Saw documentary about bees being trucked 3000 miles,from FL to CA.Would the bees survive the trip,and what route would the driver take.Apparently orchards in CA are in short supply of bee`s to pollinate trees.
Hi Toby. Bees are in short supply everywhere in the world and in fact the situation is so serious that many scientists are talking about a potential world food crisis if the bee population does not recover. In North America bees are being bred in intensive programs and colonies are being transported out to the fields. The program you saw must have been about this or something like it. Sometimes they carry established hives on the back of flatdecks with a net over to try to contain the bees but if you ever see a truck like this parked (say in a truckstop) there is always lots of dead ones around the place so the mortality rate must be fairly high.
The journey in the documentry (depending on where in Florida & California) would have been around 4000kms and would of crossed the southern states of Alabama, Mississippi, Lousiana, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
I have actually hauled a load of live bees myself and delivered them around Colorado. They were in hibernation or pupae form and so were asleep in thousands of tiny holes drilled into special timbers. I pull a reefer trailer and had very strict temperature instructions in order to protect them and keep them from incubating and the load was so valuable that we had to obtain special insurance cover just for that job.
Thanks for that Wire,with the bee shortage question.Do you or your mate ever get to the Lansing area,Laingsburg,4239,Seib Road,off Oviedo Road,dont know if Kevin and Sheila Kurtz,still have a big dairy farm there,brother was John Kurtz.Spent 9 months there,when the farm was bankrupt,lived on maccoroni cheese and nestle crunch bars from the “Poormans Ponderosa” store.Worked 15 plus hours a day,3 times a day milking the cows and tractor work.Got paid when i left and spent 3 weeks on a Amtrak train,travelling all the USA.Got a poasting with the young farmers J1 visa exchange programme to National Nurseries at Cooper City,Fort Lauderdale.Working on tree plantations with Puerto Rican and Haitian workforces.Shared a bungalow on the nursery and weekends on $99 Bahamas cruises from Port Everglades,and cruising the “Strip”,on Spring break,with my Kenny Roberts Yamaha RZ 350,bit of a poser!!Shipped the bike back to the UK,first week back a drunk driver crashed in to me,and gave me a bit of brain damage.If you are on vacation,at these two places,any info,on how the towns and cities have changed since 1986 onwards,would be great.Heard Fort Lauderdale has grown a lot.When i got lost in Broward county,Miami,the Sherrifs office would ■■■■■■ me out of that dangerous area or dodgy street.Where do American truck drivers take their vacations.Would love to visit Montana and that area of the North.Wont recomend Mexico at the moment.Be good,drive safe.T.
wire:
Hi Toby. Bees are in short supply everywhere in the world and in fact the situation is so serious that many scientists are talking about a potential world food crisis if the bee population does not recover. In North America bees are being bred in intensive programs and colonies are being transported out to the fields. The program you saw must have been about this or something like it. Sometimes they carry established hives on the back of flatdecks with a net over to try to contain the bees but if you ever see a truck like this parked (say in a truckstop) there is always lots of dead ones around the place so the mortality rate must be fairly high.
The journey in the documentry (depending on where in Florida & California) would have been around 4000kms and would of crossed the southern states of Alabama, Mississippi, Lousiana, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
I have actually hauled a load of live bees myself and delivered them around Colorado. They were in hibernation or pupae form and so were asleep in thousands of tiny holes drilled into special timbers. I pull a reefer trailer and had very strict temperature instructions in order to protect them and keep them from incubating and the load was so valuable that we had to obtain special insurance cover just for that job.
Kin ell Mark, that’s gotta be the winner of ‘the strangest load you’ve ever carried’ competition.
In my quest for useless facts I have to know the tempreture you run the fridge at for that load?
BTW the route taken would’ve been as Wire says, along the much fabled I-10.
I have carried live Bees several times in the past, they use to come in to Holland from Poland and I would then take them down to Almeria in Spain.
Basically they were carried at a temperature close to 4 degrees celsius (if I remember correctly) so that they stayed in hibernation mode, and also with ventilation hatches open so that they do not poison themselves with smell, if you had no ventilation hatches we had to open the doors for 15 minutes when we took a 45 minute break.
Not as strange a load as you may think as I know that there are several loads a week still going down.
Basically they were carried at a temperature close to 4 degrees celsius (if I remember correctly) so that they stayed in hibernation mode,
I ran my reefer at 45 deg f which isnt far away. We are still using imperial here. It was a nice light load to take over the Colorado Rockies.
I ran with some bloke a few weeks back who was returning from taking a load of bee’s from FLorida to Maine and was now empty … He hated the job. 
I was asked if i wanted to do a load this week, I thought it’d be one of those jobs that seems easy at first but then you get a load of complications, sort of a sting in the tail thing, so I told the Boss to buzz off 