When three-year-old Saylor Class began complaining of monsters in her bedroom, her parents thought it was just a figment of a child’s overactive imagination.
But then a beekeeper discovered tens of thousands of honeybees above the girl’s bedroom.
Saylor had complained of “monsters in the wall” of her room at their farmhouse in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Her mother, Ashley Massis Class, and her husband thought nothing of it.
They had after all just shown their daughter the Pixar movie, Monsters, Inc.
“We even gave her a bottle of water and said it was monster spray so that she could spray away any of the monsters at night,” said Ms Massis Class, a home designer.
Image source, Ashley Massis Class
But over the following months, Saylor became more insistent that there was something in her closet.
It began to make more sense when Ms Massis Class noticed bees swarming in clusters near the attic and chimney outside their 100-year-old house.
They thought Saylor might be hearing the buzzing near her bedroom ceiling.
Ms Massis Class called a pest control company that found the winged insects were honeybees, a protected species in the US.
She and her husband contacted a beekeeper who noticed the insects were travelling towards the floorboards of the attic – right above her daughter’s bedroom.
The bees had spent eight months building the monster hive.
The beekeeper brought a thermal camera to scan the walls in the three-year-old’s bedroom.
Image source, Ashley Massis Class
“It lit up like Christmas,” Ms Massis Class said.
The beekeeper said he had never seen a hive go that far down into the wall.
He tracked it to a coin-sized hole in the corner of an attic vent.
The beekeeper – whom Massis Class’s daughter began calling the monster hunter – opened the wall to reveal a large honeycomb.
“They just came pouring out like a horror movie,” Ms Massis Class said.
The beekeeper has removed between 55,000 and 65,000 bees and 100lb (45kg) of honeycomb.
There have been three extractions by reverse vacuuming the insects out of the wall to put them into boxes. The insects are being relocated to a honeybee sanctuary.
Ms Massis Class has had to screen off the room between extractions to prevent the bees from buzzing around her home.
The honeybees and their honey damaged the house’s electric wiring, Ms Massis Class said.
She said her homeowner’s insurance won’t cover anything pest-related because they deem it preventable.
She estimates the bees have caused more than $20,000 (£16,000) in damages.
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James Parker is a UK-based entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to the West End, he offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
