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Honey bees are helpful to life and the world, but you don't want them living in the walls of your home. You should know where bees like to build a hive and some signs they are living in your walls. Here are three interesting and helpful facts about bees and their living habits.

Bees Keep a Clean Hive

If you discover you have a beehive in the walls of your house, don't worry about them bringing in disease, bacteria, or awful smells. A live colony of honey bees will build their honeycomb and keep it free of bacteria and fungus with propolis. They coat the cavity of space where they build their hive with propolis and it is what helps keep honeycomb and the resulting honey clean enough to eat right out of a hive. 

Although bees are not dirty pests, a leftover hive and honey will begin to rot and attract pests that you don't want in your home. If you have bees in the walls of your home, make sure to have the entire hive and all the honey removed. 

Besides smelling bad, a hive you leave behind will attract more bees to build a hive in the same spot. The old hive will give out a smell that bees are attracted to, so be sure to have everything removed after you have the bee colony removed.

Bees Are Choosy About Where They Live

Bees need an area of space that is large enough for their entire colony, which can be from four to nine gallons of space. As long as a honey bee can find a tiny opening at least the size of a pencil eraser, to a large enough space, they will move in and build their hive. 

Bees prefer to find a space behind the siding or brick on your house, underneath a shed, or inside a tree. Bees will choose a location that is on the east or southeast side of a structure to build their hive. This gives them early morning sunshine and protection of the shade later in the afternoon when the sun heats up surfaces in direct sunlight. 

Do Bees Cause Damage to Your Home?

Unlike carpenter ants or termites, bees will not chew through any materials to build their hives or to access a hollow space for building their hive. Bees don't damage structures they are building their hive on or in, except drywall. 

Drywall is a material that is water soluble. As bees will carry water to their hive to cool the honeycomb, any drywall nearby can become wet. Inside the walls of your home, bees will saturate your drywall and turn it soft. This is usually how bees end up inside your home when they have inadvertently made a hole in the softened drywall and escape into the interior of your home. 

If you do have swarm of bees find a way into your home and you provoke them, they will begin to attack and sting you. It takes an estimated 1100 bee stings for it to kill you, so don't provoke bees by waving your arms around.

You might also begin to see a wet stain appear on the inside of your home's walls. This and the buzzing sound you might hear inside your home are both signs that you have a honey bee infestation. 

If you find a bee colony or beehive anywhere in your yard or your home, it is a good idea to have it removed by an expert bee removal service. A good removing service will remove the honey bees and move them to a better spot, without killing the bees.

Check out sites like http://www.beeremovalnow.com for more information about finding a professional.