80 million bees swarm as truck crashes

A TRUCK carrying 80 million live bees has overturned on a Florida motorway, killing the driver and spilling its cargo across the road.

Conrad Cramer, aged 82, died on Monday at the scene of the wreck on Interstate 95, but a swarm of bees that circled frantically around the overturned truck made recovery of the body impossible for several hours. “A lot of the hives were broken, so firefighters had to put on their protective equipment to get the driver out,” said Brevard County Fire-Rescue spokesman Orlando Dominguez. There were no reports of stings from emergency workers or people on the roads.

Cramer, owner of Cramer’s Honey, was probably heading to Orlando with a cargo of bees he had recently collected, said his daughter-in-law Ranee Turner.

Beekeepers from Cramer’s company arrived by nightfall to collect the bees, using smoke to put the escaped bees temporarily to sleep.

Florida beekeepers often truck hives northwards in spring and early summer to catch the blooms of commercial fruit orchards and vegetable fields, then bring them back to winter in Florida.