14 Million Bees Unleashed on Highway After a Truck Crash—Local Beekeepers Rushed to Save Them

Rescue workers in Washington state faced a precarious situation recently when a commercial semi-truck carrying 70,000 pounds of honeybee hives overturned on May 30, releasing 14 million bees into the wild, according to the Whatcom County Sheriff's Office.

The driver, who was not hurt, likely "didn’t navigate well enough on a tight turn, causing the trailer to roll," Amy Cloud, a spokesperson for the local Whatcom County Sheriff’s Department, told The Seattle Times.

Several beekeepers, deputies, and emergency responders assisted at the scene, located on Weidkamp Road near Lynden, a town close to the Canadian border. "I had the incredible privilege of helping to rescue millions of honeybees," one of the beekeepers, Derek Condit, wrote in a Facebook post accompanied by a video of the swarming bees.

The road was closed for 24 to 48 hours, giving the bees time to reenter their hives and find their queen. "Bees are highly social by nature and drawn to their hives because that’s where their queen and the next generation of bees (the 'brood') are located," Gene E. Robinson, an entomologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told The New York Times about the rescue efforts.

Per the Whatcom County Sheriff's Office, most of the bees returned to their hives, but it's unclear how many survived the ordeal. Some deputies were stung during the rescue efforts, Cloud told The Seattle Times, but no one had to seek medical treatment.

It's not unusual for beekeepers to transport bees from one location to another so they don't deplete resources in one particular spot. “Migratory beekeeping is essential for the production of many important fruit, nut, and vegetable crops, and migratory beekeepers are unsung heroes,” Robinson told The New York Times.

The goal of the rescue mission was to save as many bees as possible. According to the National Park Service, about 90 percent of wild flowering plants and 75 percent of food crops around the world depend on pollination to produce fruits and seeds, and bees are an essential part of this process.