Bee job.

I have been working as an exterminator (no, we don’t call it that anymore) pest control technician (no, that’s outdated, too) Pest Management Professional (right — that’s what we’re called now — PMPs for short) for almost two years now. In that time, I have never had to deal with bees to any large extent. In other words, I haven’t ever had to get rid of a hive or swarm of bees… until today.

If you don’t have time to read the full story of my experience, here’s the short version: it was freaking awesome.

Interested now? Read on.

I pulled up to the location at just past 10am. The hive was located inside a telephone box — you know the ones with the metal lids out at the end of driveways next to the street. Unfortunately, there was a 5-6ft tall tree that had branches sticking out all over in front and around the box. So it made for a slightly annoying time in the process, especially after I drenched the hive.

Now, most people don’t know, but bees are not killed with poison: they are killed with liquid detergent. That’s right. Don’t hire an exterminator if you get bees (unless you fear for your life). All you need to do is dump soapy water all over them.

I prepared my five gallon bucket with the appropriate mixture of soap and water, got suited up in my bee suit (I will undoubtedly put video and pictures up the next time I do this… I didn’t think about taking pictures this time, as I didn’t realize how much fun I was getting into). Once I was already, I poured about 3-4 gallons down the small hole in the cover.

From my vantage point, since there weren’t many bees entering and exiting the hive, I assumed it wasn’t a very large hive (then again, I have NO experience doing this, so who am I kidding?) After dumping in the water, I used a screwdriver to pry up the cover. To my surprise, the whole box was filled with honeycomb… and a hell of a lot of pissed off bees that hadn’t gotten hit by the soap-water. After getting up off the ground (I seriously fell over because I was so surprised / scared), I quickly dumped the remaining water on the hive.

This is where I started having problems.

For whatever reason, when I picked up the bee-killing-materials from the office yesterday, they only gave me a couple cups of soap. I had used it in my previous 5-gallon mixture… so I was out. And there was still a lot of honeycomb to saturate.

But the bigger problem was the fact that I thought I had gotten the majority of the bees.

When I walked back to the hive to brainstorm what to do next, I heard the most intimidating buzzing sound. I thought, “Maybe there’s still a bunch of bees UNDER the honeycomb somewhere…” As I looked intently on the mostly-destroyed hive, I saw out of the corner of my eye, about 3 feet away from my head on the nearby tree, a small football-size swarm of (I’m estimating) a few thousand bees.

I crapped my pants.

And then I ran, like a little girl, to the other side of the street.

Here I was — stranded with no soap — and a football of bees. So I did what any rational person would do… I knocked on doors. I found a guy with some detergent (who wouldn’t give their detergent to a guy in a bee suit?) and this was the coolest part:

For any of you who played Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and remember the boss Granfalloon, the swarm basically fell in the same fashion as I blasted them with a high pressure shot from my backpack-sprayer filled with soapy water. I stood there for about ten minutes, steadily spraying, as chunk after chunk of clumped-together bees were destroyed.