Tom Ferry found himself standing in his bee suit on a rural Whatcom County road immersed in a “tornado of bees” — all 14 million of whom, it seemed, were intent on stinging him.
He knew bee swarms are dangerous. But when he heard a semitruck bed carrying the hives tipped over about 8 miles from his home on May 30, he wanted to help the beekeeping community that had brought him and his wife so much peace.
“I was put in a place in that moment where I actually had an opportunity to help,” said Ferry, 54. “That, I felt, was an (indication) to work through whatever fears or doubts I had as to how effective I could be.”
He joined a dozen other beekeepers already there, lifting the hives out of the ditch and carrying them into the nearby field. He wrapped strips of duct tape around his wrists and ankles to prevent bees from flying up his sleeves and pant legs.
Still, Ferry left after 90 minutes with 27 stings on his ankles and forearms, driving home still wearing his bee suit with his windows down.
Ferry awoke the next morning OK, but with body aches from the previous day’s physical labor. Calling the situation “very intense,” Ferry said he believes everyone did the best they could.
No injuries, besides stings, were reported after the Whatcom County crash that went viral. Most of the bees returned to their hives after they were moved back into the field they had just come from.
Nevertheless, Ferry is among a growing number of Washington beekeepers calling for a statewide “emergency plan” that would have let officials respond quicker. State officials and the Washington State Beekeepers Association have begun assembling a team tasked with creating such a plan.
Although the truck tipped over around 4 a.m., the bees did not wake up and start swarming until almost 9 a.m.
Delays caused by the struggle to tow the truck bed out of the ditch and the need for the vehicle’s owner to document the damage for insurance meant the hives could not be moved before the bees woke up, according to Kurtis Plaisted, whose company, Grigg Apiaries, was hired to load the hives onto the semitruck that morning before it got on the road. The bees’ owner got the semitruck and hired the driver, Plaisted said.
The bees’ owner did not respond to The Seattle Times’ request for comment.
“I don’t know if rules and regulations would have prevented this,” Ferry said. “But I know as humans we can do better. We just don’t currently have the things in place to make that happen.”
How the bees escaped
Katie Buckley, pollinator health coordinator for the state Agriculture Department, said she receives reports of a crash involving bees in the U.S. about once every one or two years, like when 14 million bees escaped a crashed semitruck and started stinging people in 2015 in Lynnwood.
Responding to these crashes can be complicated, as first responders and bee owners try to balance keeping the public safe with protecting the bee owners’ livelihood.
Loads of bees like the one that crashed in Whatcom County are often worth up to $200,000, Plaisted said, and bee owners usually must have insurance companies approve any work on the crashed vehicle and damaged hives before they can start to respond.
Whatcom County sheriff’s deputies saw this problem unfold May 30.
Someone called 911 to report a crashed semitruck shortly after 4 a.m. between West Badger Road and Loomis Trail Road near Lynden.
The truck had just been loaded with 408 hives of bees, which had finished pollinating a nearby blueberry field, and were on their way about 10 miles south to raspberry fields, Plaisted said.
As the driver exited the blueberry field and turned right onto Weidkamp Road, the bed of the truck tipped into a ditch, toppling some of the colonies onto the road.
The bees remained calm at first, sleeping through the cool and dark morning hours. But Plaisted knew he had to act fast.
At the bee owners’ request, two tow trucks tried lifting the truck bed out of the ditch, but were unsuccessful.
The owner then turned his attention to contacting his insurance company, but by then, it was too late. It was almost 9 a.m., the day was bright and warm and the bees were awake — and angry.
The pollinators rose out of their hives and swarmed, many flying after and stinging sheriff’s deputies and emergency division workers who were standing nearby.
Creating a plan for the future
State officials are hoping a new “comprehensive plan” could provide guidance to beekeepers and law enforcement for how to respond faster whenever a similar crash happens next, said Ellen Miller, vice president of the beekeepers association.
The team working on the plan is expected to include representatives from the state’s agriculture and transportation departments, law enforcement agencies, commercial beekeepers, and the beekeepers association, Miller said by phone.
“One of the components we feel is needed after this incident is a standard for how to document hive losses or damaged hives right away so that insurance companies are happy,” Buckley, with the Agriculture Department, said by phone. “Then the hives can be recovered much more quickly, rather than having to wait.”
Plaisted was skeptical of whether such a standard, or a statewide plan, could be useful or enforceable.
Dealing with lawyers, tow truck companies, law enforcement and insurance agents after a crash all takes time, and bee owners often have no choice but to focus on their financial liability — even if it means losing their hives.
“Replacing a load of bees is expensive but possible. A multimillion-dollar lawsuit is much more crippling,” Plaisted said. “As beekeepers, you work hard to keep your business, and the last thing you want is to lose it in a lawsuit.”
But Alan Woods, a Centralia-based beekeeper and president of the beekeepers association, said the emergency plan could help. Speed is critical in responding to crashes involving bees, he said.
Sometimes that means spraying a swarm with foam retardant and water to protect people from being stung, or prioritizing clearing a roadway after an accident to keep other drivers safe, like in the 2015 Lynnwood spill.
Other times, protecting hives and moving them to a safe location where bees can rehive themselves can take priority. And the sooner that happens, the better the odds that the bees survive.
Many of the bees did eventually rehive themselves after the volunteer beekeepers moved their hives into the nearby field, Plaisted said. But waiting until the bees had started swarming to move the hives increased the risk of beekeepers getting stung, Woods said, and the odds that the bees would fly off and die.
“Had I known, I would have went up there at 4 o’clock and tried to help them myself,” he said.
For Ferry, the Whatcom County crash was an unexpected boon.
In the days after the swarm first appeared, he noticed more bees than usual appearing in traps around his property, likely bees that had flown away from the crash site and been attracted by the traps’ lemon grass oil scent.
Those “free bees” are now under Ferry’s care, helping him produce small batches of honey he sells at local farmers markets and joining in their colonies’ collective calming buzz.
But Ferry still thinks about the bees that could have been saved had he and other beekeepers been able to approach the hives sooner, and had he known how to better protect himself from their stings.
“I don’t feel we performed our best in that instance, and some of it had to do with legal red tape and insurance,” he said. “But hopefully we can apply some pressure where we need to to make some change.”
