When Sara and Jason Weaver decided to buy their Skippack home in December, they also opted, in the name of brevity, to skip the associated inspection. They knew there were bees in the walls of the house. But they figured things would work out, writes María Paula Mijares Torres for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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

The pair first started realizing they might have a big issue as the weather warmed.

“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.

He managed to remove all the bees last week using a special vacuum that does not harm them, and by using the three queen bees to attract the rest out.

Due to the bee invasion, the family has postponed their moving in date from this fall to next year.

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