Resident concerned with bees in greenbelt

Maricopa resident Sherry Arnold wasn’t aware of the bees that lingered on the other side of her backyard fence.

Arnold, who lives in The Villages at Rancho El Dorado neighborhood on Donithan Way, was outside completing yard work Monday while her 33-year-old daughter stood nearby smoking a cigarette. 

“All of sudden, there was just bees everywhere,” Arnold said Wednesday. “And I just looked at (my daughter) and said ‘Are those bees?’ She’s like ‘yes,’ and we ran back in the house.”

An employee from Bircher Exterminating Services, a company that serves the Phoenix area and surrounding communities, including Maricopa, discovered the nearby hive Wednesday. Bees were housed inside a plastic water-valve box on the ground just on the other side of Arnold’s backyard fence. 

Kerry Reed, a service manager from the pest control company, said the business receives around 15 to 20 bee calls a day. In the warm spring and summer months, especially when flowers and plants are blooming, bees are more active. 

When bees or other pests are located in a public green space within a Maricopa neighborhood, community management – not the city – handles the situation. The valve box containing the bees next to Arnold’s home was in a neighborhood greenbelt complete with a public walkway. 

Worried not only about her family’s safety, but those of her next door neighbors and children playing in the area, Arnold started making calls after the Monday incident. She eventually contacted the management company that oversees her neighborhood’s HOA, Associated Asset Management. AAM contacted Bircher Exterminating Services to come out and remove the hive. 

However, Arnold isn’t sure her bee problem is gone. Her worries haven’t been focused on a water-valve box dug into the ground, but rather, high in a tree positioned just on the other side of her backyard fence. There, a large mass of what appears to be bees is grouped among green foliage. 

Yet Bircher employee Ted Bloodworth, who removed the valve-box hive on Wednesday, was positive he removed the threat. 
“The actual hive was in the box,” he said.

Bloodworth said he did not find the bees in the trees, but when he opened up the valve box – a typical place bees like to hide – he found a “pretty big hive.” 

Wearing his white bee suit, Bloodworth put insecticide in the box and took out the hive. 

Reed, the service manager, said beehives aren’t on trees, but are located in enclosed spaces with a small crack that allows the bees to enter, such as a water-valve box. 

Arnold could be witnessing, he said, a bee swarm, in which the bees occupy a location for a certain period of time while other bees go out and search for a potential hive. Finding that hive can take up to a day or even 48 hours.