About 5 million honey bees that flew to Alaska last weekend were delayed as Delta Air Lines routed them through Atlanta, where most of the bees died after being left in boxes on the ground for hours in hot weather.
The bees were the first of two shipments ordered by Alaskan beekeeper Sarah McElrea from a dealership in California. The bees were to be used to pollinate apple orchards and nurseries in Alaska, where they are not native.
But the bees were nudged from their original route to Anchorage, Alaska, and instead put on a flight to Atlanta, where they were to be transferred onto a plane bound for Anchorage, according to published reports.
McElrea said she was concerned when the £800 delivery didn’t arrive in Atlanta in time to make the connecting flight. The next day, she said, Delta informed her that some bees had escaped, so airline employees placed the boxes of bees outside of a Delta cargo hold.
Panicked, McElrea reached an Atlanta beekeeper, 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 on Friday that the airline “was made aware of the shipping situation … and quickly engaged the appropriate internal teams to assess the situation.” We immediately took action to take new measures to ensure that events of this nature do not happen again in the future.”
Morrow said Delta apologized to McElrea. The airline declined to provide anyone for an interview.
Atlanta beekeeper 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 so many deaths,” Georgia beekeeper Julia Mahood told Atlanta-based broadcaster WABE. “Just clumps of dead bees that didn’t stand a chance because they were left out without food and basically got lost in Delta’s machines.”
McElrea, who runs a business called Sarah’s Alaska Honey, said she has had previous shipments of honey bees on Delta from Sacramento, Calif., to Anchorage via Seattle many times. The airline told her last weekend’s shipment didn’t fit on the plane, so it was diverted via Atlanta.
McElrea said her supplier in California will replace the shipment, worth about $48,000. She said she hopes Delta will provide some help, although she acknowledged there are risks in shipping live animals.