A massive bee swarm of around 10-20 colonies (that’s an estimated half million insects) made a great escape last Wednesday at a Love’s Travel Stop off of I-81 near Exit 90 in Jonestown, Pennsylvania.
The tractor-trailer load carrying the bees is reported to have shifted as the driver was coming off of the interstate. The driver quickly realized that there was a problem, and pulled into the Love’s Travel Stop to fix it. However, after he’d fixed the load he hadn’t realized that an enormous amount of bees had already escaped, and continued along his route.
Due to the hot weather, the insects were extremely aggressive – stinging dozens of people, swarming, and weighing down a small tree.
Love’s eventually had to call out beekeeper, Bill Fisher to handle the issue. Fisher had never dealt with a swarm of that magnitude before, and admitted that it was far from an easy task.
As of Friday afternoon 99% of the bees had been removed and relocated to Fisher’s farm.
Due to the extreme level of aggression displayed by the swarm, the state Department of Agriculture came out to collect samples. Tests will be conducted in order to find out if they had been crossbreed with the Africanized ‘killer’ bee.
Sources
41 Action News | KSHB
The Sentinel
WGAL News 8