Toddler Tells Mom She Hears Monsters in Her Bedroom. Beekeeper Discovers Over 50,000 Bees in the Wall (Exclusive)

The 100-year-old wall had months of bees' work hidden throughout its attic and walls

A toddler's persistence about monsters in her bedroom led to an unbelievable discovery in the family's 100-year-old farmhouse.

Ashley Massis Class, who goes by @classashley on TikTok, tried to reassure the oldest of her three kids when she first started reporting there were monsters in her room.

"She was saying she heard monsters in her bedroom wall, but we'd been watching Monster's Inc.," Ashley explains to PEOPLE. "She was a little speech delayed, so when she tried explaining it, we thought she meant there were monsters in her closet."

To reassure her, Ashley and her husband tried everything. "We told her, 'Nobody is in that closet.' We made jokes about fighting the monster. We gave her a spray bottle full of water that was her monster spray."

Then, the toddler started to have "night terrors," with Ashley explaining, "She was just freaking out. She had to stay in our room, and she kept saying there were monsters. We thought, in part, that she was experiencing a little regression since I had just had a baby in February and was pregnant and tired before that."

Then, a few weeks ago, Ashley and her husband noticed a few bees entering their attic. Since they live in a 100-year-old farmhouse, they decided to get ahead and call a pest control company. Once they were informed they were honeybees, they had to take a different approach.

"The pest control company told us they were honeybees, probably just looking for a place to stay. They don't spray them because they are endangered, so that took me down this whole new path," she says.

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Related: Dad Hears 2-Year-Old Son Screaming Outside. Runs Over to Find Him Stung by More Than 20 Bees (Exclusive)

The couple thought it would be as simple as contacting a beekeeper and patching the hole they came in through, but that turned out not to be the case.

"Beekeeper after beekeeper was like, 'Nope, they're not in the house yet.' They drilled a hole up in our attic and said they didn't see anything. It wasn't until a beekeeper actually sat there and observed that he was like, 'Okay, so I see them going down into the floorboards of this unfinished part. Let's see where this wall runs down. Underneath there directly is my daughter's room."

The beekeeper came prepared with a thermal camera to assess the situation, but no one could have predicted what they would discover.

"At first, I thought it was a body. I was like, 'What is that?' And he says he thinks it's a hive. He didn't even have his bee gear on yet, but he took a hammer and knocked into the wall. Bees came swarming out like a horror movie."

Ashley continues, "There were streams of bees, and the wall where he hit was oozing honey. But it looked like blood because it was really, really dark, running down my daughter's pink walls. It looked really strange."

The beekeeper acted fast, shutting the door and getting into his gear. He informed Ashley that they had to open up more of the wall to understand the extent of the situation.

"He opened the wall and it was one of the biggest hives he's seen in his 40-year career," she shares. "Just 50,000 bees were swarming like crazy in my daughter's bedroom. It was a nightmare. They were dropping honey everywhere, all over all her stuff."

The first day, the beekeeper was able to remove 20,000 bees and a 100 lb. chunk of honeycomb, but his work was far from done.

"We sealed off the room and he came back the next day. He took out another 20,000 bees. Now the hole in the wall is covered by plastic and we still keep getting bees coming in. We think there are another 20,000 bees now, so he's coming back, anticipating removing another 20,000."

Ashley made sure to let her daughter know that the monsters were being taken care of.

"We told her, 'We found the monsters, you were right.' Then we introduced her to the beekeeper and she was like, 'No, he's a monster hunter.' So she called him Mr. Monster Hunter for the rest of the day, which was awesome."

The beekeeper even showed her how not to be afraid, Ashley explains. "He let himself get stung so he could let her hold one and not be scared. But she saw the huge bee box and heard the buzzing and was like, 'Absolutely not, I'll just look at it from over here.' "

There's still a lot of work to be done to get the house back to normal.

"It's about $20,000 in damage. We're going to have to seal everything back up, patch the tiny dime-sized hole they got into — and it's crazy to think all the damage that's been done can happen from a hole that small. And then we have to re-insulate the whole wall. The honey dripped down all these electrical wires, so we have to redo that. Our daughter is going to be out of her bedroom for at least four weeks because we have to wait two weeks to see if bees come in and try to make a new hive by smelling the honey."

Not only were they able to get approximately 50,000 bees out, but the beekeeper "found the queen and were able to move [the surviving bees] to a bee sanctuary."

"We've had a couple of thousand that died because their queen is no longer here, so that's sad. We've been leaving the window open, hoping the remaining ones fly out, but many will die without being able to smell the queen, as I understand. So we've been cleaning up thousands of dead bees every single day, and I've learned that bees can still sting you when they're dead. It's like a landmine, with thousands on the floor. We have to wear rubber boots to walk around and not get stung."

"The beekeeper has assured us that what has been saved is significant versus what's been lost."

In the meantime, the mom of three under 4 is adjusting to losing a whole room of her house.

"Our newborn is in our room and my oldest has been sleeping in her sister's room, which has been great because she feels she's protecting her sister from the monsters. So they're having a great time, which I'll enjoy now because it won't always be like that. Not only do we not have our oldest's room but it's like a crime scene."

She continues, "We have to run in, grab what we can, and run out or we're going to get stung. It's pretty crazy. We can't leave the door open, and we're so scared of the kids getting stung, especially with a newborn, because since they're so young, we don't know if they have allergies or not."

When Ashley shared the story to TikTok, she never pictured it going so viral.

"It's been really interesting to see, between people who are afraid it could happen to them — because I have learned it's very common — to other people sharing stories of their damage, it's connected us with a lot of people. I didn't expect that at all."

The beekeeper estimated it was "about eight months of work for these bees."

"If this went on longer, because the house is 100 years old and the walls are made of plaster, they just would have cracked eventually. Thousands of bees could have poured into my daughter's room. Hearing that was a new terror for me."

"I'm really thankful my husband and I are on leave right now and that we can deal with this situation, but at the same time, hearing the sound of humming bees on the other side of a door is kind of terrifying."

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