The journey of a honey bee

Every town has a mail carrier, teacher and police officer but not every town has a honey bee hauler. Tom Wheelan, of Washington, transports about 2 million bees at a time from California back to the Midwest all in the spirit of having a good story to tell.

He got the job a few years ago when a buddy asked him if he would be interested in transporting bees from California or Georgia, back to the Midwest. He jumped at the chance and has been hauling them for the past three years.

Wheelan picks up the bees from farms in the two states and travels back to the Midwest, making stops along the way to drop them off to honey producers in the Midwest.

'The farmers basically use the hives to pollinate. In California it's mostly almond (trees),” he said.

Before Wheelan gets there, the farmers shake the bees into packages. The packages are wooden boxes with screens on both sides and a metal funnel in the middle. The funnel contains sugar water for the bees to feed off during the trip.

The packages are all attached to pallets and stacked into the trailer. With anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 bees per package, Wheelan can have as many as 2 million bees in his truck at any time.

He said he has a bee suit, but rarely wears it and instead opts for gloves when removing the packages.

'Unless you give them a reason to be mad at you, like if you try to brush them off a queen or something, they just really don't care,” he said.

The bees are hauled in a refrigerated semitrailer to keep them cool. In their packages, the bees huddle around the queen to keep it warm and produce lots of heat. Too much heat can result in the bees dying off, so Wheelan has temperature gauges in the truck so he can keep it climate controlled.

If temperatures outside are too warm and the bees need more oxygen, there are windows cut into the sides of the trailer that can be opened to provide air flow. When the air is cool, the bees cluster, which not only keeps them alive, but keeps Wheelan from getting stung.

The bees have about four days' worth of sugar water in their package and need to get to their destination in that time. Wheelan said he takes about 10 trips a year between March 15 and May 1 because bees can only be shaken into their packages during a certain time of year.

During the other months of the year, Wheelan works in physical therapy. However, for a few months a year, he hops in his truck and transports a few million of his closest friends across the Midwest. He said before his friend asked him to drive, he never would have thought of doing it. Now, he cannot imagine not being part of the bee business.

'I've always liked learning things and doing different stuff and when he was like, ‘Do you want to haul bees?' I was like ‘Well, yeah, I've never done that before,'” he said with a laugh. 'It's just fun to be a part of something that makes the world go ‘round.”