A semi-truck full of millions of bees overturned near Crater Lake and the beekeeper who showed up three days later was not prepared for what she found

A semi-truck carrying millions of bees overturned on Highway 230 near Crater Lake National Park on March 17, scattering hundreds of commercial beehive boxes down a steep embankment and closing the highway for several hours. The truck, registered to LeFore Farm Fresh Honey LLC, flipped approximately nine miles past rural Prospect on the road toward Bend. The story gained wider attention as reported by BroBible, after the beekeeper who investigated the site days later posted a video that drew millions of views.

The driver, the only person in the vehicle, sustained minor injuries and declined medical treatment. Oregon State Police confirmed the incident, and Julie Denney, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Transportation, noted that crews had to approach the scene carefully given the number of bees in the air. The exact cause of the crash remains unknown.

Eagle Point beekeeper Tristen Tartaglia heard about the accident over a scanner and assumed the situation had been handled. Three days later, curiosity and concern for the bees prompted her to go check for herself. What she found was not a cleared highway. Looking down the steep slope, she saw hundreds of boxes strewn across the forest.

Nobody was doing anything about the bees when she got there

“I was horrified,” Tartaglia told Central Oregon Daily. She began filming immediately, then started piecing together broken boxes so the bees might survive the approaching cold front. There was no caution tape and no sign of active rescue efforts. Tartaglia and her partner, Chuck Skeen, recognized that the bees would not survive dropping night temperatures and incoming rain without intervention. They were also concerned about the summer wildfire risk posed by the wax and honey left in the smashed hives.

Tartaglia posted a video to social media urging anyone with bee suits and a willingness to help to meet at the location the following Monday. The post accumulated 2.5 million views in under two days, drawing a response that surprised even her. Much like the Fruit Love Island TikTok creator who found herself at the center of an unexpected wave of public engagement that same week, Tartaglia had not anticipated the scale of what her video would set in motion.

Fifty volunteers arrived the next day and completed in 15 minutes what had taken Tartaglia an entire day on her own. People came from Eugene, Roseburg, Crescent City, and Yreka, California. Beekeeper Tyler Hawkins described working through layer after layer of smashed hives stacked against each other. With roughly 420 boxes involved and each estimated to contain between 30,000 and 50,000 bees, coordinators put the total at somewhere between 12 and 20 million bees. Volunteers used a daisy-chain method to navigate the heavily wooded canyon and retrieve broken boxes for repair.

LeFore Farm Fresh Honey LLC, which has operated in Oregon since 1999, reportedly declined to attempt recovery of the surviving bees. It was Tartaglia who organized the rescue. Her friend Trisha Falcone, who saw the video from Yreka, stepped in to help manage the response online. “Tristen is pretty driven in anything she does,” Falcone told the Times, adding that she knew Tartaglia would not stop until she had saved every bee she could.

The three-day rescue effort, which continued at a smaller scale for cleanup and locating surviving clusters, ultimately saved more than half of the displaced bees. Tartaglia, a member of the Southern Oregon Beekeepers Association, credited Oregon State Police for allowing the retrieval and emergency responders for not using chemical foam to subdue the bees, which would have killed them. Amid broader government response failures drawing national attention that week, the Oregon bee rescue stood out as a case where a community acted without waiting for official direction.

Tartaglia described the bees as extremely healthy, which she believes contributed to their survival. Reflecting on the experience, she said being surrounded by hundreds of swarms at once was something she would not forget.