I purchased this house and occupied it late January. Of course, the learning curve with a new house and property are pretty much straight up, so I didn't catch on to this till late summer.

On the west side of my home, in the soffits, I have a MAJOR nest of European bees.

{{gwi:434546}}

They look like small bumbles, but hive up and sting like h@&&. I know they come from greenhouses, cause I used to live up the road from a hydroponic Tomato greenhouse, and was told on a tour that they were brought in from Belgium. They had tried to invade my home there - so like I said, a very large hive on the west end. Sounds like a small engine if you bump the soffit. I stole the above photo from an Aussie web site about these bees. Sadly, it was copied from http://unis.mcgill.ca/en/uw/insects/bumblebees.html, which shows the same bee as a native bumble.

On the Eastern Front, I have what I suspect is a honey bee hive, again, large(not as large as the west); on the 2nd floor, I have hornets.

To the best of my knowledge, these are long term tenants; sadly they do not help with the taxes. I have tried to contact local bee keepers, as I thought at least the honey bees were worth saving. Possibly someone would find value in the european bees as pollinators, and then I could poison the hornets. That was me trying to be nice.

Now it is winter, and the not nice me is thinking, hmmm, January, February - very cold. Maybe I could just knock my soffits out, kill them all, and have a carpenter in to fix the soffitt.....

Is it a plan, or a plan for disaster??

Nancy.