Bees in menage

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equinedentistuk

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Help needed please.
I'm at my wits end. We have a mining/heather bee infestation in our menage. These are solitary bees that live in single cells in the ground 6 - 12" deep. Pest control have been out twice so far, first visit they hadn't understood the scale of the problem!
Both my horses have sustained multiple stings and had a nasty immune response resulting in toxic laminitis in one.
Has anyone succesfully got rid of them without resorting to digging up the surface?
I'm currently trying to drown them/move them on with sprinklers on pest control advice and they are coming back again Tuesday for round 3.
I've contacted menage installation companies and noone has any advice. Much of our topping has blown away so I'm aware the sand is appealing for them so I'll try and afford a rubber chip top up as soon as they've gone.
Has anyone a success story please? Thank you
 
Had miner bees in manège really badly one year and left them after taking advice that there wasnt anything we could do. No horses were stung. We used it as normal. Every year a few come back but they are completely innocuous so you must be very unlucky. Toxic laminitis sounds awful.

Sorry but I couldnt bring myself to kill bees. They don't like the damp but the female dies off quite quickly once eggs are laid so shouldn't be an issue until they hatch next spring.
 
I can be of no help to you, I'm afraid. We used to have ground-nesting bees, one of the horses had an unpleasant allergic reaction to a sting, diagnosed and treated by the vet, when her face swelled up. One of the ewes also had a dramatic reaction but we didn't realise the cause until the horse was also stung. Poor sheep was practically unconscious for 24 hours and never did recover all her faculties, over the next 5 or so years.
Our bees vacated the place when we had some building work done, which must have disturbed them, although not in exactly the place where they were nesting.
 
equinedentistuk said:
Help needed please.
I'm at my wits end. We have a mining/heather bee infestation in our menage. These are solitary bees that live in single cells in the ground 6 - 12" deep. Pest control have been out twice so far, first visit they hadn't understood the scale of the problem!
Both my horses have sustained multiple stings and had a nasty immune response resulting in toxic laminitis in one.
Has anyone succesfully got rid of them without resorting to digging up the surface?
I'm currently trying to drown them/move them on with sprinklers on pest control advice and they are coming back again Tuesday for round 3.
I've contacted menage installation companies and noone has any advice. Much of our topping has blown away so I'm aware the sand is appealing for them so I'll try and afford a rubber chip top up as soon as they've gone.
Has anyone a success story please? Thank you
Click to expand...
Neonicotinoids?
There are still some DEFRA categories for emergency use, altho I don’t think this is what they had in mind(!), and since you are going to fully cover school
equinedentistuk said:
Help needed please.
I'm at my wits end. We have a mining/heather bee infestation in our menage. These are solitary bees that live in single cells in the ground 6 - 12" deep. Pest control have been out twice so far, first visit they hadn't understood the scale of the problem!
Both my horses have sustained multiple stings and had a nasty immune response resulting in toxic laminitis in one.
Has anyone succesfully got rid of them without resorting to digging up the surface?
I'm currently trying to drown them/move them on with sprinklers on pest control advice and they are coming back again Tuesday for round 3.
I've contacted menage installation companies and noone has any advice. Much of our topping has blown away so I'm aware the sand is appealing for them so I'll try and afford a rubber chip top up as soon as they've gone.
Has anyone a success story please? Thank you
Click to expand...
that’s horrendous, you’re lucky the poor horse hasn’t expired, I do hope it manages to recover.
What are pest control using to kill them? Neonicotinoids under the ‘crop exemptions’ clause, then cover arena with rubber chip to prevent non residents being affected? You might have to totally flood the arena to successfully drown them, and eggs might still survive, they burrow quite a long way down.
Heard of this on an allotment: the managers poured petrol on the ground area and then burned some rubbish on top of it (a rhubarb bed, far smaller than a manège) subsequently had to dig that bed out and fresh top soil, but no more bees, and if there were any eggs, they didn’t hatch. Really hope you get it sorted out!
 
Burnttoast said:
Given the huge pressures invertebrates of all kinds are under these days, and their importance in the health of the ecosystem, I'd be pleased to have inadvertently provided them with a home. I know my view will probably not be popular (that's part of the reason inverts are struggling, of course)
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You know, I don’t believe anyone wishes to harm bees, unfortunately they don’t always return the favour.
If bees, wasps, hornets are a physical danger to humans or beloved pets or livestock, they need to be moved on or eradicated from that location.
Miner bees don’t swarm (far as I know, bee whisperer, anyone??) so you can’t skep them up into a new hive somewhere else - which would be ideal.
It’s not even 100% clear that neonix kill bees, because those in the studies also had other bee diseases, while migrating bees from elsewhere represent a very serious threat to ‘ours’.
You can understand bees setting up in allotments (site mentioned is used for vulnerable groups and social / green prescribing, so multiple stings are not an acceptable risk), but hardly a manège, where food is non existent.
Read the OP’s experience: those bees in that location are an unacceptable danger, altho someone else might enjoy their presence. Hope it gets resolved.
 
Exasperated said:
You know, I don’t believe anyone wishes to harm bees, unfortunately they don’t always return the favour.
If bees, wasps, hornets are a physical danger to humans or beloved pets or livestock, they need to be moved on or eradicated from that location.
Miner bees don’t swarm (far as I know, bee whisperer, anyone??) so you can’t skep them up into a new hive somewhere else - which would be ideal.
It’s not even 100% clear that neonix kill bees, because those in the studies also had other bee diseases, while migrating bees from elsewhere represent a very serious threat to ‘ours’.
You can understand bees setting up in allotments (site mentioned is used for vulnerable groups and social / green prescribing, so multiple stings are not an acceptable risk), but hardly a manège, where food is non existent.
Read the OP’s experience: those bees in that location are an unacceptable danger, altho someone else might enjoy their presence. Hope it gets resolved.
Click to expand...
I did say that my view wouldn't be popular and the opposing view was part of the reason for the trouble inverts are in.
 
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No advice but what a nightmare. Im not one for killing bees but OP does have my sympathy. She can't use the menege and her horse is at risk. There are bee keeping forums. It may be worth asking on one of those?
 
If it is the Heather Mining Bee Andrena fuscipes, they fly only in late summer - around July-September. In general, they are not aggressive unless defending themselves. They hatch, fly to the nearest heather, and die a few weeks later, having (in the case of the female) laid next year's eggs. The period of inconvenience will be limited to that timeframe. If they come back despite watering I'd probably hack out for a couple of months.
 
Could you not put something around the area the bees are and ride around it?, like a cone or a A frame sign.
We've had miner bees on walkways and as long as you don't directly step on them they aren't usually a problem.
Failing that, talk to a beekeeper? They are usually much better at helping to relocate bees than a pest control company
 
Think of the planet, let the bees alone - they'll soon move on, and then you can replace the missing surface to prevent a recurrence of the situation. Either hack out instead for the interim, or give your horses a bit of time off from ridden work. The latter might be wise to do anyhow, since they're both recovering from being stung.

And it's manege or manége for athletic activities involving equines - letter A for Athlete since it's a sport is how I remember the correct spelling.
 
Burnerbee said:
Don’t use that part of the ménage?

Sometime mentioned beekeeping forums - they’re for honeybee keepers. Solitary bees can’t be kept in hives / don’t have communities based around queens (beekeepers succeed by managing queens).
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No, they don’t swarm, so you can’t skep them up to take to a hive elsewhere. Or manage their honey! As bees go, not very cooperative....
They are also solitary, not necessarily confined to a convenient, single corner; and as OP’s discovered, very effective stingers - spectacularly effective with allergic subjects.
Hope it gets satisfactorily resolved.
 
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