"I found a beehive with honey in the walls of my house" (Elisha Bixler)
When the honey started dripping from the walls of their home, 41-year-old Kate Dempsey initially assumed it was damp, but the sweet aroma piqued her curiosity and she decided to take a closer look.
"It all started during the extremely hot summer we had last year. We noticed a sticky, liquid black substance on our bedroom wall," Kate told SWNS.
"It got to the point where we couldn't ignore it anymore. I smelled it and dared to taste it too. Suddenly I realized, it's honey."
When Kate and her husband Andrew, 42, moved into their new home in the UK, they did notice there were bees around, but didn't think too much of it.
They believed it was a brief invasion and after repainting the house, the bees were gone.
But over time they could no longer ignore the strange things that happened in the house and decided to investigate it in depth.
When they broke down one of the walls in the house and lifted up floor tiles, they discovered pieces of honey comb almost two meters long and liters of honey, as well as maggots and moths.
It quickly became clear to them that their house had become a beehive.
"We started removing more and more, it just seemed like there was no end to it, it was absolutely disgusting," Kate shared.
"We've never seen anything like it. The volume of the hive was enormous. We kept cutting those floorboards and more and more of the honey forest appeared."
This is how it looks
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. Kate tried to find a company to get rid of all the beehives and honey surrounding her home, but she received an exorbitant quote of over 12,000 dollar.
This prompted the couple to gather a number of close friends and take on the project.
They started by scooping out all the honey by hand - wearing rubber gloves, of course - and over the course of four weeks removed all the honeycomb from under the boards.
"We kept finding more and more, there's a bit of roof over our window and there was also full of golden honey," said Kate, "you can imagine the mess. It was horrifying."
They filled 20 "massive" garbage bags with honey, although the honey was inedible because much of the honey forest had been attacked by moths.
"If it had been a live honey forest, we would have invited local beekeepers to extract it and move it," she said, "but we were in a bit of trouble because we couldn't get anyone to take it unless we paid a huge price - and they would also kill the bees, something we wanted avoid him".
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The trouble did not end there
"When we were in the middle of the evacuation, we woke up one morning and the room was full of bees," Kate said.
A swarm of "robber bees", honey bees that invade other hives to steal the honey from them - tried to take a taste of this sweet honey, but luckily none of the humans were stung.
"We called the local beekeepers for help and one came to take a look. He explained to us about the robber bees and that they came to the nest to steal the honey. He instructed us to use gloves to catch cats because the bees can't sting through them - and to wear many layers," she shared.
"However, the beekeeper showed us their behavior pattern - the bees fly in through a hole in the wall, take the honey and fly straight out the window again - so the bees weren't that interested in us anyway," Kate added.
Kate is now encouraging people to check their homes and not ignore things they might find suspicious.
"I was very concerned about the extent of how much damage could have been caused. I have no idea how long it was there, but probably a lot," she said, "We didn't realize the amount of damage they caused and we thought our story could help other people and raise awareness."
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