I hate insects, especially the ones that fly, so you can imagine my displeasure at learning an 18-wheeler carrying about 15 million honey bees crashed and overturned on I-95 in Maine while being transported to pollinate blueberry fields in Washington County.
Luckily for you and me, “most” of the 15 million flying monsters were contained within the trailer, which landed on its side, according to the Associated Press. A spokesperson for the Maine state police said that the “goal was to save them.” Unfortunately for first responders, they didn’t realize the cargo hold was full of bees until firefighters went down an embankment to check for leaking fluid. They sadly learned the hard way.
“The guys did get stung on a regular basis. Everyone got stung at least a couple of times,” Fire Chief Travis Leary, who also suffered several bee stings, told the AP.
That being said, the sting damage could have been much worse, but temperatures in the 40s meant that the lil stinging ghouls weren’t as rowdy as they might usually have been if it had been warmer. A beekeeper was also brought in to help corral the bees.
Thankfully, this bee disaster won’t endanger Maine’s blueberry crops, according to experts who spoke with the Bangor Daily News:
The single truck could inhibit a small grower that may only place one order of bees annually, said Peter Cowin, the founder and former president of the Penobscot County Beekeepers Association. But, for a large blueberry producer such as Wyman’s, one damaged truck likely won’t hurt the company’s harvest.
“In terms of state crop pollination, this truck is likely a drop in the bucket,” Cowin said.
While 15 million may seem like an unimaginable number of bees, Cowin said the truck is actually a fraction of the 3 billion out-of-state bees Maine receives each year to pollinate crops.
[…]
The bee trucks that come to Maine typically carry about 400 colonies, each containing 30,000 to 45,000 bees.
That’s way too many fucking bees, oh my God.
Anyway, they usually come from southern states that have earlier springs, giving colonies plenty of time to grow in size, according to the Bangor Daily News. This specific truck of bees was on its way from Georgia.
Here’s how they’re transported:
Bees are transported in wooden apiaries stacked on an open-air flatbed truck, then covered with a net. While the net keeps most of the bees contained, some are still able to escape when a truck stops.
It’s also apparently fairly common for some bees to escape their enclosure while being transported when the truck driver stops for breaks or meals. They can lose “tens of hundreds of thousands of bees” at rest stops along their journey. I’m never going to a rest stop again. OK, to be fair, local beekeepers are usually called in after a truck has left to control and clean up the orphaned bees. Still, I don’t like it one bit.