Toddler heard ‘monsters’ in the wall — it turned out to be 50,000 bees inside the family’s home
Those walls would most likely be yelling if they could speak.
According to a viral TikTok video that racked up more than 9 million views, a Charlotte, North Carolina mother named Ashley Massis Class was shocked and appalled to learn that the “monsters” her young daughter had been hearing were actually a colossal colony of about 50,000 honeybees living inside their walls.
The caption for the video read, “What nightmares are made of,” as Ashley described how her century-old farmhouse had been bugged out.
The clip starts with a thermal camera pointed at her daughter’s bedroom wall, displaying a large orange patch—the heat signature of the hive. The screen then lifts to reveal a huge hole in the wall and bees buzzing around the room, evoking a scene from a horror movie.
What made the “monster” talk so convincing is that the family had recently been watching Disney and Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. Ashley’s 3-year-old daughter, Saylor, kept insisting something was living in the wall by her closet, pointing to the same spot night after night for roughly eight months. The parents assumed it was a toddler’s imagination—they even handed her a spray bottle of water and called it “monster spray” so she could fend the creatures off at bedtime.
@chaosinthecarolinas What nighthmares are made of #bees #toddlersoftiktok #toddlers
In the video, Ashley states, “When your daughter has been hearing ‘monsters’ in the walls.” She continued, “Turns out it was 50,000 bees buzzing.” The bees, it turned out, had slipped in through a dime-size hole in a pipe near the chimney of the 100-year-old home and then burrowed downward into the wall of Saylor’s room—an unusual path that fooled even the professionals at first.
A lot of viewers were rattled by the mother’s makeshift bee farm, with many wondering how she managed the buzzing intruders. Rather than exterminate them, Ashley brought in a beekeeper—Curtis Collins—to remove the colony safely.
According to a later update, the extraction stretched across three separate visits over several days. On the first day alone, Collins pulled out roughly 20,000 bees and more than 100 pounds of honeycomb, then sealed off openings to prevent any stinging incidents.
@chaosinthecarolinas Day 2 Bee Update: Eerie to see the bees removing around behind the plastic #savethebees #nightmarefuel #charlotte #toddlerroom #beekeepersoftiktok
The mother described in a different video how the bees built a honeycomb large enough to fill a garbage bag—over 100 pounds—over the course of about eight months. It was so heavy and laden with honey that it had to be triple-bagged to be carried out as the outer layer began to give way.
@chaosinthecarolinas Replying to @cantthinkofaUsername How did they get in?/Why we didn’t notice them #savethebees #bees #charlotte #honeycomb
Ashley said, “It only takes a couple bees and a swarm that you might not be able to see to become a colony that’s 50,000 bees,” in response to fans’ questions about how she missed the vast insect city being built beneath her roof.
But that was only the start of the problem: Ashley described finding another group of bees inside the walls of the house, complete with a queen bee. Throughout the ordeal, Collins worked to save the bees rather than kill them—locating the queen so the whole colony could be relocated to a new hive and kept alive.
When the last of the swarm was finally cleared out, the room was coated in honey. As the honey dripped, it seeped into the floorboards of the old farmhouse, soaking into each individual plank.
@chaosinthecarolinas You can hear how sticky the floor is. We’ve tried to clean it but we will need to do a full overhaul of the room. Honey is everywhere #savethebees #homerestoration #toddlersoftiktok #beetok #honeybees #charlotte #beegate
A later video added insult to injury: Ashley said her homeowner’s insurance would not reimburse the costs because the damage was deemed “unrelated to the property,” noting that most policies do not cover pest or insect damage. All told, she estimated the cleanup, repairs, and damaged electrical wiring would cost upward of $20,000—out of her own pocket.
There was a happy ending of sorts. Ashley said her daughter’s night terrors stopped once the bees were gone, and Saylor decided Collins wasn’t just a beekeeper at all. “She looks straight at him and said, ‘He’s not a beekeeper. He’s a monster hunter,’” Ashley recalled. The family also used the moment to teach their kids about honeybees and why they matter: “It was really neat to be able to show our three-year-old, ‘These are the monsters you’ve been hearing. You’re completely right.’”
Commenters felt for Ashley in her sticky situation. One person said sympathetically, “I would honestly rather have monsters in the wall than to have 50k bees,” while another wrote, “I would cry before knowing it was bees.” A few shared their own tales of these little honey makers breaking into their homes, including one who said, “This happened to my friend, except the ceiling collapsed above their bed and rained bees on their master bedroom while she was out to dinner with her husband.”
For more from The Aegis Alliance, browse our Odd News and Videos sections. You can follow Ashley’s updates on her TikTok account.
How do bees equate to ‘horror’, exactly? Wasps, sure. Hornets, okay – but bees? C’mon…
Kevin Solomon Stevens 20,000 bees living in their walls though lol.