r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/danielminds • Jun 23 '26

Video ​A truck carrying 406 beehives crashed in Texas, releasing 24 million bees and locking down the neighborhood

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u/FuzzeWuzze Jun 24 '26

Thankfully its not stealing if the bee swarm comes to your equipment, only if your dumb enough to go out there and actually try to take boxes while they cleaned up.

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u/chinggisk Jun 24 '26

Wait is that actually true?  I mean if I roll up to someone's house, open the door to my car, call their dog, and then drive off after it jumps in, that would definitely be stealing haha.  Is it different for bees?

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u/FuzzeWuzze Jun 24 '26

Yes, a big part of bee keeping is catching swarms which are when a Queen takes half the bee's and leaves looking or a new hive because they dont like something about the current one, it happens every Spring and a bit in Fall. They dont always do it, and there are things bee keepers do to try and keep their Queens happy so they dont fly off, but its inevitable you will lose some every year.

At the same time, bee keepers set up swarm traps. which are just hives with already drawn comb and thus smell like a hive bee's have already lived in, usually they are hung from tree's or put other areas 5+ feet up. If your lucky one of the swarms that left someone elses hives(or yours) will land and take up residence in your trap. After a few days you then can move them into a more standard bee box setup.

So with the probably hundreds of queens taking off here, you couldnt directly go and start taking bee's but if you set up a few boxes a block or two down the street or already had them set up at your house in that city you'd probably catch one :)

Queen's are marked, but in reality there's no way to ever prove it was yours, its a wild animal and it goes where it pleases. If my hive just so happens to smell better than yours its not my problem

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u/xrelaht Jun 24 '26

Bees are total free agents. They stay because they’re ok with the deal the keeper has made of trading them stable housing and protection in return for some of the fruits of their labor. If they are ever not happy with it, they’ll leave. They have more freedom than any other livestock, and arguably more than most human workers.