Bennie and Imogene were pastors of the Oak Hill Church of God of Prophecy for two or three years. As I recall, they had been there for about two years and the church needed a fresh coat of paint. Especially on one side, the paint was flaking off and looked really bad.
Several men and women from the church gathered together and painted the whole church and it was so very nice and pristine. It was a lovely little bright white country church.
For about a month.
Then the flaking started again on that same side. The rest of the church looked nice and freshly painted. So they painted it again. A month later the same thing happened, it was flaking all over again! Was that one wall devil-possessed or what?
Come to find out, honey bees had built a nest inside the wall of the church, a huge nest! One old gentleman had some experience in bees, so a bunch of church folk, including me, gathered AGAIN, brought special suits, smokers, and tore off the siding. We removed the bees, replaced the old siding with new lumber, painted it once more, and the church was finally “healed of its affliction.”
I don’t remember exactly how much honeycomb and honey was collected from the nest, but I personally took home two 5-gallon buckets of honey and it was delicious. Of course, straining the honey and getting all the dead bees and other impurities out was quite a chore.
But that’s another story for another time…
