Around five million honeybees, which were set to be shipped to Alaska from the United States, died after they were left on a hot tarmac in Atlanta. The crates carrying the bees were left unattended for hours, The Independent reported.
Alaskan radio station KTOO said that beekeepers who were waiting for the shipment to arrive termed the loss as “devastating”.
“We had a load that was going to Fairbanks, and then we had somebody else that was going to distribute from Wasilla to Talkeetna,” Sarah McElrea, who runs Sarah's Alaska Honey, was quoted as saying.
She was waiting at Anchorage airport for a shipment of 800 pounds of bees.
Two hundred packages of bees were supposed to be flown directly from Sacramento to Anchorage, Alaska, four days ago, but somehow ended up at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, according to the Metro Atlanta Beekeeper's Association.
After four days, the bees started to escape and workers took the cargo containers outside in the heat, as per a report in WABE.
When Ms McElrea got to know that the flight bringing the bees has been changed and that the bees have been put outside, she connected with Atlanta beekeeper Edward Morgan, who went to the airport.
Mr Morgan found that most of the bees were already dead from the heat.
KTOO reached out to Delta Airlines, which were supposed to bring the bees, and its spokesperson Catherine Salm replied saying, “We have been in contact with the customer directly to apologize for the unfortunate situation.”
According to the website of Alaska's Department of Fish and Game, there are no native bees in Alaska that gather in hives and produce honey. Alaska's native bees are more solitary in nature, so beekeepers in Alaska import European honeybees for making honey.
These swarms of bees form colonies in the wild and produce honey, but are not able to survive Alaska's cold winter.
Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world
