Woman Points Thermal Detector at Wall, Instantly Knows What's There When It Registers 96 Degrees
A beekeeper who went to a St. Petersburg, Florida, home last month to remove a beehive made a startling discovery behind the shower wall.
The hive was 7 feet tall, contained around 100 pounds of honey and housed 60,000 to 80,000 bees, beekeeper Elisha Bixler said, according to WTVT-TV.
According to The New York Times, the sheer size of the hive shocked even Bixler, owner of How’s Your Day Honey.
“There was honey everywhere: walls, floor, on my shoes, doorknobs,” Bixler said. “I had to pull the wall down to the studs to get all of the comb out.”
The homeowners, Stefanie and Dan Graham, had long known that bees had set up camp behind their shower wall, WTVT reported.
Stefanie said that two or three years ago, Dan opened the bathroom wall to get rid of a giant hive. After removing it, however, they did some work on their roof, which left a few holes through which the bees could come back.
Since then, the Grahams, their two kids and their pet dogs have lived side-by-side with the insects.
“We both really love nature and we love bees,” Stefanie said. “We’re like, ‘We’ll leave you alone. You leave us alone.’ They were nice bees. So we were like, ‘Sure, go ahead, live in our shower.’”
But then the bees started flying out into their house through cracks in the wall, and Dan got stung. The couple also decided to renovate the bathroom, which required the peaceful cohabitation with the bees to come to an end.
To get rid of the hive and find the bees a new home, the Grahams approached Bixler in October.
Bixler said the Nov. 2 job was her first shower removal.
After arriving at the Grahams’ home, Bixler aimed her thermal detector gun at the shower wall. The gun gave a reading of approximately 96 degrees.
“As soon as I saw where they were, I started breaking away the tile and unveiling this massive 7-foot hive,” Bixler said.
Wearing a protective suit, Bixler removed the bees by identifying the queen and putting her in a wooden box so that the other bees would join her there. She then used a vacuum to get the bees who were not willing to move out of the hive.
Bixler said all the bees were taken to her farm.
The five-hour process cost the Grahams $800, the Times reported.
As for the honey in the hive, Bixler and the family divided it among themselves.
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