Last spring, I decided to thoroughly clean my home from top to bottom. I laundered all of the linens, organized the closets, washed the windows and cleaned everything from the overhead light fixtures to behind furniture. Multiple times, I found a bee flying around the room. I carefully captured the bee and released it outside. I couldn’t figure out where they were coming from. It wasn’t until I started up the air conditioner for the first time that I realized the bees had built their nest inside the ductwork. When the rush of cool air hit the bees, they poured from the supply vents into the house. There were a lot of them, and they were extremely angry. We needed to vacate the house. I immediately called my HVAC contractor and explained the problem. He told me that bees are a protected species and that I’d need to contact a professional bee removal company. While the bee company was very good about arriving quickly and handling the problem, this resulted in some damage to my walls, ceilings and ductwork. I then had no choice but to hire the HVAC contractor to repair, clean and seal the duct system. The bees had left behind a great deal of debris inside the pipes that would potentially block airflow and cause issues with indoor air quality. All of these many services added up to a great deal of time, stress and expense. We were unable to run the air conditioner until the bee problems were taken care of. The house was extremely overheated the whole time.
