Vegas Bees' Secret World of Bees

Bees in your dog’s water bowl are there because they need water, especially during the hot Las Vegas summer. Like everything on our planet, they need water too. Honey bees collect water and carry it back to the colony, where it can be used to help cool the hive and support other colony needs. When temperatures climb and natural water sources dry up, a dog bowl becomes a dependable puddle that refills itself, which in this climate is worth more to a bee than most people realiz

Are Bees Gathering Around Your Outdoor Irrigation? Here’s What’s Going On. If you step outside and see bees hovering around your sprinkler heads or crawling along drip lines, it definitely can feel strange and worrisome. We get these calls all the time in Las Vegas, especially in peak summer. The reality is simple. This is one of the most common and least understood bee behaviors in the desert. The good news is that it’s usually not an emergency. The better news is that once

In our line of work, we see something homeowners rarely expect. People call us thinking they've just developed a bee problem, but when we open things up, the truth is almost always the same: that colony didn't just arrive last week. Homeowners are shocked to find out that It's been there, quietly building and growing, sometimes for months, sometimes for years. By the time we get there, the home has already been functioning as a hidden hive, and unlike most tenants, this one n

Why Bees and Wasps Show Up at Your House (And What Actually Draws Them In). Every spring we start getting the same call. Someone noticed a few bees hanging around the eaves, figured it would pass, and now there's a colony the size of a basketball behind their siding. It never passes. Bees don't scout a location and change their minds. We've never once shown up to find they talked themselves out of it. The good news is that bees aren't showing up at your house by accident. The

Fake Wasp Nests Don't Work, especially in Las Vegas. We get asked constantly whether hanging a fake wasp nest on the patio will keep the real ones away. The honest answer is that they don't work with our paper wasps here in Las Vegas. We should know, we remove bees and wasps. The brown paper ball hanging from a hardware store rack looks convincing, the packaging promises no more wasps, and the price is a lot lower than a service call. However, we have removed wasps from count

Bees in Your Water Meter Box? Here's What We Do. A few weeks ago a parks maintenance worker had noticed bees all over the top of a water meter box at Durango Hills Park. They called us before anyone got close enough to find out how the colony felt about visitors. We see this constantly around Las Vegas, and honestly it makes sense once you think about what a water meter box actually is from a bee's point of view. It's a dark, enclosed cavity set into the ground, insulated on

There is a moment of pure, unfiltered awe when a swarm of bees arrives at your home. It begins as a distant "zzzzz" sound, and then a vibration in the air that you feel in your chest before you even see them. Then, thousands of tiny wings cloud the sky, swirling in a mesmerizing cloud before settling onto a tree branch, a porch overhang, or the side of your house. In less than 5 minutes, it is over, and quiet again. Once the initial shock wears off, a deeper question almost a

Our Adventures on the Beekeeping Reddit Site If you're searching for "Beekeeping Reddit," you're probably looking for advice from people who actually keep bees. I did the same thing years ago, and still do to this day. Reddit has become one of the largest places online where hobbyists, sideline beekeepers, and commercial beekeepers discuss everything from installing a package of bees to treating varroa mites. Unlike traditional forums, Reddit allows thousands of beekeepers fr

Live Bee Removal from a Sprinkler Valve Box in Las Vegas Sunni contacted us after she noticed honeybees coming and going from the valve box in her front yard. When we lifted the lid, there was a fully established honeybee colony that had decided the space below her sprinkler valves made a perfectly good home. We see this more than people expect. Valve boxes are dark, protected, and just the right size, so bees move in and build comb straight down into the cavity, wrapping it

Here is the gallery of pictures from the bee removal on July 3, 2026. Betsy & Pete Vegas Bees 🐝 Las Vegas’s All-Natural Live Bee Removal Team About Us: The Authors Betsy Lewis and Pete Rizzo from Vegas Bees We’re Betsy Lewis and Pete Rizzo - Beekeepers on a Mission in Las Vegas We’re not just in the bee business, we’re in the bee-saving business. Trained by a master beekeeper and backed by hundreds of successful removals, we are dedicated to rescuing and relocating honey be

Why do bees love salt cedar trees (tamarisk) in Las Vegas? The desert has long periods with very few blooming plants, especially during summer. Salt cedar flowers during one of those gaps, making it one of the most dependable nectar sources available. That's why beekeepers often notice heavy honeybee activity around these trees while many other plants appear dormant. If you've spent any time in the Southwest, you know tamarisk. It lines the wash banks and river corridors in l

On June 22, 2026, Betsy and I drove out to a Las Vegas home expecting a routine bee removal. The homeowner had honey bees living inside an irrigation valve box in the yard. What we found inside that box stopped us both cold. The honey wasn't golden. It wasn't amber. It was vivid, unmistakable green. After hundreds of bee removals across Las Vegas, neither of us had ever seen anything like it. What We Actually Found The colony itself looked completely healthy. The bees were ac