Texas Fire World
July 11, 2005
Louis N. Molino, Sr.

The community of Lake Worth near Fort Worth was abuzz with bees and lots of them! Some estimates state that over a million bees recently swarmed the area near the Lake Worth bridge outside Fort Worth on July 5 and 6 after more than two-dozen boxes containing honey and hives toppled from a flatbed truck that was traveling through the area. The Lake Worth Fire Department sprayed the insects with foam to drive them back into their boxes and then the Public Works department used heavy machinery to push the boxes onto the grass median of the highway, said Lake Worth Police Chief Brett McGuire.

The incident began at about 11 p.m. Tuesday when the boxes fell onto Lake Worth Boulevard just east of the Lake Worth Bridge after the truck's driver apparently misjudged a curve, McGuire said. The highway was intermitantly closed by Texas Transportation Department workers for almost two hours during the cleanup.

"We had several officers, public works folks and firefighters that got stung just in the course of doing business," McGuire said. "We're still trying to clean bees out of cop cars."

David Lister, a state-certified beekeeper, was called to the scene July 6 to help control the situation. He reported that he counted more then 25 boxes of bees and that each box could hold an average of about 40,000 bees. He reported the swarm to be approximately 300 foot in diameter around the site where the boxes were toppled off the truck.