Millions of bees spill onto Washington state highway after truck overturns

April 17, 2015: A beekeeper inspects the spilled remains of beehives that spilled off of a semitruck along northbound Interstate 5. (AP)

A semitruck carrying millions of honeybees overturned on a highway outside Seattle early Friday knocking over hives and sending beekeepers into a frenzy trying to save as many insects as they could.

The truck had just merged onto Interstate 5 around 3:30 a.m., when it tipped on its side, dumping 448 hives, or about 13.7 million bees, onto the roadway, Washington State Patrol Trooper Travis Shearer said.

The 36-year-old Idaho man was not hurt in the accident.

The owners of the insects, Belleville Honey and Beekeeping Supply of Burlington, sent beekeepers to recover as many as possible and been covered their protective suits while they worked.

The bees became more active as the sun rose and the weather warmed, and firefighters had to douse the insects with foam on some of the boxes, killing the insects for safety.

Many of the hives were still along the highway more than seven hours after the accident, when a front-loader began scooping them up and dumping them into a dump truck, Shearer said. Most of the hives had been crushed.

"I'm sure they'll take that somewhere and try to save as many as they can, but they can do that someplace safer, away from the I-5 corridor," he said.

The bees were being transported from Sunnyside, in central Washington, to a blueberry farm in Lynden, a city near the Canadian border about 100 miles north of Seattle, Shearer said.

First responders and reporters alike swatted at the bees as they tried to do their jobs.

"I think everybody there got stung," Shearer said.

Seattle television station KIRO posted a video compilation of its on-scene reporter swatting the insects as he reported on the accident.

Shearer urged drivers to keep their windows up and to "#beesafe when traveling through that area," as he wrote on Twitter.

A man who answered the phone at the beekeeping company said he couldn't immediately answer any questions related to the accident.

The Associated Press contributed to this report