Press Herald – by David Hench and Jessica Hall
A tractor trailer that spilled its load of 16 to 20 million honeybees when it rolled over in Delaware was headed for blueberry fields in Washington County.
The bee shipment of 460 crated hives originated in Florida and was intended to pollinate fields owned by Allen’s Blueberry Freezer Inc. of Ellsworth. The tractor-trailer overturned on the sharp curve of an on-ramp to Interstate 95 near Newark, Delaware just after 6 p.m. Tuesday.
The onramp was closed for 13 hours as firefighters tried to disperse the bees and local beekeepers worked to recover as many hives as possible.
“You can imagine you can’t round up 20 million bees,” Delaware State police spokesman Sgt. Paul Shavack said. “We couldn’t get to the truck to get the ramp open or inspect the truck at all.”
About half the hives were able to be salvaged, according to the bees’ owner, Pollination US Inc., based in Felda, Florida. Firefighters on Wednesday turned to using soapy water foam to kill the remaining bees so the rest of the debris could be cleaned up.
“It’s one of those things nobody expects to happen but wow, what a controversy it created,” said Sandy Roumillat, a spokeswoman for the Delaware Department of Transportation.
Shavack said Tuesday’s crash was the first time state police used their official honeybee swarm removal plan.
“It’s a plan that’s been in place since 1995,” Shavack said. “It contains a current list of bee handlers and keepers in each county throughout the state to respond to an incident like this.”
Lynette Miller, spokeswoman for the Maine Emergency Management Agency, said Maine’s response plan for a major bee release entails calling the state entomologist and bee inspector, Anthony Jadczak.
Jadczak was on hand in 1999 when a similar truck rollover released 20 million bees in Falmouth on Mother’s Day.
Jadczak said Maine commercial farmers are expected to import about 75,000 to 80,000 hives this year, starting with blueberries this month.
Beekeepers move hives around the country over the course of the year, hired by local farmers who depend on the extra bees to pollinate crops.
The driver of the truck, Adolpho Guerra, 55, of Miami, Florida, and two passengers were taken to Christiana Hospital in Delaware with minor injuries from the crash and 50 to 100 stings each, police said. Public safety officials said the men climbed out of the truck and ran down the road, covered in bees. There were also reports of passersby also being stung, according to The Wilmington News Journal in Delaware.
Police eventually charged Guerra with failing to properly secure the load, which allowed the hives to shift to one side as the truck turned.
The rollover occurred where Delaware 896 and Interstate 95 intersect, a predominantly urban area with businesses and homes, just outside the University of Delaware campus and not far from the Maryland border.
Pollination US owner Steven Eisele said his company had been shipping bees for 20 years without accidents before.
“This was our first incident,” Eisele said.
Eisele praised local firefighters for initially using water to calm the bees so some could be recovered, rather than using chemicals that would have killed them all. He said about half of the bees survived and were taken to another site until a company representative could check on their welfare.
“It’s very difficult on the hive to go through something like this, just as it would be hard on a person to have an accident,” he said.
The total value of the truck and cargo was about $250,000, including the bees themselves, the hives and the revenue from renting the bees for pollination, Eisele said. The truckload that overturned had been contracted for two pollinations in Maine. Officials from Allen’s Blueberry Freezer declined to comment on the incident Wednesday.
Eisele said his company had insurance on the cargo and contracted for the truck. The bees were being moved by Odilia’s Express Inc. in Miami Beach.
Road crews spent Wednesday cleaning up broken hives and debris. Dumpsters loaded with the broken hives had to be saturated with foam to kill the swarms of bees that remained on them. Some of the bees that were released were swarming on nearby roads, prompting state transportation officials to activate message boards with warnings telling motorists to “Keep windows closed” and “Bee swarms in area.”
In the Falmouth incident in 1999, police determined the driver was going too fast on a tight, 25-mph turn connecting the Maine Turnpike spur to Interstate 295 northbound and lost control, spilling 400 hives.
Most of the hives were crushed and emergency officials ultimately killed the bees after concluding that it would take days to try to recover the broken hives. The ramp would have had to remain closed, officials said at the time, with the cloud of honeybees hovering around the upside down trailer to stay near the hives.
Jadczak, who was the state’s beekeeper at the time, was joined by assistants in protective gear who burned pine needles to create smoke and quiet the bees.
Falmouth firefighters sprayed a fine mist of water over the wreckage to simulate rain and cause the bees to cluster around the hives. They were then killed by a spray of a fire suppression formula similar to soapy water.
Jadczak said at the time that any bees that escaped could survive only about six weeks and without a queen, could not start a new hive.
Michael Shutts, a planner with the Cumberland County Emergency Management Agency, said that while the county doesn’t have a specific bee swarm response plan, it does have a general hazard response plan which calls for evacuating the area, controlling traffic, establishing communications between different response agencies and establishing a chain of command for responders. Much of that planning refers to hazardous materials being carried over the nation’s roads, but bees do not appear in the Department of Transportation’s list of hazardous materials.
David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:
Twitter: @Mainehenchman
Humans existence is directly proportional to bees existence.
“The driver of the truck, Adolpho Guerra, 55, of Miami, Florida,…”
Legal? U.S. driver’s license? Insurance?