Honey leaking from ceiling leads to discovery of 80,000 bees inside Ontario home

VARNEY, Ont. – Never mind a house of horrors, this was a house of honey.

A homeowner in southern Ontario says she knew she had a “sweet mess” on her hands when a crack in the ceiling started oozing honey.

Loretta Yates soon discovered the 1 1/2-storey house she shares with her husband and 22-month-old son was also home to about 80,000 bees nesting in the first-floor ceiling.

She says her insurance company wouldn’t cover the damage to her house in Varney, just outside Mount Forest, and a pest control company couldn’t promise to get the bugs out for good.

That’s when she called beekeeper David Schuit, who took down the ceiling and scraped the honeycomb loose, catching at least one queen bee and recovering more than 100 kilograms of honey.

Schuit says there was so much dripping down in the kitchen, a lightbulb blew because it was half-full of honey.

Bees and wasps have been nesting in the house for about four years, says Yates, but she never realized there were so many.

“I guess with the cracked ceiling in the kitchen and the honey dripping on me — that was (the) time to get help,” she said Monday.

It’s expected some of the honey will be made into candles.

(CFOS)