40,000 Bees Found In Bedroom Of Utah Couple

A colony of 40,000 bees was found inside the walls of a Utah couple’s bedroom. The colony of bees was removed by beekeepers on Saturday.

The couple from Provo, Utah, did not realize they were sharing their bedroom with thousands of bees, KSL reports. Tyler Judd and his wife had moved into the house five months ago and did not realize they were had unexpected houseguests.

Tyler said to KSL he did see some bees around the property but was not concerned until he could literally hear the bees buzzing inside the walls of the home. Judd said, “We were just sitting on our couch, turned off the TV and could hear some buzzing in the walls.”

Beekeepers were soon called, and they discovered the source of the buzzing was from within the walls of the Judd’s bedroom, KSL notes. The beehive had not grown overnight, and, while the bees would certainly cause problems for Tyler and his wife, the bees were also causing structural damage to the house, beekeeper Al Chubak noted. The beekeeper said it would have taken at least three year to five years for the hive to become that size.

Chubak said he had to remove, not kill, the bees and take the honeycomb from the bedroom walls in order to ensure a permanent solution to the problem. Simply killing the bees without removing the honeycomb would not prevent new bees from returning to the home. While KSL notes the colony to contain around 40,000 bees, Fox 13 is reporting that the hive was even bigger, with a population between 60,000 and 80,000 bees.

Tyler Judd and his wife can take comfort in knowing they are not alone in having a colony of bees sharing a home go undetected. According to Chubak, up to 60 percent of bees living outdoors have died since 2012 but notes to Fox 13, “Well, that’s a huge population of bees that are gone, yet the ones inside homes are doing fantastic.” Provo, along with Salt Lake City and Ogden, is a part of the Wasatch Front, and Chubak said there could be up to 1,500 homes in the area that have bees within their walls.