TORONTO – Millions of bees were safely collected from a roadway near Toronto on Wednesday after their crates fell off a truck that was hauling them.
Halton Regional Police said that they got a call just after 6 a.m. Wednesday about bee crates that got loose from a truck on Guelph Line in Burlington, Ontario, according to The Associated Press. The crates also reportedly spilled onto the roadway.
Constable Ryan Anderson said that “swarms of bees were flying around,” the AP reported.
After about an hour, police posted a notice on social media looking for beekeepers. Anderson said, according to the AP, about six or seven went out to the scene.
Beekeeper Terri Faloney went to the scene around 8 a.m. after her mother saw a report on television about the 5 million “angry bees,” The New York Times reported. Another beekeeper, Mike Barber got multiple calls from a local police officer seeking his assistance.
Barber has a business he owns called Tri-City Bee Rescue, the Times reported. He helped to relocate swarms of bees from houses and other places. He brought his beekeeper suit to the scene. Faloney brought bee smokers that help to “subdue panicked bees into a state of lethargy.”
Police advised pedestrians to avoid the area and urged drivers heading in the area as well as residents living in the area to keep their windows closed, the Times reported.
A few hours later just after 9 a.m., police said most of the bees were safely collected, the AP reported. The crates were then hauled away with a few left in the area for the bees that were able to be collected.
The commercial beekeeper who was reportedly hauling the bees on a trailer that was attached to a pickup truck, Tristan Jameson told the Global News, a Canadian news outlet, that he had swerved to avoid something in the roadway that “nearly swerved into the ditch, tried to correct, and dumped all the hives,” the Times reported.
