Crews spend 3 days cleaning up 9-foot long hive filled with 50,000 bees at Tucson home

TUCSON, Arizona -- Africanized honey bees swarmed to a home in Tucson, building a hive that was about nine feet long! The homeowner had a very big problem on her hands -- a problem that took three days to rectify.

Greg Denker with American Bee Control said there can be 50,000 Africanized honey bees in just one hive. The hive at Cindy Stewart's home stretched about nine feet long, and took about a year to develop, Denker said.

Denker said he planned to relocate the bees to various bee yards across southern Arizona.

"Well, this is totally unmanageable, because it was inside the wooden soffit of the house. If there were laws against bee-keeping in Arizona, this would be against the law. Every jurisdiction that has laws on bee-keeping says you have to have a hive that can be manipulated, so keeping a hive inside a cavity inside of a roof is a no-no," Denker said.

Denker said American Bee Control is seeing an uptick in calls, as the warmer weather means bee season has arrived.