2026-06-22 11:04:31
An estimated 250 million bees swarmed an area close to Yellowstone National Park after a truck carrying their hives overturned.
The vehicle was transporting the bees along US Highway 191 in Montana on Tuesday when the truck crashed and overturned, scattering the bee hives across a quarter of a mile along the road and letting their inhabitants loose.
The crash happened close to the tourist trap of Yellowstone National Park and officials raced to the scene in a bid to clear the crash and contain the bees. Reports suggest a Gallatin County sheriff’s deputy suffered nine bee stings while directing traffic around the crash scene.
Dalton Broadus of West Yellowstone drove past the scene and he told the Cowboy State Daily the bees began swarming his car as he slowed down to see what was going on.
James Peterson, dispatch manager for Eaton Road Solutions, told the publication it’s the second time in 15 years that emergency workers have been called in to deal with a bee crisis, saying: “We’ve been working one-on-one with the company [that owns the hives] and they’re trying to save what they can.
“We haven’t dealt much with bees. This was our second bee call in 15 years, and we still have the beekeeping suits we got for the first call.”
Video footage from the scene shows boxes of beehives scattered across the road and every box could contain between 75,000 and 125,000 bees.
Beekeeper Michael Jordan told the outlet: “There could be up to 1,000 of those boxes in one load. The first four hours are critical … “
He went on to explain the clean-up could be complicated by the fact the crash happened so close to one of America’s best-known national parks which is visited by almost five million tourists every year.
Jourdan added: “When your boat sinks in Glendale Lake, they charge you for littering, not to mention salvage.
“It’s going to be a pretty big loss, and that’s just the property damage. The owners will need approval from the insurance companies, and then there’s whatever liability the trucking company will have with the NPS. If the mitigation takes too long, they [the beekeeping company] could lose everything.”
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