Bees safely removed from 7-11 gas station

WICHITA FALLS, Texas (KAUZ) - A colony of honey bees took over the wall of a 7-11 gas station. Bee experts were called to safely remove the bees but one expert said this is a process.

“There’s a possibility that they’ve been here for three years,” said Cheryl Hazelton, an employee of Honey Bee Patriot.

Hazelton said when bees form a colony it can be dangerous.

“Bees can form combs within like three weeks, a good size portion of combs so after they’ve been here for about three years they’ve actually kinda made this wall their home. If you start using machinery like lawnmowers, weed whackers or anything that creates a vibration around then you can agitate them and that’s when you really start running into problems,” added Hazleton.

One exhibit curator said if bees feel threatened, they’ll use their defense of stinging. Hazelton said the bees were living in the wall for about three years.

“What we’re gonna do first is we’re gonna go inside the building, there a pipe that runs through and we’re gonna try to plug off that pipe and so the bees won’t come inside and once we get that done we’re going to start removing it brick by brick and once we get enough bricks off we can determine how big the colony is then we’re gonna actually start removing comb and putting it into a box,” added Hazelton.

Here’s what they found.

“We ended up cutting of the other side here, it’s got a little bit of brood in it but it has the resources, it has the pollen that they brought in,” said Dennis Taylor, owner of Honey Bee Patriot.

“Once the bees are all gone, we treat the area so that other bees won’t come back in there,” added Hazelton.

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