House Swarming

Tony Hauk has a little problem that stings every time he thinks of it.

Thousands of bees apparently decided Tuesday to stake a claim on Hauk’s well-appointed home on Tyler Court, forcing his family of six out until the winged trespassers can be evicted.

“I can’t even go home tonight,” said an exasperated Hauk. “They’re everywhere. . . . They got into the air-conditioning vents, they’re flying around the television, they’re sitting on the beds. It’s bad.”

It’s a problem for a few Ventura County homeowners every year about this time--as Hauk discovered after coming home Tuesday afternoon to grab a bite to eat before heading back to work as a dispatcher for a Simi Valley manufacturing company. After parking his car in the driveway, Hauk pulled open the garage door and heard a strange din as thousands of bees buzzed about inside.

Hauk could see that they had already made an assault on the home’s interior, forcing their little bodies between the cracks in a door leading into the house and up through vent openings.

Hoping that the push could be stopped, Hauk entered his house, only to find hundreds more in the kitchen, bedrooms and living room.

“This was definitely something I didn’t want to come home to,” he said. “I just wanted to eat.”

With a swarm of bees homesteading his property, Hauk called an exterminator, who rushed out.

“Well, Tony’s got a pretty bad bee problem,” said Zach Lopez of Old Reliable Pest Control in Simi Valley. “We’ve still got crews out there trying to assess the problem.”

He said crews clad in protective gear were preparing to exterminate the bees with pesticide.

Until then, Hauk and his family, were staying at a neighbor’s house and taking heart that their home is not the first targeted by bees.

Lopez said that for several weeks, his company has been getting three to 15 calls a day from people all over the county who have been chased out of their homes by bees.

“It’s that time year again, but this time it’s a little worse,” with heavy rains helping to turn out more bees than usual, Lopez said.

Lopez advised residents who have a bee problem not to try to tackle the situation by themselves.

“Some people try and get rid of them by squirting them with water,” Lopez said. “All that does is make them mad and then [they] just start coming after you. . . . Let someone who knows take care of it.”