Toronto, Ontario – Burlington, Ont., was quite literally buzzing with activity this week after a truck carrying five million bees spilled its contents onto the road.
Halton regional police stated that they received a call at approximately 6:15 a.m. on Wednesday reporting the bees had come loose from a truck and spilled onto a road in Burlington, Ont.
“Crates were literally on the road and swarms of bees were flying around,” Constable Ryan Anderson reported to CBC News.
The bees had spread to over a 400-metre (1,300-foot) radius at the apex of their spill.
Police are not sure how the bees came loose, but suspect that the boxes containing the beehives slid off the trailer that was transporting them due to being improperly strapped down and then swarmed onto the road.
Once notified of the scene, police reached out to several beekeepers in the area who were able to safely collect the bee crates as well as most of the bees themselves.
Michael Barber–one of the beekeepers contacted by police–said that “there were probably a thousand bees on the front of [his] truck” when he arrived onto the scene.
Thankfully, no one was seriously injured–although, Barber reports that the driver of the transport truck did receive over 100 bee stings and was attended by paramedics.
