250 Million Honeybees Escape After Truck Crash Near Canadian Border

There was a real buzz in the air Friday in northwestern Washington State after about 250 million honeybees escaped from a commercial truck that overturned.

The accident happened around 4 a.m. near Lynden, close to the Canadian border, according to the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office. The truck was carrying an estimated 70,000 pounds of honeybee hives when it rolled into a ditch.

The driver apparently failed to navigate a tight turn properly, causing the trailer to overturn, county emergency management spokesperson Amy Cloud said in an email. Thankfully, the driver was uninjured.

Deputies, county public works crews, and local bee experts rushed to the scene. The box hives had come off the truck, and local beekeepers swarmed in to help recover, restore, and reset them, the sheriff’s office reported.

The plan is to give the bees time to return to their hives and locate their queen bee over the next day or two, with the goal of saving as many as possible.

“Thank you to the wonderful community of beekeepers—more than two dozen showed up to help ensure the rescue of millions of pollinating honey bees would be as successful as possible,” the sheriff’s office posted on social media.

The public was urged to avoid the area on Friday, while sheriff’s deputies occasionally had to retreat into their squad cars to avoid being stung.

Honeybees are essential to our food supply, pollinating over 100 crops, including nuts, vegetables, berries, citrus, and melons. Yet bees and other pollinators have been in decline for years due to factors such as insecticides, parasites, disease, climate change, and a lack of diverse food sources.

In 2018, the UN General Assembly declared May 20 as “World Bee Day” to raise awareness about the threats to bees and their crucial role in agriculture.

Beekeepers frequently move millions of bees from one location to another, as leaving them in a single spot for too long can deplete resources for other pollinators, according to The Seattle Times.

Alan Woods, president of the Washington State Beekeepers Association, told the newspaper that the state should develop a standardized “emergency bee response” plan for incidents like this. A similar accident in 2015 north of Seattle resulted in 14 million bees escaping on Interstate 5 and stinging people, The Seattle Times reported.