Honey bees, France, odd behaviour, help please (1 Viewer)

We are fortunate to have a small second house in the Correze in central France. It's an old house, so thick stone walls - rustique as they say!

Anyway for some years we've had a problem with house flies. They make 'nests' in the stone walls and erupt into the house occasionally. I plug any holes with foam, and regularly set off those 'bombs' to fumigate the place. Last time in late March.

Anyway this problem was replaced recently by another, more puzzling one. When my daughter went to stay in mid-June the floor under one of the living-room windows, behind closed shutters was covered in dead, small honey bees. And I mean covered, hundreds of them. And lots of secretions, shall we say. She cleaned them up, but they kept coming, not sure where from, and dying, but in reducing numbers.

We came down a few days ago and the process is continuing, albeit in even smaller numbers. Some of them seem to have full pollen sacs even. I still cannot be sure how they get in, or even if they are coming from the large fireplace.

Any ideas? They arrive in the house, fly around for a short time then always expire in the same place where my daughter found the first large mound. No more flies at the moment though .....

Puzzled.

Mick

Perhaps your flies are cluster flies. They can overwinter in houses in large numbers, and then try to find a way out in spring.

Maybe your bees are nesting up the chimney? Are you sure they're honey bees?

Flies are just the usual house flies, and the bees are the small brown bees that beekeepers have, and that recently swarmed in a tree in my garden in the UK.

Mick