A Quarter Billion Bees Are On The Loose In Washington After The Truck Carrying Them Crashed
Officials hope to recapture the bees but that sounds way easier said than done.
We've had many stories over the years about tractor-trailers flipping over and dumping their contents all over the road. We've had trucks dump beer all over roads, we've had dimes spilled, and we even had a truck dump various pasta sauces all over the roadway.
But the latest unusual tractor-trailer incident unleashed something I didn't even realize was being carried around on America's highways in big rigs, and that's a quarter billion bees.
According to BBC News, a truck crashed in Whatcom County, Washington, near the Canadian border. Nothing crazy about a crash like this, but this truck was carrying 70,000 pounds of active bee hives, and with those bee hives came 250 million bees.
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I don't know what your math skills are like, but that's a quarter of a billion bees.
The swarm of millions of newly freed bees led to warnings for locals to stay away from the area.
"The goal is to save as many bees as possible," Whatcom County Sheriff's Office said in the wake of the incident.
A quarter of a billion bees spilled out of a tractor trailer in Washington this week. (Getty Images)
Now, I don't want to be "That Guy," but how is that going to work? Do they just send a bunch of deputies out with nets and hope for the best?
And if you catch a bee, how do we know it's one of the escapees (escape-bees?) and not just a local Whatcom County bee buzzing around and getting it on with plants or whatever? Was there some kind of shipping manifest with the quarter billion bees on it? I mean, you can't interview the bees like it's Bee Movie… or can you?
I mean, you'd hate to have a local bee scooped up and shipped off. Sen Chris Van Hollen would probably go have margaritas with it as a PR stunt.
Also, I understand the scourge of invasive species and unleashing a bunch of anything into an ecosystem that isn't ready for it is a bad idea… but, at the same time, I always hear about how we need more bees.
Well, Whatcom County just became the honey bee capital of the US.
The site remains closed for the moment, with the Whatcom County Sheriff's Office saying that it hopes the bees find their queen and rehire, something that they believe could take between 24 and 48 hours.