When Sara and Jason Weaver decided to buy their Skippack home last year without an inspection, they knew there were bees in its walls, writes María Paula Mijares Torres for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

What they did not know or expect is just how many there were: close to 450,000 of them.

The pair first started realizing they might have a big issue several months later.

“As spring approached, we started to see bees, and more bees, and more bees, and then it was like swarms of bees,” said Jason.

They contacted Allan Lattanzi, a general contractor and professional beekeeper who owns Yerkes Honey Farms in Collegeville.

He determined the family had three colonies inside the 1872 farmhouse’s walls.

In business for nearly a decade, Lattanzi said this was “the biggest bee removal and reconstruction” project he has worked on.

And at $12,000, it was also the most costly one, resulting in quite the economical sting to the new owners.

Lattanzi managed to remove most of the bees using a special vacuum that does not harm them. The remainder, he enticed out with the help of the queen bee.

The infestation caused a year delay in the family’s move-in plans.

Now, they are safely tucked in their home sweet home.

Read more about the bee removal process in The Philadelphia Inquirer.