‘The Absolute Worst This Season!!’: Florida Woman Opens A Room In Her House. Then She Realizes It’s Been Overtaken By Yellowjackets

A Florida family has been dealing with the worst kind of buzz this summer: bees. Their home has become ground zero for hordes of yellowjackets.

Nichole Brown (@being_nicholebrown) documented the nightmare scenario in multiple TikToks in recent weeks.

Brown says that the bees started appearing in her daughter’s bathroom. They figured the yellowjackets were coming in through the exhaust vent. So, like anyone would, they called a pest control company.

The company used a dust insecticide outside their home, she says, and told the family that the bees would carry the dust inside, ultimately killing the others.

That didn’t happen.

“A bunch of them died, but now the situation has multiplied,” Brown says. “Like it’s gotten so much worse. They are continuously coming in, and they are now in my daughter’s bedroom. Not just in the bathroom. They’re everywhere in her room.”

As she talks, Brown shows that there are dozens of bees—both alive and dead—in her daughter’s bedroom. Thankfully, they aren’t behaving aggressively, which she believes may be due to the insecticide. Still, the plethora of yellowjackets is frightening enough that she’s visibly trembling as she records.

“I’m kind of scared to open her bathroom,” she says before opening the door. “I feel like there’s going to be a swarm.”

The sheer number of bees inside the bathroom is astonishing. Happily, they don’t swarm Brown when she opens the door.

She says that they have a pest control company coming back the next day.

“I just don’t even know what to do,” Brown says, later adding, “I think I just need to burn my house down.”

Two of her TikToks about the yellowjackets have a cumulative 70,000 views.

A Native Pest

Yellowjackets aren’t actually bees; they’re wasps. This difference may seem like semantics, but it’s actually an important indicator of behavior.

Bees don’t typically attack unless provoked. Though both can and do sting, honeybees and bumblebees are often described as gentle.

Wasps, on the other hand, can be extremely aggressive. Like bees, they generally only sting when provoked, but their defense mechanism is much more aggressive. They’re known to swarm, as Brown feared, in which case you can get stung many times.

As every ’80s kid who sobbed during “My Girl” knows all too well, for people with an allergy, this can be deadly.

Even people without an allergy can get seriously ill from bee stings, however. Mayo Clinic reports, “If you get stung more than a dozen times, you can have a bad reaction that makes you feel quite sick.” Symptoms include burning pain, swelling, and itching at the sting site and adjacent area, in addition to nausea, diarrhea, fever, vomiting, and lightheadedness.

Before you perform chemical warfare on every yellowjacket you encounter, take note that they do have benefits for our ecosystem and food supply. The National Park Service notes that they’re beneficial to gardens and farms because they eat insects such as caterpillars and flies that harm crops.

A yellowjacket nest in or near your home is another matter entirely. As the Browns found, it’s not something to be taken lightly.

Bee Gone

Brown’s yellowjacket woes attracted a plethora of advice and sympathy. A common refrain was that she needed to call someone who deals specifically with bees.

“CALL A BEE PERSON not a bug man,” wrote one. A second agreed, “You MUST call a bee person.” They then added some harrowing advice, “You probably have a massive nest in your wall/ceiling and it will affect the integrity of your walls. They legit could collapse. Please take this seriously.”

In a follow-up post, Brown shares some optimistic news about what happened when pest control returned.

“This guy was so much more helpful,” she says. “He immediately was like, ‘Let me see your attic, let me see the bathroom.'”

The man went into the attic where she says he saw a “ginormous nest.” He treated the space with a can of what one can only assume was a particularly powerful pesticide, shut the door, and instructed them to leave it be for a few days.

Then he went into the bathroom where Brown says he found that the nest was beginning to breach the ceiling. He used some more pesticide, taped it up, and told them to wait a while.

“He said after a couple days there shouldn’t be any more activity, but if there is to give them a call back. So hopefully this worked,” Brown says.

If the bees were docile before, they weren’t after pest control came. Brown says the buzzing got significantly louder.

“I assume they’re all just panicking and dying,” she concludes. “Fingers crossed and I’m praying this actually took care of it.”

Someone responded to her update with words of caution.

“You need a bee person to come out and REMOVE the nest or you will end up with the same issue again, they literally destroy your walls and ceiling,” they wrote. “They eat bugs so they take their corpse back to the queen bee and so many of them that they STINK!!! YOU NEED A PROFESSIONAL BEE KEEPER (bee person).”

Brown replied, “We def plan on removing nest!”

She didn’t immediately respond to BroBible’s email seeking comment.