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Photo by Ashley Massis Class

Eight months ago, Saylor Class told her parents she could hear “monsters” in her bedroom. Since then, the 3-year-old had grown increasingly frightened, often pointing at the wall where she said the sounds were coming from.

“She became more and more adamant that there were monsters,” Ashley Massis Class, Saylor’s mother, said in a phone interview. Saylor was so “terrified” that she began sleeping in her parents’ bedroom, Class said.

The family home in Charlotte is over 100 years old, and was purchased three years ago as a renovation project.

Three weeks ago, Class finally got to the bottom of her daughter’s grievance. Unwanted visitors were indeed lurking in Saylor’s bedroom: more than 50,000 honeybees jammed inside the wall, along with 100 pounds of honeycomb.

Class, who was pregnant with her third child when Saylor first became “nervous” about her bedroom, said she put her daughter’s behavior down as a possible sleep regression and considered she was worried about her incoming sibling.

Class and her husband, Chris, never heard sounds coming from Saylor’s room, so they tried to reassure her. “We made it a game,” Class said. “We gave her a bottle of water and called it monster spray, so that she could spray them away.”

When Saylor maintained her story, Class said, “I did not know what was going on.”

But one day in April, while standing outside, Class spotted what she thought were Yellowjacket wasps flying “in and out” of the attic, which is above Saylor’s room. Pest control told Class that they were not wasps but endangered honeybees, and advised her to contact a beekeeper.

The first two beekeepers told her the bees weren’t in the house. But the third, Curtis Collins, had a different response, telling Class he would need to “cut a hole” in a wall in the house to investigate further.

A thermal camera found “an 8- to 9-foot section of hive” inside Saylor’s room, Class said.

When Collis opened up a piece of wall next to Saylor’s closet, Class said, “bees just started pouring out.”

What nighthmares are made of #bees #toddlersoftiktok #toddlers 

The wall had no insulation, meaning it provided “an empty cavity” for the bees to “thrive,” Class said.

Collins determined the bees had been there between eight and nine months — an estimation that lines up with when Saylor first reported hearing monsters in September. The bees had been entering the attic through a “tiny hole,” Class said.

“He got 20,000 the first day,” Class said. “He came back three days later and got another 20,000.”

Collins is still making trips to the family home to catch more bees, Class said, estimating he’s caught between 50,000 and 65,000 so far. “That was the biggest hive he had seen in his career,” Class said.

The bees were transported to a sanctuary, Class said, though “a few thousand” died in the operation.

Asked what happened to the honey, Class said, “unfortunately it had to be thrown away.” She didn’t want to risk anyone’s health by eating or selling the honey.

Class, who is a home designer, estimates the damage has so far totaled $20,000 — none of which she is getting back from home insurance, she said.

“We’re going to have to demolish the 100-year-old plaster, rewire, reinsulate the wall, get a new vent, patch and paint both the attic and Saylor’s room,” she said.

“There’s electric damage because the honey dripped down and corroded all the wires.”

As for Saylor? Class said she and Chris explained what happened when she came home from school. That day, “the beekeeper had 20,000 bees buzzing in a bee box” on the front porch, and they asked Saylor to listen to the sound of the honeybees buzzing and confirm if that was the sound she had heard in her room. “Yes, that’s monsters,” she replied.

Class told her daughter: “They’re actually honeybees and you were right, adults can make mistakes.” Validating Saylor and showing her what the noise was probably helped her overcome her fears, Class said.

Saylor refers to Collins, the beekeeper, as the “monster hunter,” and is doing well with “zero night terrors,” Class said. However, she is not back sleeping in her own bedroom just yet as the bees are not completely gone.

“They keep coming back, trying to repopulate,” Class said. Collins still comes back every few weeks to check the situation.

“I can still hear them hitting the paper on the other side and buzzing,” Class said.

While the incident is not over, it has already brought some much needed relief.

“When she kept saying that there were noises, my husband and I got worried that the house might actually be haunted,” she said, laughing. “I would take bees over ghosts, honestly.”

Germany’s Golden Blogger, foreign reporting (German election messaging app project)

Brunel University in England, BA in English and creative writing

Walthamstow School for Girls, England

Jennifer Hassan is a London-based breaking-news reporter for the Foreign desk at The Washington Post. Before joining The Post in 2016, Jennifer honed her breaking-news skills as the U.K. social media editor at MailOnline.

Jennifer Hassan

washpost

50,000 bees found behind child’s bedroom wall

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HANDOUT on 5/2/24

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