a letter from elena

Beneath The Hive

  • Post by Elena
  • Dec 22, 2020
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What was initially a pleasant house to live in became the house of horrors.

On a beautiful spring day we were passing this house that we were planning on viewing the following Monday. As luck would have it an estate agent was showing the flat to another person and we were invited in to view it early.

Instantly we liked the house. I was struck by how much natural light there was, flowing through it, and how much space there was in comparison to where we were living at the time. After having a good look around we decided quite quickly that we wanted to live in this house. Blind-sighted really to things that could become an issue, such as that very glass ceiling.

This is not to say that there were always problems with the house. We did very much enjoy being there in the beginning.

The problems began in the first summer. To this day we are unsure if it was a bee or a wasp hive that was in the roof directly above our heads where we slept. At first we started noticing them coming in and out of the open windows, which we did not think was odd at the time. Our solution was to close the windows, despite it becoming stinking hot.

More of them kept appearing in every room. Some days we would wake up to find them half dead in a pile in our bathroom huddled together. It got to the point where we were picking up dead bees/wasps daily. It went from three or four to between twenty to thirty at a time.

The straw that broke the camels back was when we started to get stung by them. Early one morning we discovered one crawling around in the bed with us, as it stung my knee. Making the next few hours putting any pressure on me knee quite painful.

We found out they were coming through the light fittings. We are almost certain that the hive was directly above our heads in our bedroom as this is where the most were. The handyman sealed up the wholes in the fittings and this more or less solved the problem. However, to this day we know that the hive is still there as they are still becoming trapped in the light fittings.

It will be a strange day once we leave this place, it did have good moments. Although, I for one will not miss the bitterly cold winters and the faint humming of the bees/wasps.

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