Crash Releases One Million Bees On Florida Interstate: ‘There’s A Lot Of Dead Bees On The Highway’

If you happened to be driving down U.S. Highway 301 in the Baldwin area of Florida between 3:15 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, you may have noticed something unusual: a bunch of beekeepers.

That’s because a semi, driven by a 26-year-old man from Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, crashed into a truck carrying stacks of beehives with around a million bees on the entrance ramp to I-10 east in Duval County, setting them all loose.

“There are thousands of bees in the area after the collision,” read a Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) crash report.

“The public is advised to use caution in the area as the bees continue to disseminate,” police advised.

A 20-year-old Jesup, Georgia man was the driver of the truck carrying all of the insects. Thankfully, according to Florida Highway Patrol, neither driver was injured in the mishap.

“We were just chilling minding our business doing our thing and that’s when you heard a loud boom! I’m like, ‘Oh wow!’ It was crazy,” Jewel Strong, who was working at the Travel Center nearby, told News4Jax.

After partially closing the road, beekeepers were brought in and by 7:30 a.m. they had re-secured all of the bees, said FHP.

However, News4Jax reports that Trent Padgett, the owner of Jesup Bee Company and the driver of the truck carrying the bees, claims he lost between $40,000 and $80,000 worth of bees in the incident.

“We both had a green light, but the semi-truck made a U-turn there without a turn signal, and I didn’t see it coming so I just hit right at the front end of the truck,” Padgett said. “A lot of bees got lost. A lot of them flew away. There’s a lot of dead bees on the highway that came from those boxes.”

Speaking of bees, last week, a group of PGA golfers were playing in the opening round of the Mexico Open when they were seen ducking for cover to avoid a swarm of bees.

“That’s the most unusual thing I’ve ever seen on the golf course,” one of the announcers said.