Bees Will Find A New Home in Fair Oaks

The owners of the abandoned Brookhill Drive home overrun with bees will get assistance from community members and Sacramento County representatives, starting next week.

Ronald Conn, contractor, craftsman and environmentally aware owner of Eco-Built Construction is the man tasked with the responsibility of overseeing the removal of the bees and reconstruction of the house.

Conn took on the contracting work free of charge as a favor to the homeowners who are close friends. When the owner became unable to continue living in the home in its current condition, she was transferred into an assisting living community.

“This whole situation has kind of kicked into gear the entire remodel of the house,” Conn said.

The construction-end of the project isn’t likely to present Conn with too many obstacles. Of course, this isn’t any typical construction job.

“The difficulty is, I don’t usually have to dodge bees while I’m doing my work,” Conn said.

Conn has been working with County Senior Code Enforcement Officer, Scott Woodward who has been overseeing the situation for some time.

Currently Conn is looking for a beekeeper that can take on the job of safely removing bees, which could be a more daunting task than anyone can foresee at this point. The beekeepers coming to inspect the property can only estimate how large the hive is and that’s assuming there’s only one of them.

“The beekeepers are estimating these beehives at anywhere between 16 inches and four to five feet tall,” Conn said.

Ultimately the front façade of the house will need to be removed before anyone has a definitive idea of how large a project lays in wait. Despite the project's unforeseen logistics, Conn believes it to likely be business as usual. There’s always a catch, though.

Conn explained windows toward the front of the house are typically built with solid wood headers above them, leaving little to no void between the window and the header for the bees to have any hive in there.

“And yet, they’re entering the house right there,” Conn said. “So my only concern there is the bees may have somehow got in between the first and second floors of the floor joist.”

If that is the case, it could present the bees with an opportunity to build a much larger nest. It's a worst-case scenario Conn is already preparing for.

In that case, “We’d go in there, create a tent and open up the drywall between the first and second floor to allow removal of the bees there,” Conn said.

That isn’t as bad as it sounds either, Conn said - other than, of course, the open cavity being filled with bees.

“I told the beekeepers I’m not afraid of getting stung once or twice; that’s not really a big deal,” Conn said. “But, you know, 15 … 20,000 times … I don’t really have any need for that.”

The work of removing the bees from the home is likely to take upwards of a week to complete, Conn said. Since many beekeepers, including the one in talks to do this particular job, typically take the work in exchange for harvesting the bees for personal use, there isn’t likely to be any charge for the removal, either.

Conn believes there is no reason the qualified beekeeper hired will have any problem removing the bees in a safe way, though. He also believes it’s important to keep the bees in Fair Oaks.

“If we're going to be getting them out of there anyway, we might as well attempt to get them out alive and go ahead and have them relocated,” Conn said. “We’re trying to keep them in the area, so we’re trying to get beekeepers to take them and harvest them, so (the bees) are doing the same job they’re doing now.”