Alaska distributor loses 5 million honeybees in airfreight reroute

About 5 million honeybees bound for Alaska got waylaid when Delta Air Lines routed them through Atlanta, where most of the bees died after being left for hours in crates on the ground during hot weather.

The bees were the first of two shipments ordered by Soldotna beekeeper Sarah McElrea from a distributor in California. McElrea said the loss is devastating. She runs Sarah’s Alaska Honey and also coordinates shipments of bees to beekeepers around the state to pollinate orchards and nurseries.

The bees were bumped from their original route to Anchorage on April 24, and instead put on a flight to Atlanta, where they were to be transferred to an Anchorage-bound plane, according to published reports.

McElrea said she worried when the 800-pound shipment didn’t arrive in Atlanta in time to make the connecting flight. On April 25, she said, Delta told her some bees had escaped, so airline workers put the crates holding the bees outside a Delta cargo bay.

In a panic, McElrea reached a beekeeper in Atlanta, who rushed to the airport and discovered that many of the bees had died from heat and starvation, according to The New York Times.

Delta called it an “unfortunate situation.”

In an emailed statement, Delta spokeswoman Catherine Morrow told The Associated Press last Friday, “We have taken immediate action to implement new measures to ensure events of this nature do not occur in the future.”

Morrow said Delta apologized to McElroy.

The beekeeper in Atlanta, Edward Morgan, called more than a dozen people to go to the airport and try to save any bees that were still alive.

“It’s devastating to see that many dead,” Georgia beekeeper Julia Mahood told Atlanta broadcaster WABE. “Just clumps of dead bees that had no chance because they were left outside with no food and basically got lost in Delta’s machinery.”

McElrea said she had received previous shipments of honeybees on Delta from Sacramento, California, to Anchorage via Seattle many times. The airline told her that last weekend’s shipment didn’t fit on the plane, so they were rerouted through Atlanta.

Her supplier in California will replace the shipment, which was worth about $48,000. She said she is hoping Delta provides some help, although she acknowledged that shipping live animals carries risk.