250 Million Honeybees Escape After a Truck Rolls Over in Washington State

U.S.|250 Million Honeybees Escape After a Truck Rolls Over in Washington State

In the northwest corner of Washington State on Friday morning, the authorities issued a most unusual all-points bulletin, rather, an A.P.Bee.

They said in the alert to the public that 250 million fugitives were at large.

A tractor-trailer carrying 70,000 pounds of pollinator hives and bees had rolled over on a country road near Lynden, Wash., releasing an eye-popping number of honeybees, the authorities said.

“250 million bees are now loose,” the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Department wrote on social media.

Then came an all-caps warning: “AVOID THE AREA due to the potential of bee escape and swarming.”

Several emergency responders were stung while sheriff’s deputies, working with master beekeepers, tried to recapture the bees, said Amy Cloud, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s department.

Officials advised the public to stay at least 200 yards away from where the truck overturned, which was in a sparsely populated area about 100 miles north of Seattle.

The goal was to allow the bees to re-hive and find their queen bee, a process that should happen within 24 to 48 hours, they said.

It was not clear what caused the tractor-trailer to roll over. Officials did not identify the driver.

Because they are highly social by nature and drawn to their hives, the bees were likely to settle down and stay close to the truck, said Gene E. Robinson, a professor of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an expert on insect social behavior and genomics.

“That’s where their queen and the next generation of bees (the ‘brood’) are located,” Professor Robinson said in an email on Friday.

At this time of year, each beehive typically contains about 40,000 to 60,000 bees, according to Professor Robinson, who said beekeepers should be able to get most of the bees back into their hives if they were not damaged.

“Migratory beekeeping is essential for the production of many important fruit, nut, and vegetable crops and migratory beekeepers are unsung heroes,” he said.

Friday’s honeybee infestation was not the first time that wayward insects have created a problem for the people of Whatcom County.

It was there at the end of the last decade that the invasive species known as the “murder hornet” established a home until its eradication in 2024.