--- title: Driver Caught With Car Full of Freely Flying Honey Bees description: The Montana Highway Patrol cited a motorist for reckless driving a car full of bees. canonical: https://time.com/3907142/honey-bees-car/ author: Sam Frizell article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-03T15:11:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:03:04.404Z og:title: This Guy Drove Around With Thousands of Bees Flying Freely in His Car og:description: He was cited for reckless driving og:url: https://time.com/3907142/honey-bees-car/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt92f8d5f7191f0242/698852c90b72e337dc6e44aa/bees-montana.jpg?branch=production&width=640&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 640 og:image:height: 360 og:image:alt: bees montana og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This Guy Drove Around With Thousands of Bees Flying Freely in His Car twitter:description: He was cited for reckless driving twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt92f8d5f7191f0242/698852c90b72e337dc6e44aa/bees-montana.jpg?branch=production&width=640&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Guy Thought It Was a Good Idea to Drive Around With Thousands of Bees Flying Freely in His Car > Sponsored content. 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It curates the day's top headlines with TIME's reporting and analysis across politics, world affairs, business, health and culture. It is free to join at time.com/newsletters. #### How do I sign up for The Brief? The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-brief-2026q3/newsletters?i=ce96b1ff-e002-4d55-9c4e-79c67b7391b4&cr=time-nl-brief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: TIME Explains: Why Bees Are Going Extinct [Watch (HLS stream): TIME Explains: Why Bees Are Going Extinct](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/dZuiDonP.m3u8) (1:41)  _Published 2013-08-07. The bees are dying and we're to blame. TIME's Bryan Walsh explains colony collapse disorder, and why bees are on the verge of extinction._ by [Sam Frizell](https://time.com/author/sam-frizell/) ## Sam Frizell Jun 3, 2015 3:11 PM UTC  Montana Highway Patrol by [Sam Frizell](https://time.com/author/sam-frizell/) ## Sam Frizell Jun 3, 2015 3:11 PM UTC A Montana driver was [cited](http://www.upi.com/Odd%5FNews/2015/06/02/Montana-motorist-cited-for-driving-with-car-full-of-bees/1781433270174/) for reckless driving after he was found with thousands of bees flying freely in his car. The Montana Highway Patrol troopers responded to a report on May 22 near Missoula of a “vehicle driving all over the road,” UPI reports. Police found a motorist was transporting five hives of bees that had been allowed to fly freely around the inside of the car. According to Montana’s beekeeper, the motorist’s method of transporting the bees did not require a permit, though it was “very unsafe.” The driver said the insects were “harmless” Russian honey bees. \[[_UPI_](http://www.upi.com/Odd%5FNews/2015/06/02/Montana-motorist-cited-for-driving-with-car-full-of-bees/1781433270174/)\] ## Transcript >> Albert Einstein once supposedly said that if bees disappeared from the face of the earth, mankind would only have four years left to live. There was no evidence that he actually said that, but he does touch on a real concern because the honeybees are disappearing. >> Those are all dead. All [ unk ] >> It's like that. >> The term is called colony collapse disorder and it refers to something that's been happening with honey beehives over the last decade or so. Suddenly, hives are dying. Bees are fleeing the hives for reasons we can't really understand. We lost 43 percent of bee colonies over the last year. That's important 'cause honeybees are a key part of agriculture. They pollinate a number of fruits and vegetables, from almonds to blueberries to apples to cherries, scores of other fruits. There's a number of possible reasons that's causing the colonies of honeybees to collapse. One is pesticides. There's a new class of chemicals called neonicotinoids. They have an impact on bee nervous systems. They have navigation problems. They have flying problems. It seems to kill them in large numbers. Another are parasites and mites that actually attack the beehives themselves. One is called the Varroa mite. It's been around for about 20 years and it's been probably the biggest single cause of bee loss in that time. And there's also the simple that bees are running out of nutrition. They usually depend on flowers, wilderness, wild spaces in order to pollinate, in order to gather pollen for their own hives. But increasingly, farmers, because the price of corn and soya bean has gone up so much in recent years, have been replacing all that open area with crops. And as a result, bees are encountering what's almost like a food desert for them. But the honeybees really do disappear. It's not likely that mankind will follow them in four years, but certainly, our dinners would become a lot less colorful and a lot less varied. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3907142/honey-bees-car/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3907142/honey-bees-car/"},"headline":"This Guy Thought It Was a Good Idea to Drive Around With Thousands of Bees Flying Freely in His Car","datePublished":"2015-06-03T15:11:22.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:03:04.404Z","description":"He was cited for reckless driving","url":"https://time.com/3907142/honey-bees-car/","keywords":["Newsfeed","animals","Bees"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt92f8d5f7191f0242/698852c90b72e337dc6e44aa/bees-montana.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sam Frizell","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/sam-frizell/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt92f8d5f7191f0242/698852c90b72e337dc6e44aa/bees-montana.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"bees montana","caption":"bees montana","creditText":"Montana Highway Patrol","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3907142/honey-bees-car/","name":"This Guy Thought It Was a Good Idea to Drive Around With Thousands of Bees Flying Freely in His Car"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"TIME Explains: Why Bees Are Going Extinct","description":"The bees are dying and we're to blame. 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