Suchat Pederson/AP A truck carrying 460 crated hives overturned Tuesday evening while taking the ramp from Route 896 to Interstate 95. The buzz around town is that a tractor-trailer hauling up to 20 million bees fell over in Delaware about 6:10 p.m. Tuesday after its driver apparently bumbled a turn.
Motorists were advised not to swarm the area around the ramp from Route 896 to Interstate 95 near Newark now that the bees are free. The ramp was closed after the crash and reopened about 6:50 Wednesday morning.
After the truck overturned the night before, the 55-year-old driver and two male passengers, ages 24 and 25, got out of the vehicle with only minor injuries, Delaware Online reported. But they were stung 50 to 100 times each.
“They were running down the street covered in bees,” Chief Lawrence Tan of New Castle County Paramedics told WPVI-TV.
They were reportedly taken to nearby Christiana Hospital. Sgt. Paul Shavack says there were reports of bees also stinging passers-by.
Suchat Pederson/AP Emergency-response personnel work through the night to disperse the swarm before reopening the ramp Wednesday. The rig had been carrying 460 crated hives from Florida to Maine. Immediately after the crash the swarms of bees were so large that authorities couldn’t get near the truck.
Delaware State Police have had an official bee swarm removal plan for 14 years but this is the first time they have ever used it, according to Shavack.
Suchat Pederson/AP Firefighters spray the bees with water to calm the tiny terrors down, instead of trying to collect them. Three on-call bee handlers in protective suits joined firefighters to spray water at the bees, the crates and the truck.
“There’s no rounding them up,” Shavack told The Associated Press. “The water will disperse and calm the bee activity.”
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