When a real estate agent on the NSW Far South Coast gave Phillip Innes a buzz about a routine termite inspection, he was surprised to find a hive of activity behind the living room's plaster wall.
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The bee-wildering discovery and brief sting for the homeowner was made by the owner of Eden and Merimbula Pest Management, who said he discovered bees entering through a gap in the bricks.
After placing his ear against the plasterboard within the home while the golden glow caused from light filtering through a honey-coloured blind illuminated him, he heard buzzing, exciting the hobbyist beekeeper.
Mr Innes removed sections of the plaster wall to find what he estimated to be 20,000 bees in residence where the insulation usually sits, and determined there were two colonies only metres apart.
"Beehives split after a few years when they get too big. They produce a young queen, and the old queen takes 40 per cent of the hive and leaves and makes another hive, and 60 per cent stays," he said.
Wearing a white beekeeper suit, silver gaffer tape around his pant legs to ensure no nasty surprises, and a hooded veil, and holding a horsehair brush, hive scraping prying tool, and a stainless steel queen cage, he made his way towards the base of the densely packed bee nest.
Having secured a cardboard box in his left hand and pushed it against the wall, Mr Innes reached up with his right and began brushing bees into the box so he could relocate the colony into a hive while reducing dead bee carnage during the process.
"My goal was to identify the different sections of honeycomb and the different sections of brood and then I took the brood out and put it in my Langstroth hive in hope the queen would go into the hive," Mr Innes said, a process without the use of chemicals.
"I was able to gather up a certain amount and take the honey out of the honeycomb, recovered about 10 or 15 kilograms, but it's a dangerous job," he said.
The colonies were transported to a block of land in Eden where Mr Innes and his wife had several beehives.
Dr Doug Somerville, an apiculturist studying honey bees for close to 50 years, said bees were well and truly opportunistic when building their homes.
"Sometimes they just build their colony off a branch in a tree, exposed, they are generally cavity-nesting insects so they try to find a suitable area be it a hole in a tree or a cavity in a house or even a rabbit hole," Dr Somerville said.
However, he stated in a lot of cases leaving them alone wouldn't damage house cavities and most people would be oblivious to their presence, but he said for those with allergies, bees could be extracted.
"The conditions down here right now on this whole South Coast is very, very good for bees, there's lots of blossom around and weeds, trees flowering, and I think you'd have 40,000 to 50,000 bees in a colony if they'd been there for a while and well-established," he said.
"When you start to interfere with an actual colony that's established, they can get aggressive and territorial. When they are actually swarming they're homeless and don't tend to be aggressive in that situation.
"Once the colony is established wherever the location might be it will become defensive. Bees vary in their temperament like dogs, people and whatever else, but they still can and will sting."
The increase in tiny red-brown varroa mites across NSW was likely to make bees in homes a rarity in the future because the mites will wipe out these colonies, Dr Somerville said.
"As the mites spread across NSW, which they're not doing down here to my knowledge yet, but they will eventually get in in the next few years, then all your unmanaged bees will really struggle to maintain themselves," he said.
"It's not the end of the world for beekeepers because you can actively manage your bees."