Life is a Highway: The Why and How of Bee Transportation

If you spent time on the road this summer, you may not have driven next to a truck or semi full of honeybee hives. If you did, you witnessed something that may not be normal, although more than 2 million honeybee colonies are moved yearly, and whether you see them or not, they are probably next to you on the highway. Honeybees are transported in trucks, which is done to improve pollination and help crop species survive and thrive. The pollination window for some crops is small, resulting in many honeybees being sent to their new farm via highway.

Life is a Highway

When commercial farms need honeybees to help pollinate their crops, they rely on trucks and large semi companies to get the bees there quickly. The brief period for some crops to be pollinated means some bees may come across the nation to reach their needed location. Farmers rely on bee transporters to help their fields bloom year after year.

The Risks of the Honeybee Road Trip

Although this is how bees get from one location to another, the highway can be scary for bees and cause them harm. The highway road trip can harm honeybees because of the speeds, temperatures, and various altitudes they may endure during their journey. Honeybees can overheat, freeze, and suffocate, resulting in lost colonies during transport.

Imagine a bee colony leaving California for the East Coast. These bees will experience all sorts of turmoil in their journey. Most transporters anticipate the loss of many honeybees during a trip, and upon arrival at the final destination, only a few may be left to do all the work. Colonies with less than ten frames rarely make the coast-to-coast trip because they can’t regulate their own temperature inside the hive.

Experienced Honeybee Movers

How hives are loaded can also impact the trip's hardships, so experienced transporters should know the best way to load them so they are minimally exposed to wind turbulence. Where beehives are located on a large truck can also significantly vary temperature. Although bees are excellent at self-regulation and adaptation to temperature changes, a small hive won’t have enough bees to regulate, and too large a hive can quickly overheat and make regulation difficult and life-threatening. The greatest threat is to any brood within the hives, which can result in abnormalities and higher death rates.

The Need for Bees

The need to transport honeybees from one location to another will unlikely diminish anytime soon. Honeybees are responsible for a significant part of our food supply, and since they are wild, farmers cannot force them to stay. So, the need for new honeybee colonies continues to grow as farmers rely on these essential pollinators to help their crops.

The good news is that the rising awareness and appreciation for bees has provided more specialists to help transporters find better ways to get bees from one spot to another. As honeybee transport becomes less harmful to bees, beekeepers will have more options to rent out their bees and get them back. Although growing efforts to save the bees are encouraging, every person has a role to play in helping maintain the health of bee colonies everywhere. Planting wildflowers, other nectar sources for honeybees, and plentiful water stops can help your area's local bees and beekeepers. What we can do to protect these insects vital to our environment, ecosystems, and food supply is thoughtful in providing year-round foraging for bees and other pollinators.