14 Million Bees Escape on Highway.

A semi-truck accident on a Idaho highway resulted in thousands of bee stings, gallons of honey spilling everywhere, and the daring escape of millions of bees.

Just outside of Island Park, Idaho, a semi-truck carrying 400 bee hives crashed and tipped over, freeing 14 million bees and spilling hundreds of gallons of honey. Emergency personnel were stung numerous times before they could acquire the necessary protective gear to battle what were being referred to as “black clouds” of bees that enveloped the highway. In the end, millions of bees escaped but many were killed by firefighters who sprayed the little guys with foam.

The bee business is big. Bees are vital to crop pollination and 80 billion of them are trucked across the country every year to be set down in fields to pollinate crops. It’s estimated that each bee in the pollination industry is worth about 3 cents. That means about $400,000 worth of bees were lost just in this one accident.

Putting millions of bees on the back of a truck to drive cross-country seems like a very complicated operation. It’s amazing that this stuff doesn’t happen more often.