About 5 million honeybees bound for Alaska last weekend got stopped when Delta Air Lines made them travel through Atlanta, where most of the bees died after being left for hours in wooden containers on the ground during hot weather.
The bees were the first of two shipments(运输的货物) ordered by Alaska beekeeper Sarah McElrea from a distributor in California. The bees were about to put pollen(花粉) into apple trees in Alaska, where they are not native. The apple trees then would produce more seeds. But the bees were moved from their original route to Anchorage, Alaska, and instead put on a flight to Atlanta, where they were to be transferred to a direct flight to Anchorage, 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(转接班机). The next day, she said, Delta Air Lines told her some bees had escaped, so airline workers put the containers holding the bees outside a Delta cargo bay(货舱). 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.
In an emailed statement, Delta spokeswoman Catherine Morrow told The Associated Press on Friday that the airline “was made aware of the shipment situation...and quickly engaged the appropriate internal teams to assess the situation. 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 McElrea. But the airline declined to make anyone available for an interview.
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 extremely shocking to see that many dead,” Georgia beekeeper Julia Mahood said. “Just clumps(群) of dead bees that had no chance because they were left outside with no food and basically got lost in Delta’s machinery.”
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