Bee infestation causes Texas home's walls to drip honey

Feb. 8 (UPI) -- A Texas woman said a bee infestation discovered by roofers has worsened to the point where honey is dripping down the inside walls of her home.

Latanja Levine of Spring said some roofers discovered a bee infestation while working atop her home that caused them to have to suspend the project.

"They discovered there was a bee problem, told me that he couldn't do anything on the roof until something was done with the bees," Levine told KIAH-TV. "So we looked at the bees to remove them enough so that they could work."

Levine said the entire colony wasn't removed, and the professionals were unable to find the queen bee.

"Behind me is where they pulled out the bees, they smoked them out and put them directly into their colonies. There must've been 50,000 bees and they were swarming everywhere, but I asked them if they got the queen bee," Levine said, adding that the answer was "no."

Levine said she returned to her two-story house to find the bee situation had caused honey to start streaming down her walls.

"It's coming in from the ceiling, down to the walls," she said. "I'm mopping it up, mopping in the walls. It's all over the curtains here -- just honey. They're probably ruined."

"It's going to other walls and coming through other places and you can see it's coming through cracks and crevices in the crown molding," Levine said.

Kelsie Hughes of Scottsdale, Ariz., faced a similar problem recently when she discovered a smoke detector in her home was covered in honey. The discovery led her to find the aftermath of a bee removal process apparently carried out by the previous owners of her home, who she said failed to clean up the mess of honey in her attic.

"There's got to be 5 to 6 pounds of honey in the ceiling," Hughes said. "That equates to about 60 to 70,000 bees. That's terrifying to even comprehend that many bees in your house."