North Carolina child’s ‘monster in the closet’ was in fact

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DuckHairback
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30 Apr 2024, 8:59 am

North Carolina child’s ‘monster in the closet’ was in fact 50,000 bees in the wall

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... re_btn_url

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A toddler told her mom that “monsters” were in her closet. But in fact, there were more than 50,000 bees there.

A mother of three children under four years old was met with a “terrifying” surprise after she and her husband investigated why a handful of bees had flown into the attic of the couple’s North Carolina home.

After a visit by a pest control company and multiple beekeepers, a thermal camera finally revealed where the bees had gone – to a massive hive they had built inside the wall of her daughter’s room, where the girl was convinced she had heard a monster of some kind lurking.

“At first, I thought it was a body,” Ashley Massis Class told People magazine recently. “I was like, ‘What is that?’ And he says he thinks it’s a hive.”

For roughly eight months, a swarm of endangered honeybees had been building a hive inside the wall of her daughter’s room.

The beekeeper “didn’t even have his bee gear on yet, but he took a hammer and knocked into the wall”, Massis Class recalled. “Bees came swarming out like a horror movie.

“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.”

Beekeepers ultimately removed tens of thousands of bees over several extractions, and a honeycomb weighing more than 100lb.

The bees were relocated to a bee sanctuary. Massis Class first documented the experience on TikTok, where her story went viral and caught the attention of news outlets.

After the extractions, Massis Class reassured her daughter that “Mr Monster Hunter”, as the toddler called the beekeeper, was removing all the bees. She also reassured her daughter that, after many months, the family now believed her.

There was, in fact, a kind of monster in her wall.


I had a similar experience when I was about 6. I heard a noise inside my wall one night that scared me. It was actually a wasps nest falling down the inside of a partitiion wall. I didn't know that of course but I heard the sliding in the wall and then a crazy amount of humming as the wasps came out. I stayed in bed for a long time and then decided to go and wake my parents. When we came back to the room the carpet was crawling with wasps, thousands of them. I'd somehow managed to walk across the room in the dark with stepping on a single one.


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LittleBeach
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30 Apr 2024, 1:17 pm

DuckHairback wrote:

I had a similar experience when I was about 6. I heard a noise inside my wall one night that scared me. It was actually a wasps nest falling down the inside of a partitiion wall. I didn't know that of course but I heard the sliding in the wall and then a crazy amount of humming as the wasps came out. I stayed in bed for a long time and then decided to go and wake my parents. When we came back to the room the carpet was crawling with wasps, thousands of them. I'd somehow managed to walk across the room in the dark with stepping on a single one.


That sounds terrifying 8O. Did it give you a fear of wasps for life?



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06 May 2024, 11:12 pm

Last night I was taking a bath and when I got in the tub there was a dead wasp in the water. I started thinking there might be more wasps and they're going become more active when summer gets here and they'll drop on me and sting me while I'm in the bath. I even thought I was feeling sharp pains as if I was being stung on my legs but I think was just my imagination going wild. :roll:

But yes, honeybees can build their hives inside the walls of buildings and there can be like several feet of honeycomb, I saw it one time on TV and it's pretty amazing. The bees create the wax from their own bodies, so imagine how many bees had to work to make that much honeycomb.



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07 May 2024, 12:13 am

50,000 bees in the wall, 50,000 bees?
Take one down, pass it around, 49,999 bees in the wall.....


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