Eve Ault, 25, and her family moved into their home in Macclesfield in Cheshire, more than five months ago – but their disturbing discovery coincided with the first time they had entered the loft after finding a new entrance. They were left stunned when they poked their head into the tight roof space only to find three enormous nests attached to the wooden beams.
Ms Ault described the nests as at least the size of a child’s space hopper or roughly 70cm wide and estimated they would cost hundreds of pounds to remove professionally.
The online business owner, said: “I live with my family in the family home. Just the other week we went into the attic for the first time, we hadn’t been in yet.
“We’d been here five months, none of us had been in there as it’s through a tiny hole.”
Ms Ault continued: “It was a bit of a shock. There were these nests that were at least the size of a space hopper, three of them.
“They took up a lot of the room as it’s such a small space.
“The other owners of the house didn’t tell us about it beforehand. The estate agents didn’t say, I don’t think they knew.
“It’s such a small space, we don’t really use it for anything.”
The family, who live in a three-floored Victorian townhouse, braved their fears and removed the nests by hand, only to find a number of the insects dead inside.
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Pest controller Sean Whelan estimated it had contained roughly 500,000 insects.
He told BBC Radio Solent: “The wasps will never go back in it, so we will just leave it to disintegrate.
“There were actually eight wasps nests in the loft but I actually did not spot the biggest one until I killed off the first, second, third…
“I had been staring at it for quite some time but I did not recognise it because it was very big. It was a bit scary but it was mesmerising and very challenging.”
Big as the nests in the Aults’ loft were, they are, they pale in comparison with one measuring a whopping six feet found in the attic of a pub in Southampton in 2010.
Pest controller Sean Whelan estimated it had contained roughly 500,000 insects.
He told BBC Radio Solent: “The wasps will never go back in it, so we will just leave it to disintegrate.
“There were actually eight wasps nests in the loft but I actually did not spot the biggest one until I killed off the first, second, third…
“I had been staring at it for quite some time but I did not recognise it because it was very big. It was a bit scary but it was mesmerising and very challenging.”
