Elderly couple living with bees, unable to pay for home repairs

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- An elderly couple in west Houston is living with bees. They believe the bees may be living in the walls of their home.

"My husband is bed-ridden and he can't move much at all. And I'm pretty slow myself," said Tammy Allyn. "So we do the best we can. We have a can of spray we use for those that get in that get too close. We spray them."

Tammy Allyn and her husband have both been stung by bees at least three times inside their home.

"I still have a little bit of a mark. But when I got stung here, I was red from here down to here, and swollen for about a week," she said.

Their honeybee headache started about six weeks ago.

"When we go to sleep, there's usually a half a dozen of them on the ceiling. And if any of them start buzzing, I'm awake until I don't hear anything," she said. "Then I finally go to sleep but I make sure I'm as covered up as I can be."

The bees are above the doors that go from the Allyn's bedroom to their back yard. She believes there are a lot more in the walls. The cost to get to the root of their bee bind is more than their budget allows.

"It was all in the range of about $500 before repairs. And maybe that's a good price, IDK. But we just can't afford it. It's way over our pocketbook. We're on social security, and of course we're on limited funds. So there just isn't that kind of money," she said.

They just want to get their lives back to normal.

"I would love to have somebody come in and take the whole hive out, take it out to the country where it can continue as a honey producing hive," she added.

Tammy Allyn says she just doesn't want that in her house.