Walls Oozing Honey Make for Killer Bee Tale

ANAHEIM HILLS — Mira Davoodian was beginning to think her house was haunted. First, strange scratching and buzzing sounds came from somewhere in the roof. Then, her air conditioner mysteriously stopped working. Finally, a few days ago, gobs of sticky goo began oozing inexplicably from the ceiling of an upstairs bedroom.

On Saturday, a flabbergasted Davoodian discovered that her problem wasn’t ghosts after all. It was bees--swarms of them.

Unbeknownst to Davoodian, the bees had made their way through a tiny hole in the roof of her two-story townhouse and then spent several years building large honeycombs in the rafters.

The massive output of honey not only clogged the townhome’s air-conditioning unit, but the busy bees were keeping Davoodian and her 21-year-old daughter up at night.

“We could never sleep,” said the 60-year-old Russian immigrant. “I’d wake up all of the time because I would hear noises. I thought maybe there was rats up there then I started to think maybe it was a ghost. Then I thought maybe it was just in my head.”

Two workers from The Bee Man, a Laguna Niguel beehive removal company, cut a hole in the wall where honey had been seeping through and found more than 100 pounds of honeycombs, thousands of dead bees, and a few rats.

Marci Laurvick , a board member of the Rancho Yorba Townhomes Assn., said rat poisoning spread recently by Davoodian’s son not only killed the rats, but also the bees. As a result, the honeycombs collapsed and the honey began seeping through the roof.

She said the association will pay for the bee removal.

“It’s pretty amazing but it’s not quite ‘Amityville Horror,’ ” Laurvick said, alluding to the 1970s horror film about a haunted house. “We’ve had bee problems in a few of our units but nothing quite like this.”

Meanwhile, a relieved Davoodian looked on as the workers removed the gooey mess from her ceiling.

“I like honey,” she said, laughing. “But not this much honey.”