Next time your toddler tries to tell you there’s a monster in their closet, it might be best to investigate thoroughly.
Ashley Massis Class lives in North Carolina with her husband and three children, all under the age of four years old. And if you think that sounds like chaos already, you haven’t heard anything yet.
The Monster in the Closet
When one of Ashley’s toddlers tried to explain that there were monsters in her closet, her reaction was probably similar to that of most parents. A peek in the closet, a pat on the head, and a night light left on. But there was something much more strange at work behind the walls of this child’s closet.
In a seemingly unrelated issue, Ashley and her husband noticed that some honeybees were loose in their attic. Unsure of how they ended up there, they called pest control. What the pest control company found, though, was “terrifying,” according to the family.
Investigating with a Thermal Camera
When the pest control company brought in a thermal camera to examine what was behind the walls in her toddler’s bedroom, the family was in for a very unwanted surprise. “At first, I thought it was a body,” Ashley said in an interview with People magazine. The man-sized mass showing up on the thermal imaging was not, in fact, a human or mammal body. It was a nest of 50,000 bees.
As it turns out, a swarm of honeybees had begun building a massive hive behind the walls in her toddler’s room for eight months before this revelation.
Walls Bleeding Honey
A beekeeper was next to investigate the family house, and without any gear on he used a hammer to knock a hole in the wall near the hive. “Bees came swarming out like a horror movie,” Ashley recalled to People magazine.
But as the bees angrily swarmed out of the hole, the wall began bleeding honey. Ashley recalled, “it looked like blood because it was really, really dark, running down my daughter’s pink walls. It looked really strange.” We can imagine!
The Removal
Thankfully, the beekeepers were able to clear out the hive and remove tens of thousands of bees from the family home. The honeycomb the bees had built behind the child’s walls weighed more than 100 pounds.
Ashley recalls telling her toddler that the beekeeper was a “monster hunter” and apologized to the child for not believing her story originally.
The Damage Left Behind
As you can imagine, your house cannot host 50,000 bees and a 100-pound hive without suffering some damage. Honey that oozed and dripped behind the walls caused extensive damage to the electrical wiring, with an estimate hovering around $20,000 to repair.
According to Ashley, the only silver lining was that she and her husband were both on leave due to a new addition to their family. They were thankfully able to stay home during the workday to deal with the situation.
Let’s hope those busy honeybees find a more appropriate place to build their next hive!
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