Ceiling Wax

There has been a damp patch in the corner of the bathroom ever since we first saw the house.  It is a flat roof and they are notorious for untraceable and annoying leaks.  When we were putting in our hasty bathroom between exchange and completion, the roofer came to investigate the problem - the real roofer, that is, not he of shed roofing fame.  However, like the shed roofer, he sent his lad up on the roof to do the hard and dangerous bits.  Various things were re-arranged and re-adjusted but to no effect.

S then went up and swept off the leaves and debris of many a year, adjusting a gutter as he went.  Again, it was to no avail. With the next iteration of the bathroom, we asked the builder to have another go at it.  There was a dark stain on the ceiling plaster and we didn't want to simply paint over it without knowing that the leak had finally been stopped.

The roofer came in again but could find nothing wrong.  The builder then decided that they would go in from the inside, cutting out a section of ceiling to reveal the problem.  S and I had a sleepless night or two about it: what if it was the piping to the shower and there was a major problem?  What if it was something horribly expensive?  What if the excavation revealed that there was an extensive problem?  Our fears escalated the more we thought about it.

On the Friday morning, the builders went in.  And it turned out that it wasn't water at all.  It was honey.  There was an abandoned bees' nest but they had left behind a honeycomb, which was then leaking honey through our ceiling.  Sadly, I didn't get to see it as the builders had removed it before I got home.   The corpses of a few bees littered the bathroom.  And it smelt lovely.  Poor bees.  But, in many ways, it was a relief that it was a defunct nest and not live.

A quick google reveals that honey bees often live in roof or wall cavities so I don't think we're unique.  However, the builders had never seen anything like it before.