After believing for the past eight months that a demon was responsible for the strange noises coming from the wall near her closet, a North Carolina girl finally found out what all the buzz was about.
The little girl’s mother, Ashley Klaas, told NBC News this week that she called beekeeper Curtis Collins after noticing bees in the attic of her century-old farmhouse.
Using a thermal camera in a 3-year-old’s room a few weeks ago, Collins uncovered a hive of bees weighing more than 100 pounds.
“I kid you not, it was lit up like Christmas in the wall right next to my daughter’s closet,” Klaas recalled seeing the thermal imaging. “When I first thought it looked like a man standing in a wall, I was really shocked.”
Following the discovery, Collins began extraction efforts, which came in three waves over the course of several days. He said there were more than 50,000 bees in the hive, twice as many as any other hive he had removed.
“It was like the most apocalyptic I can think of,” Klaas said. “Just all these bees started flying out.”
In between clearing bees from children’s rooms, Collins also worked to save the swarm.
“It’s all a process of trying to save the bees and keep the hives going,” Collins told NBC News.
Klaas described the situation on TikTok, where her video showed dead bees scattered on the ground, honey flowing from the ceiling as well as various other damages to the home. Those videos would go on to be viewed more than 9 million times.
Unfortunately, insurance is not covering the estimated cost of the damage, which will cost the class over $20,000 dollars.
“It’s good that we saved all those bees,” she said. “But I’m ready for them to be evicted.”
As for her daughter, who once complained of hearing the voices of demons on her wall at night, according to Ashley, she has come up with a new nickname for Collins.
“He looked straight at him and said, ‘He’s not a beekeeper. He’s a monster hunter.'”
