Get Free Help with a Honey Bee Swarm
To report a honey bee swarm, call
(510) 898-6696
One of our volunteers will take your information and arrange for quick, safe, free relocation.
Our volunteers cover most of Alameda county and some of West Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay Area East Bay, including Alameda, Albany, Ashland, Berkeley, Castro Valley, Cherryland, Crockett, Dublin, El Cerrito, El Sobrante, Emeryville, Fairview, Fremont, Hayward, Hercules, Livermore, Newark, Oakland, Piedmont, Pinole, Pleasanton, Richmond, San Leandro, San Lorenzo, San Pablo, San Ramon, Sunol, and Union City. (For help outside of this area, see Swarm Resources in Neighboring Counties.)
What to expect: A beekeeper will arrive with equipment to encourage most of the bee swarm to move into a box. Over the next few hours, the rest of the honey bee swarm will join their sisters in the box. At dusk, the beekeeper will return to remove the box, now filled with the swarm, and take it to a safe location where it can thrive. We never use pesticides or try to exterminate the bees.
What to do while you wait: Stay calm. The honey bees will remain together in a clump, except for a few scouts. There is little danger of being stung, but keep others from approaching. If the bee swarm is in a public place, if you can, cordon off the area and post a sign saying that a beekeeper is on the way.
The honey bee swarm removal service is free, but we encourage donations to help our work. Click here if you’d like to make a donation to the swarm removal service — a great way to help save the bees!
We can only remove honey bees. We don’t provide help with wasps or yellowjackets. See our page for help Identifying Honeybees and Wasps.
Don’t use any pesticides
We can’t collect any bees that have been sprayed with a pesticide, because those bees are toxic to other bees. (Spraying honeybees with pesticides is illegal in California unless you have a pest control license and follow stringent notification requirements.)
Colony extractions
If a honey bee colony is established inside a house (for example, living in the chimney or an attic), it’s no longer a swarm. The bees can still be safely removed, but the extraction process is more complicated. The ACBA has beekeepers experienced in doing such extractions; you can call the same phone number to get a referral. There will be a fee, to be negotiated with the individual beekeeper.
A similar category is “bee trees”: natural outdoor nests where bees have taken up residence. Again, these are different from a swarm because the bees aren’t in transit; they’ve established a permanent home. We recommend leaving these alone unless they need to be removed for safety (in which case it’s an extraction); see our page about bee trees for more information.
Swarm collecting legalities
Our members only collect swarms on public land in cities, or on private land where we have been given permission by the property owner. If you see a swarm on private property and you’re not the owner, try to get the owner to call us.
We don’t collect swarms on East Bay Regional Park District land unless the park asks us to. If you see a swarm that’s causing a safety issue, contact a ranger and they will contact us if necessary. If it’s not causing a safety issue, the park district generally requests that it be left alone.
The hotline simply connects the caller and a beekeeper who wants to help. In most cases, the member is a hobbyist making a best effort to assist for free. If you’re concerned about liability issues, you may prefer a paid, licensed “extraction” company that can provide assurances of being bonded and insured. Some of our members can provide this (for a fee); if you call us, you can make it clear that you want to engage a paid, licensed extraction professional.
Our members can’t return swarms they collect. Legally speaking, swarming bees that are not “continuously within eyesight” of the original owner are wild animals, and become the property of the collector.
Swarm resources in neighboring counties
Here is a list of other organizations around the Bay Area that have swarm capture and extraction services:
| Contra Costa: | Mount Diablo Beekeepers Association |
| Marin: | Marin County Beekeepers |
| Monterey: | Monterey Bay Beekeepers (ABC) |
| Napa: | Beekeepers of Napa Valley |
| San Francisco: | San Francisco Beekeepers Association |
| San Mateo: | Beekeepers’ Guild of San Mateo County |
| Santa Clara: | Santa Clara Valley Beekeepers Guild |
| So. Santa Clara: | The Gilroy Beekeepers Association |
| Santa Cruz: | Santa Cruz Beekeepers Guild |
| Sonoma: | Sonoma County Beekeepers Association |