Here’s What 2 Million Escaped Honeybees Looks Like

Quick Take

• Millions of bees travel across America every year, and it turns out your grocery store depends on it. See how bees travel →
• The driver made one wrong turn, and it triggered a crisis that took an entire county to contain. Read about the crash →
• Recapturing two million escaped bees is harder than it sounds, and the survival odds are grimmer than you would expect. See the survival odds →
• Bees follow a surprisingly precise national schedule every year, though this pattern holds only until something goes wrong. Explore the seasonal schedule →

As road accidents go, this one, captured in an Instagram post, is among the most bizarre. A truck transporting bees crashed, releasing millions of them into the local neighborhood. Watch the Instagram clip for yourself, and then we’ll explain how the cleanup operation began.

Transport of Live Bees

The first question to clear up is what millions of bees were doing on a truck in the first place! The truth is that millions of bees are transported in this way every year. Farmers rely heavily on pollinators like bees to grow their crops. Without pollination, there is no food.

Beekeepers move their hives around the country to maintain our food supply and to keep the bees on natural forage as much as possible. By moving the bees around, beekeepers can ensure that their insects are in the right place at the right time. It also means that the bees are always in an environment with temperatures and humidity that suit them.

Typically, the bees start their route in the west in the spring. They pollinate the almond trees in California. Then, they are moved on to apple trees, cherry trees, raspberries, and cucumbers. In the summer, many bees are moved to the upper Midwest to produce honey. In the fall, they are moved back to the southern United States to a specialized building to spend the winter. They rest, build up their strength, and wait to repeat the process—unless, of course, a traffic accident occurs!

Traffic Accident Leads to Major Bee Escape

This crash happened near the town of Mauriceville in East Texas. The driver had reportedly taken a wrong turn into a neighborhood with narrow roads just a few miles into his journey. He overturned the 18-wheeler into a ditch, releasing two million bees from 400 overturned hives.

Local emergency officials posted a warning on social media and advised residents to stay indoors due to the “heavy presence of bees in the area”. Local Orange County emergency services worked with local beekeepers to gather up as many bees as they could. In the Instagram post, you can see them in white suits amid huge clouds of bees. Many other bees have settled on trees and bushes near the truck.

A later update confirmed that the bees were transferred to a local honey farm. However, a local expert estimated that only around a quarter of the hives would survive.