted like marshmallow. It was weird and delicious, but they only had it one year. I haven't seen it since.

 

[JTsyo]

I bet $100 a pound easy. That has to be rare. I've never seen it, even from specialist producers. Btw, one of the best honeys I've had came from some kind of plant I can't remember the name of, but it tasted like marshmallow. It was weird and delicious, but they only had it one year. I haven't seen it since.

That's because the marshmallow plant doesn't bloom every year. :sneaky:

 

[BoberFett]

 

[D1gger]

We had wasps try to set up a nest in our eaves and after two days the buzzing was making me nuts.

I can't imagine that 180,000 bees in a typical house ceiling would not be heard.

 

[DrPizza]

She's not going to get anywhere near as much money as you think she will for the honey. It's fairly easy to track down feral bee colonies to steal their honey (particularly in the fall.) But, you don't hear of people doing so in able to make money by selling the honey. The best she'll do is find someone to buy the raw honey in bulk, comb and all. If she sprays to kill the bees first, the honey will be unsalable. Thus, she'll need a bee keeper to remove the bees and the honeycomb from her ceiling. If she's lucky, she'll find one willing to give her a couple hundred dollars, rather than charge her a couple hundred.

More or less, after insurance & deductible, it's going to be a wash - no profit. She could get a bunch of books to learn to do it herself, including replacing the ceiling. The honey bees are pretty simple to contend with. They're also a lot more mild mannered than yellow jackets. The yellow jackets - not so simple. Yellow jackets can sting repeatedly & don't die from stinging. You can't use wasp/bee killer, out of contamination risk to the honey. If you can find the place where the wasps are entering/leaving, they make a sort of trap door that allows them out, but not able to return.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

1) i have a hive in my wall and have never heard a thing from them. i'm pretty sure they are lame non-bumble bees and not hornets or wasps.

2) i would not eat a house, so i would not eat honey infused with house particles. "oh look, a dumpster full of honey! i'll just filter..." yeah, no thanks.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

1) i have a hive in my wall and have never heard a thing from them. i'm pretty sure they are lame non-bumble bees and not hornets or wasps.

2) i would not eat a house, so i would not eat honey infused with house particles. "oh look, a dumpster full of honey! i'll just filter..." yeah, no thanks.

The bees don't eat the house, honey is produced from nectar and pollen. Honey is stored in wax combs so, basically, yes I would "just filter" the dumpster full of honey and make mead. Gallons and gallons of wonderful mead.