‘Monsters’ in frightened girl’s bedroom wall were 65,000 bees
A three-year-old complained about “monsters in the wall” for months before 65,000 bees were discovered in her bedroom.
Ashley Class, Saylor Class’s mother, said the insects poured out “like a horror movie” after a beekeeper opened up the floor-to-ceiling hive at the family home in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Saylor had spent months insisting there were “monsters in the wall” – something her parents put down to the fact that she had recently watched the film Monsters Inc. They sent her to bed with a bottle of water they said was “monster spray”, the BBC reported.
But Ms Class eventually noticed bees swarming near the attic and chimney of their house. Even then, several pest control companies insisted the insects had not made their way inside.
However, another beekeeper noticed the bees were heading into the floorboard of the attic, and located a hive in the wall of Saylor’s room directly underneath. It resembled “a man in the wall by the shape of it”, Ms Class said.
‘What nightmares are made of’
She posted a video to TikTok showing the orange glow emitted by the tens of thousands of bees teeming behind the plaster, with the caption: “What nightmares are made of.”
The clip then cut to a large hole the beekeeper had cut into the pink walls of her daughter’s bedroom, as the bees swarmed out of it.
The insects had entered through a small hole in the corner of an attic vent before moving through gaps into floorboards and down the wall.
Over the course of eight months, they swelled into a colony of tens of thousands, and produced around 100lb of honeycomb.
As a protected species in the US, the honey bees have been vacuumed out of the wall and are being relocated to a honey bee sanctuary.
Ms Class screened off the bedroom between extractions to prevent the bees from escaping into the rest of their home. But it is estimated the colony has done $20,000 worth of damage to the house which will not be covered by insurance.
