Millions of Bees Saved After Truck Rollover - Beekeepers To The Rescue

0:00 May I have your attention, please? The following is not the real Jeff Fox release. If you no longer count how many times you get stung, you might be a beekeeper. If when robbing is going on at your house, but you don't call the police, Well, you might be a beekeeper. If you refer to your divorce as swarming behavior, you might be a beekeeper. I'm going to give you a minute to think about that one. Just in case you missed last week's episode, I'd like to give you a quick update on the research being done to solve the mystery of the U .S.'s great bee die -off of 2025. The bottom line is all related to Varroa.

1:13 No big surprises there. Bees are dying from viruses that are spread by Varroa, and Varroa is becoming resistant to some treatments, specifically amitras. So... Keep on top of your Varroa and alternate between different treatment options. If you're new to beekeeping, don't think that your beautiful bees are exempt. They're not. You have Varroa in your hive and you need an IPM to deal with them. Even treatment -free beekeepers work a plan to limit the mites. The days of lazy or naive beekeeping are over. On another note, Have you ever seen a news headline about a semi truckload of bees crashing on the highway? It happens and I've always been curious how the mess is cleaned up and by who or is it whom. So today we're having a discussion with a beekeeper in Washington state who recently helped with one of those disasters.

2:14 First a quick favor if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show please do so now. and be sure to share it with a friend. Also, if you want to be part of the show, reach out to me, Eric, at Be Love Beekeeping dot com with your ideas for guests, your wild and crazy beekeeping stories and your suggestions for the not real Jeff Foxworthy on why you might be a beekeeper. Thank you. Thank you for all of that. Now, let's find out what it's like rescuing a few million bees from an overturned semi. I'd like to welcome to the show today, and this is going to be so fun, everybody. Derek Condit. How are you today, Derek? Doing great, Eric. Thank you for having me. And you're in Washington state someplace.

3:05 Where are you? I am. So I'm actually located in Mount Vernon, Washington, which is a little more than an hour from the border of Canada. So up north. And I've invited Derek to be on the show today because I don't know if you've seen the news. But not long ago, there was a big semi full of bees that tipped over somewhere near him. And it seems like every year we hear about one of these crashing someplace. A couple of years ago, there was one only about 40 miles from me. I didn't have the opportunity to go help do the rescue efforts. They specifically, the Highway Patrol specifically said, beekeepers, please don't come help. So they must have had help that was maybe from, I don't know, the insurance company or the owner of the bees or something they wanted to take care of it themselves. But it closed down I -80 for quite some time. Derek, please tell us what happened with the truck rollover.

4:04 First of all, let me get to the most important thing. Is the driver OK? And then tell me about the accident. Sure. Yeah. And my most recent update on the driver is he's doing fine. It wasn't an exceptional amount of stings to where, you know, cause real problems, but he was stung like many of the beekeepers were during the recovery efforts. But he is doing fine. And I can. So I'll give you the as much of the story of the accident that I know, Eric. Yeah, do that. And then tell me how you got involved. Okay, perfect, and I'll actually kind of wind that into the story because it kind of plays out that way It was the morning of May 30th So just a few days ago, and I found out later the accident actually happened that evening before Because these released beehives and of course, they're doing the moving during that evening time putting them on the truck and then as the truck was leaving with this 300 or so beehives on the back Basically, it just took the corner too sharp, and along the road there, so you can maybe visualize a country road, there's gullies that run along them to catch excess water and rain and whatnot.

5:14 So the back axles of that truck are what fell into that little gully as he was leaving. And it caused the bed of the truck to slant just enough to where all the hives broke the straps and slid into the brush and trees right off to the side of it. And that's where it sat when I showed up. So now this is the morning of May 30th, which I think was a Friday. My wife actually sent me a Facebook post talking about the accident because I hadn't heard about it yet. It was still pretty early in the morning. I realized that it was about 45 minutes or so north of our location. So I thought, well, you know, I mean, I got all the gear and ready to go. So I contacted the local sheriff's department in Whatcom County and it didn't take many minutes starting from that call. to where I was chatting with the person on scene who was in charge of the accidents in the cleanup, they asked me and said, go ahead and grab your gear. We appreciate it and show up when you can. So it was probably an hour later and I was there on scene. So I'll give you kind of a description of the scene I came up on. When the beehive slid off, they didn't just fall onto the ground. They kind of they fell into some shrubs and brushes. So they were still many of them. standing or stacked, but they were separated.

6:30 So they all kind of slid. I'm not sure how to give you a visual kind of like dominoes or a stack of books that aren't quite pushed all the way over. So basically, all of the hives were exposed. And you could see the frames and all of that, which was why there were the millions of bees that were flying all around us at the time. So I arrive and I'm probably 300 or so yards from the accident itself before I approached the first barrier or stop where there's news media there and then also sheriff's department. I let them know who I am. And of course, they brought their windows up because by that point, the accident had been happened at night and they'd all been stung already, of course, even from that distance. So they let me through. I pull up to the area where the truck is kind of off still again country roads. So there's lots of room to park out there right now. And of course, not letting anybody by. So I see the accident and I'm like, oh and I'm in a large white van which is good for me because I can just crawl right in the back before getting out because once you're that close even say a hundred yards away The vehicles people everything was just bees everywhere Well, that was one of my first questions is how far out did this cloud of bees spread? Was there about a hundred yards or even further than that? well I would say to where I would call it a cloud, to where it's just so dense of bees with bees, probably 50 yards. And then, of course, it tapers off past that to maybe

8:00 100 yards. If you're anywhere within several hundred yards, which is where the barrier was in the sheriff's farm, they were getting stung as well. They just didn't have 2000 bees on them at a time. They had a typical few. So I show up there and I see what's going on with the truck. Luckily, I had the The wear was all quickly to grab my cell phone. I turned off the Wi -Fi and Bluetooth and all that and just took some footage. That's when you get to see the actual and I'll mention also, of course, the camera crews, the news crews couldn't get anywhere near this scene. Some of them had gone to I could tell local hardware stores or something about bee hoods thinking that was going to protect them from this type of scenario. They learned real quickly that wasn't that wasn't going to do it. So I would go back and forth and talk with them a little bit and go back to the scene. And then it was just really all hands on deck. And when I showed up, there were already two people there that had been there from the evening before. And they were already just beat tired, working so hard, trying to save as many as they could. Because the bigger point was to remove the hives that were leaning on the truck so we could move the truck out of there and get the hives that were not just leaning on it and laying in the brush nearby, but under it. So we were basically moving box by box and they were not all complete boxes, of course, from an accident like this, parts and pieces everywhere. So you do the best you can and then you stack them on the pallets and then, you know, try and move them out of the way. And some of that's shown in the video. But we get a forklift

9:31 under the back of the truck after so many hours and move it out of the way and then we're able to access the rest of the hives. There was massive losses, of course, on something like this, as far as the bees go. Give me an idea of how many hours you were there. Oh, maybe three or four hours total, because I didn't realize or even know the accident had happened until maybe nine or 10 that morning. And then it was, again, approximately an hour later, I showed up. And that's when I spoke to the beekeepers on scene. And he let me know that he was there for, again, since that evening when it happened. And then throughout the day, Other beekeepers would show up I'm not sure if all of them were beekeepers But people in suits is a lot of them would most of them would actually turn away when they saw how many bees that were And I don't blame them. Yeah, I mean it was and I don't blame anybody because Regardless and people brought duct tape to tape up there, you know their boots and hoods were needed in gloves But regardless bees with that many bees they found their way into all of our suits and that was happening Well, yeah, this is not regular beekeeping. No where you're just interrupting their home and giving them a puff of smoke. And for the most part, they're not going to give you too hard of a time. These are angry, angry bees. I mean, wouldn't you be if that just happened to your house? And then 300 of them houses hide. Yeah, then everybody wants an all exposed. And so, you know, you get the scenario from there. So saying they were agitated

11:01 is an understatement. I would be the same way. I was trying not to say pissed off but let's face it yeah they were beyond so you had a van so you were able to get in the back of the van get all suited up before you got out smart guy you know what we're just gonna have to post some of the video so get on over to our youtube channel Bela Beekeeping You'll find it on YouTube. And I'm going to post these couple of videos, Derek, that you sent over. I appreciate your permission on that. And they're not edited fancy or anything else, but it'll give you an idea. I mean, I saw one of the people there. His back was completely covered. You couldn't really tell that he had a white bee suit on because it was just be back as we call it. So and I can't imagine the guys that were there all night. That's exhausting because you're lifting heavy things, too. Would think that just that many bees that upset I haven't been in the middle of something like that It's got to be as much as you try to be calm. Isn't it a little bit? I don't know Exhausting and anxious filled. Yeah, that's good points Eric.

12:05 It was there's a lot going on Personally, you know, I try not to get in the heightened state because as we know as beekeepers I can heighten situations antagonize. So yeah, no I was I've been through a lot of stuff in life. We can just say so I think really for the most part the ones that the beekeepers that actually stuck around and were going hands on moving the boxes were relatively calm. I mean, they weren't they weren't getting heightened at all, just exhaustion. So that was a thing. But there were other people that showed up that would run around even in suits, just swatting the bees on themselves and having issues like that. I'm like, yeah, you might just want to stand back a little bit. And you guys do look calm. So I'll give you a whole ton of credit for that, because I imagine that wasn't easy. So I have a couple of other questions for you. What happened to all the bees afterwards?

12:53 And who owns the bees? And how does the insurance kick in? Sorry, I said a question. You just got delusional three of them. I know that's OK, and I'll do the best I can on this because that's we had some issues the following days, but I can kind of go in reverse. Somebody reported to me yesterday a local resident in that area where this accident happened. He drove by giving update. He said the better part of the beehives are now. gone. So they've been put back together and or relocated to another and I don't know where another location because they are least bees. But there was an issue and you couldn't help but have this issue because of the type of the accident. There was a lot of damage. So the migratory lids, the covers that would keep the beehives separate from each other were damaged.

13:41 So in the recovery, there just wasn't enough stuff or equipment there to keep them separate to move them. So a lot of them ended up being stacked where the plan was to move them just around the corner onto the farmland will and then bring in the parts and pieces to fix them. So that was one of the things that needed to be done. And we had several volunteers, including business owners with all the equipment needed to bring that in and make that final recovery and you know, separate every beehive because you don't want to leave them stacked, of course, with no separators in there. But they were left that way for a couple days. So there's a whole story behind that. I'll get into as much as I can, but I was in contact with the owners and they're making the moves they could on their part, as far as I could tell, and in touch with insurance. But I can't really comment on the insurance aspect because I don't know how that all worked or worked out for them. So from our on the ground perspective concerned citizens and beekeepers and business owners, we were just trying to get all hands on deck as soon as possible because we knew the state of these hives and there were of course, brood emerging during before and after all of this as well into that chaos.

14:53 So that's, that's a part two that hasn't been talked about because we usually just think about the bees that are flying around. And these boxes did have large amounts of brood and honey because I was putting them back together, I got to see it. Quick break to thank our presenting sponsor Man Lake. I've found that Man Lake has absolutely everything I need to take care of the health of my bees. Mite checks and treatments, beetle management, hive health and nutrition. pollen substitutes, food and feeders, and the knowledge base to help you know how to use it, including Bella, their AI beekeeping genius. Just look for her icon in the bottom right -hand corner of your screen at manlakeltd .com. While you're there, don't forget your discount code MLBlove10, it's in the show notes, for $10 off your first $100 purchase. I don't really know, to be honest, the state of the hives now other than they've been relocated because we did draw some attention to try and get that done sooner. Well, you did send me one video from a couple of days later.

15:59 Did it look like they had calmed down? Not so much. I mean, to a percentage, yes, because... On that second video is when I went back two days later thinking that, oh, these hives should have been all repaired and the migratory lids put back on kind of thing. When I started watching the video and looking a little bit closer, I realized, oh, a lot of these are still missing that, which explained why there was still so many bees swarming around in a heightened state because that was still happening. Well, and I'm guessing just in all the confusion, there had to have been some boxes where were they two deep boxes, by the way, most of them. It varied because by this time when I got there, of course, it was all a mess. Some had deep brew boxes and then with a honey on top of it, it just varied.

16:45 So there was a whole mix of them. Yeah. I mean, chances are you ended up with a box that didn't belong to a queen in this other box and some that had... And that was our issue. Yeah. And some that had no queen. And so, wow. I imagine just putting them on pallets and stacking them together. And the one video shows, I don't know, 50 hives or something on pallets. And you'd think they would kind of sort it out after a little while. But then again, hey, if I'm a bunch of guys in there with no queen. You know, they're not going to be very happy and there's all kinds of things going on and there's Robbing and I mean it just opens such a huge can of worms.

17:27 Yeah for those bees It was confusing to you. I'll tell you Eric when I posted I think it was yesterday Maybe that image which I extracted from that last video you're talking about that you'll be sharing it from the average person's perspective It looked like a bunch of pretty beehives stacked high in a field looking great and they're all saved And that's not the case. They were stacked there. But again That's why I went to verify that and see and I noticed that those the lids were missing and and that so many bees were still out having a hard time. So that's that's that's what I came up on. So now that you've done it once, do you have any advice for somebody else that may be in that situation sometime in the future? Because like I said earlier. Every year you see one or two of these someplace in the country one of these trucks flips and local beekeepers are coming to save the day I have lots of tips and believe or not since this happened a few days ago. I've already started drafting a Nationwide response plan for bee emergencies like this so that first responders know We need this gear. Here's where we call people. And I've already set up on another website I just developed, a database where beekeepers nationwide can put their name and phone number on there so they can be notified if there is an accident anywhere on these routes where they take the bees. But believe it or not, the recommendations bring extra tape with you, like duct tape, things like that, especially on an accident because there's parts and pieces of the truck that were there, pallets, so you can get tears in your suit. and

18:59 of course for taping up your suits like like we would do typically and you definitely want to do that in this situation and of course I can't blame anybody and I appreciate how we were provided beverages and food but my tip here is for the beekeepers or the responders eat before you go things like that because we were brought cases of lots of good stuff granola bars to eat and things but you're not exactly gonna unzip your hood to put some food in there not even for a second So that was a thing. Nobody could eat or drink. For example, the Gatorade, they brought us up against your hood and drink through it. Well, in this situation, you're trying to boy thousands of these. So it's just not a thing. So that was an issue. So I'm working that type of stuff into this plan I'm putting together.

19:42 Yeah, I imagine to eat or drink or anything, you'd have to get a couple of hundred yards away even further and then think restroom as well. Yeah, restrooms and where there are hours in the heat. So most of us just opted not to eat or drink. It wasn't really an option, to be honest. It just was what it was. So yeah, that was a problem. And if you were in a place where it was 100 degrees out, you would have no choice. You would have to be drinking. You would. It was maybe 70 degrees for us. And we were burning up in the suits, of course, lifting all those hives. So imagine 90, 80, 100. Yeah, yeah, it warms up. Well, tell me a little bit about you and your beekeeping. Sure, I'm loosely what's called a treatment free beekeeper So I try to opt as much as possible for you know, no chemicals or treatments where where you can Also, I have what's called shungite beehives. Well, I'll kind of you know, what in the world is that? I know you're like what what is that? Long story short as I like to say shungite is a black rock It's a mineral that's carbon -based and it's found in Russia But what scientists have found out is that this mineral called shungite, S -H -U -N -G -I -T -E, for those who want to look it up, has an effect on frequencies within our environment.

21:01 So one way I use it is I use the shungite powder, blend it with paint, paint the exterior of the beehive. And when I was in the military, we would call things like this Faraday cages. So what shungite does, and this has been proven already to have an effect. it'll stop much of those harmful frequencies that are under power lines, you know, Wi -Fi, cell phone, that stuff in our environment that does affect the bees, and it's been proven to have an effect on. So introducing shungite to that environment, you can say energetically, keep the bees calm. It keeps a lot of the harmful frequencies away from them. So when the bees are in their beehive recovering and sleeping at night, you can say they're healing themselves.

21:42 So I don't have the colony collapse disorder losses. I had pre years using shungite on my hives. And I've got a lot of information on this on our website and the documented studies verifying shungite and its effects on energies and bees. and we'll put your website in our show notes so anybody that wants to go there mysticalwears .com it'll all be in there but so this is a regular langstroth hive and you call it shungite because of the coating you put on is that correct yeah we do and i actually put shungite nuggets so again it's a black rock um if you look at it at the entrance and what bees will do and i've recorded video of this for the most part so a highly percentage number of the bees that come and go from the hive will opt to land on the shungite, it energetically has an effect. And again, it's all about, I need the science, I won't get too much, but it's about the carbon -60 molecule that's in there. It's called a fullerene or a buckyball. Buckminster fuller, lots of scientists know about it and work with this. So when you use those aspects of it, and again, that buckyball or a carbon -60 molecule is what's inside of shungite that gives it these energetic aspects to it. And we're just using those effects of shungite in various ways on the beehives to help them. So you take this, you grind it up into a powder, and you mix it with paint. Is that how you explained it to me? Yeah, you actually do. So we actually have shungite powder you can buy, and you blend it in the paint, and then just paint the exterior of the beehive. We have

23:13 rooms, and these have been made in Europe, called shungite rooms, where they'll line the walls with shungite and or shungite paint. My own clay is I brought it to the bees, but shungite's been around for a long time. Huh. I think you're going to be selling this stuff. I'll take some right now. I'll tell you what, Eric, you should go to our website because I've done this for seven years now. We've gifted free shungite to any beekeeper on the planet who's willing to try it. If you go to MrGores .com, request the free bee kit, you're just going to pay shipping. I'm giving it to you for free. You're going to get enough powder to make your own gallon of paint to paint your beehives and free shungite nuggets. And this whole explanation of how to use this And a lot of this, like 90 studies, scientific studies, not me doing them, I've republished on our website showing the effects shungite has.

24:04 So for those that want to get into that part of it, it's all available as well. But again, we've been gifting this for many years now. Well, I didn't mean for this to turn into an infomercial, but if you're not making money on it, I guess it's not technically so. It's free. Yeah. Hey, that's pretty cool. All right. This is the time in an interview that I normally ask people to tell me their most wild and crazy beekeeping story that they can think of. I think you've accomplished that already. But can you think of anything else, something unusual that happened or something embarrassing or painful or give us something unusual? One unusual thing from my perspective was I found myself for various reasons. in the middle. I live in the Cascade Mountains here in Washington state, so a lot of snow at times. I find myself in a situation where I had to relocate three beehives in three or four feet of snow. So, and that means full beehives and they were probably stacked three or four boxes high left over the winter for that and there were somebody else's. So having to move those was a feat in itself, trying to get them up on there and through the snow and even though we sealed the openings on it and secured the boxes together. During the transport, some of the openings or the entrance blockers were damaged and were broken off and none of the bees tried to come out. Of course, it was pretty cold out, so that makes a lot of sense from that perspective, but it was interesting that we were able to successfully relocate the hives even during winter and we

25:36 had complete success rates in the spring when they came out. Were those yours and did they just get left up there or what happened? It was a chain. I was consulting on these hives So they were shungite beehives as we call them So it was shungite introduced to them and then they were just Basically that land was commercial land and I don't know if it was moving hands or what was happening exactly But the beehives had to had to go off of there So I was the one showing up to relocate them and literally lift them up into the back of a truck I would didn't think for a second. It was gonna work or we'd be able to lift them that high in the middle of winter in the snow. But, you know, thank goodness that they lasted. They were covered. That's kind of bizarre. Yeah, it was unusual. Yeah, it's been pretty unusual with all my stories with the bees, to be honest. Well, Derek, I appreciate your time and I appreciate what you did for the bees in that rollover and helping everybody out there. So thanks for all you do. And hey, keep in touch. I will. Thank you. I appreciate you having me on the podcast. Thanks again for joining us here on Be Love Beekeeping presented by Man Lake. Remember right now to follow or subscribe and share this podcast. Also a quick shout out to Vita Bee Health for their support. Vita's Varroa Control range of products includes Apistan, Apigard, and now Varroxan Extended Release Oxalic Acid Strips. Thanks guys. And remember, if you're not just in it for the honey or the money, you're

27:08 in it for the love. See you next week.