I have a bee in my bonnet!?!?

[Lyne]

I've a "bee in my bonnet"!?!? - FOR REAL! I hear it in my attic...?? I can't see any swarming AT ALL, but this damn buzzing echoing through my one AC/heat vent!?? Right over my head in computer room!

It's not IN my vent system...that is sealed tight as it should be and NO it's not my AC system itself making the intermittent buzzing ...happens when nothing is running too!!!

If it's STILL this loud tomorrow, (this is second day) I'm gonna call my AC folks first, then my "bee guy" ...there is a tiny drain pipe for AC condensation over flow up under my eve too...wonder if he crawled into it!?! I just went out and looked hard at my eves all around my entire home, again, there is just NO swarm activity...Didn't even see the one mud wasp I saw yesterday... & wasps are normally silent... one web sit said a grounded bee can't live more than a few hours... I keep waiting for it to die... it's not a queen or there would be swarming around the holes (screened off holes up under my eves)...it's also quiet at night... all just like bees do...

On a cheery note: I have a small lizard friend out front on my walkway I've seen basking 2 times now... sooo cute!
http://www.californiaherps.com/lizards/images/sobocourtiisb508.jpg
Western fence lizard I think...has no blue belly

 

[eclark1894]

Hmm, I have heard of bees taking up residence in the walls of houses. Hope that's not the case, but it is a possibility. Wait!!? You have a "bee guy"?

 

[Hornet3d]

Hmm, I have heard of bees taking up residence in the walls of houses. Hope that's not the case, but it is a possibility. Wait!!? You have a "bee guy"?

Over the past two years we have seen wasps going in an out of holes in the morter in both our neighbour's houses, happily the problem was easily sorted in both cases. Certainly a job for the experts in my book.

 

[McGyver]

You might have wasps in a wall... Try listening near windows.
Bees are usually easier to hear then wasps, but I've had a few nests in the outer walls that were disturbingly noticeable.
If the house is wood, wasps like Yellowjackets often find gaps near windows and nest in the spaces between the walls.
The older the structure and less insulated, the better.

 

[Lyne]

Thankfully...after 3 1/2 days, I think the bee died! I had gone out to examine my eves AGAIN...and called my AC guys...they said you really need to ask your Bee Guy if his spray would be a problem... but then I heard an even odder sound like he bashed through something and then "quieter" (or more tired?) buzzing ...and now I've had a bit more than 24 hours of silence... SO relieved!!! I don't think there is any way bees or wasps could get into my walls- which are made of stucco a sort of material sprayed onto the wire...chicken wire stapled to the framing... cheap So. Calif. un-insulated walls!! (plasterboard is only on the inside - side of walls!)

 

[McGyver]

My house has really crazy stucco over steel mesh (early 1900s method of hurricane-proofing a house) and they still find ways in...
Usually it seems to be from under, where the exterior coating meets the foundation.
In fact virtually all wasps incursions have occurred in the older sections of the house that are stucco coated.
The funny thing is the house has siding over the stucco (some stupid 60s "improvement") and the few times I couldn't get to the nests, the exterminator would tell me it's odd because wasps don't go under aluminum or vinyl siding.
So when I tell them it's stucco under there they say it's impossible and insist I'm wrong... until they find out I'm right and they are idiots...
I really hate when on the rare occasions I have to hire someone to do something they love to try and convince me everything about my house is impossible... Megh.
I didn't realize you were hearing the sound of a single insect... I get it now... The sound of the buzzing was being magnified by where it was trapped... I thought you were hearing hundreds of bees.
That can be super annoying... We had a huge inch long beetle trapped in the metal base of a light once and I guess eventually it croaked from the heat, but I couldn't find where sounds were coming from for a couple of days...
Eventually a few years later I found the carcass when I changed the fixture.

 

[Lyne]

argh!!! BUZZING IS BACK!! This time I called a BBB accredited pest co. NICE lady, they can't come till Monday at 6 am...to respect my immune problems, (be healthy) etc... so just don't want it to be something where I have to have my walls or roof opened up... sooo scared of something like that....

 

[AlphinaNovaStar]

At least it is not an alarm clock in the wall. I saw that on TV but do not know much more than that about it.

 

[Hornet3d]

argh!!! BUZZING IS BACK!! This time I called a BBB accredited pest co. NICE lady, they can't come till Monday at 6 am...to respect my immune problems, (be healthy) etc... so just don't want it to be something where I have to have my walls or roof opened up... sooo scared of something like that....

Sorry to hear the buzzing is back and I hope they are able to sort it easily on Monday, something like this can be annoying and frightening.

 

[eclark1894]

Maybe it's the ghost of the first bee.

 

[Hornet3d]

Maybe it's the ghost of the first bee.

Yea, as I said, annoying and frightening.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Alarm clock stuck in wall

As for the alarm clock in the wall? Something like 13 years ago, a guy needed to locate a stud on his wall. His solution was to set an alarm for 10 minutes and then from dangle the alarm clock from a string. When the alarm went off, he'd be able to locate the stud. Unfortunately, the string broke, so he was unable to retrieve the clock. Thinking the batteries would die after a few months, they left it there. Seeing as how putting a hole in the wall to retrieve a soon to be dead alarm clock didn't appeal to them.

Since the story ran last month, a local A/C company removed the clock.

Alarm Clock Finally Removed.

 

[eclark1894]

Alarm clock stuck in wall

As for the alarm clock in the wall? Something like 13 years ago, a guy needed to locate a stud on his wall. His solution was to set an alarm for 10 minutes and then from dangle the alarm clock from a string. When the alarm went off, he'd be able to locate the stud. Unfortunately, the string broke, so he was unable to retrieve the clock. Thinking the batteries would die after a few months, they left it there. Seeing as how putting a hole in the wall to retrieve a soon to be dead alarm clock didn't appeal to them.

Since the story ran last month, a local A/C company removed the clock.

Alarm Clock Finally Removed.

Yeah that story ran on Inside Edition yesterday. I thought to myself, Ray o vac, the battery maker, should feature that story in a commercial and silence the Eveready Bunny. By the way, when they removed the clock, the battery was still working. They took the clock out of the wall, dropped it, and it was STILL working.

 

[McGyver]

That clock would last like ten seconds in my wall... The importance of non holed walls over an annoying alarm is minor... Non holeance is a societal myth... After all, are not windows and doors just holes in walls?

By the way, I was thinking, as that on occasion does happen, though I can not predict nor control it, but nonetheless, you new buzzing roommate may be a spider hunter wasp.

They vary in size, color and flavor, but most are iridescent blue/black (black diffuse with a cobalt blue specular highlight) and are usually between 1/2 - 3/4 inch.
They are somewhat shy and will only sting or bite if you pick them up or try and eat them.
They taste terrible, so avoid the latter.
We get them every few days around here, but I keep evicting the via the glass and paper method... Actually, for all I know it could be the same wasp.
I personally don't have a problem with them because all they want are my stupid spiders, which we have an over abundance of here... Seriously, Long Island should have been called Stupid Spider Island, but since I wasn't there in time for the naming ceremony, they chose that one.
These little ladies tend to be able to find the tiniest hole to go in search of spiders, which they paralyze, lay an egg in and then wall up in a chamber in their nest for their hungry larvae to feed on from within and eventually burst out of... Despite the horror of that alienesque scenario, that's between them and the spiders who have their own horrific feeding traditions, so I'm not judging them.
While I was thinking, I remembered you had some construction done and that may have left some tiny gaps where there wasn't previously.
Spider hunters are solitary wasps, quite antisocial in wasp society actually, though they are great orators and have no trouble giving public lectures... Which reminds me of their occasional loudness... They can sound as loud as a bumble bee against the right surface.
An AC duct would probably be a great amplifier.
The going away and coming back could be that it got a bit lost, found its way out and them came back because life on the outside was confusing and difficult.
Or your ducts are crawling with evil spiders and it found the ducts a virtual spider supermarket and it keeps coming back for more...
I would recommend focusing on the first scenario, as most people aren't as one with Mother Earth enough so as to be okay with the idea of an army of spiders massing in their HVAC ducts while plotting their conquest of mankind.

This wasn't helpful was it?

But it's just a thought, in case they don't find anything and nobody believes you and they tell you that you are imagining things or that you are crazy...
You are not...
Trust me, there are tests and a review board and you have to be licensed and every year you have get recertified and the license requirements keep changing... It's a real hassle.

Anyway good luck with the buzzing... Hopefully they are able to stop it...
If it turns out to be the ghost of a bee that died in the duct and it won't go away, look into getting a few Priest Beetles, they are pretty good at exorcisms, but they are hard to find...

Either way good luck.

 

[eclark1894]

I agree with McGuyver. No way that clock would have stayed in my wall for 13 years. No wall is worth my sanity.

 

[Lyne]

Anyway good luck with the buzzing... Hopefully they are able to stop it...
If it turns out to be the ghost of a bee that died in the duct and it won't go away, look into getting a few Priest Beetles, they are pretty good at exorcisms, but they are hard to find...

Either way good luck.

LOL, and thanks... still quite nervous...called the lady back to make sure I told her my home is a TWO story house...she said yes, that's why I'm sending two techs out... it's so hard to wait... ! Trying to distract myself...reassure myself...my AC guy changed filters end of May, no bees then... but afraid a month + is long enough to build a hive!? Read more on line...even "live bee removal sites" say in some instances (like mine), it's better to call an exterminator... BUT they said after the first kill visit they'd have to come back for the hive/pupa kill?!? and it said NOT to leave the "dead" hive/wax/honey, cause it could rot and smell...so I'm armed with more knowledge and "?" to ask the guys coming Monday...

 

[JOdel]

I occasionally get a (dead) bee in my sink. They come down through the stove vent. Which I sincerely doubt has ever been cleaned. The building is 86 years old. I think the soot poisons them. Not altogether sure why they always end up in the sink.

 

[McGyver]

They probably just want you to feel guilty and they know you will find them there.
Bees are big into guilt.

 

[Lyne]

Soooo.... OF COURSE the sound would stop when the pest control guy got here!?! Actually it had gone quiet again over the weekend... I felt like a ditz... BUT am vastly relieved that there is NO hive or bees in my attic!!! (since I HAD had a queen & workers get in and start one a few years ago)... this guy & I agreed, IF the noise comes back, I'm to call my AC guys next....but now I have to chalk it up to "gremlins" I guess... ( I DO still think a single -dumb- bee had gotten itself stuck in there somehow... oh and NEXT filter change, I'll tell my AC guy to look hard for anything inside there...

 

[eclark1894]

Soooo.... OF COURSE the sound would stop when the pest control guy got here!?! Actually it had gone quiet again over the weekend... I felt like a ditz... BUT am vastly relieved that there is NO hive or bees in my attic!!! (since I HAD had a queen & workers get in and start one a few years ago)... this guy & I agreed, IF the noise comes back, I'm to call my AC guys next....but now I have to chalk it up to "gremlins" I guess... ( I DO still think a single -dumb- bee had gotten itself stuck in there somehow... oh and NEXT filter change, I'll tell my AC guy to look hard for anything inside there...

That's how ghosts are, Lyne. They really active as long as you're home alone by yourself. But the moment you bring the ghostbusters, they go dormant.