‘It was like a horror movie.’ Giant swarm of bees infests walls, attic of Texas home

Elvia Murphy’s kitchen light also serves as a graveyard for hundreds of bees.

The El Paso, Texas, resident told KTBC the bees have made her attic and the inside of her walls their home for about three years, but now there are more of them than ever, and they’re more aggressive than ever.

A local beekeeper estimated that she and her husband now share their home with about a million “Africanized and European” hybrid bees that are 20 to 30 times more aggressive than run-of-the-mill honeybees, according to KFOX.

Murphy told KTBC the couple couldn’t afford to get rid of them all because the bees buzz inside their walls and within their roof. To get to the swarm, a contractor would have to open up holes in the walls and close them back up after the bees are removed.

“They don’t pay rent,” Murphy told the station. “Last year, they weren’t quite as aggressive as they are this year.”

The last time an extractor went out to the house, the bees became so aggressive that he could only remove a portion of one hive within the Murphys’ roof.

“It was like a horror movie — seeing this swarm of bees just coming out like a black cloud,” KFOX cameraman Rudy Reyes said after sustaining eight bee stings while capturing the beekeepers’ work. “Within seconds, I started getting stung by bees. I got two in the eye and in the head.”

Pyong Livingston, the beekeeper Reyes was filming, told the station his first choice would be to relocate the bees from the Murphys’ home, not kill them. Eight species of bees have been classified as endangered in the U.S. since September 2016, according to National Geographic.

Now the couple are concerned about the safety of children attending the school across the street from them.

The City of El Paso told KFOX that bees are not the city’s responsibility, though bee attacks and hospitalizations have become commonplace in the West Texas/New Mexico region. An 85-year-old Deming, New Mexico, woman was hospitalized in September 2017 after sustaining more than 100 bee stings outside her home, according to the Deming Headlight.

That was about four months after KTSM reported that an East El Paso woman was critically injured in a bee attack last May. In the summer of 2016, KVIA reported that an elderly couple in northeast El Paso were hospitalized after being covered in bees outside their home as well.

In 2011, the station also reported that firefighters had to spray foam to disperse a swarm of bees that had taken up residence in the historic Toltec building in downtown El Paso.

Bees are more active in the summer months. According to KFOX, beekeepers advise residents to leave immediately and call an expert if they encounter a large number of bees, especially in a residential area.

This story was originally published April 11, 2018 at 11:35 AM with the headline "‘It was like a horror movie.’ Giant swarm of bees infests walls, attic of Texas home."