Mike Radford has been shipping and delivering honeybees to Alaska for 10 years, but a recent incident resulting in the death of 3.2 million bees has him banned from using Alaska Airlines shipping services and the loss of thousands of dollars.

Radford is a Sequim resident who raises bees for his own sustainability purposes, but also delivers bees through his company Northwest Bee Supply.

He delivers bees throughout the Northwest, including Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Western Montana and Alaska — where he must fly out bee shipments in the shortest amount of time possible to provide his clients with the best quality of bees.

In early May, a shipment of nearly 2,000 bees was damaged at a net worth of about $23,000, Radford said.

While the Sequim businessman said mishandling of the cargo caused the loss of goods, Alaska Airline contends Radford did not pack the bees correctly.

Split shipments

When Radford went to ship 1,940 pounds of live honeybees from a straight flight from Portland International Airport to Anchorage International Airport through Alaska Airlines, Portland International representatives informed him on May 1 that planes changed with the new plane holding less load capacity.

He said he chose to split his load with one shipment flying out in the morning on May 4 and another flying out later in the evening that same day.

Radford said when he showed up on the morning of May 4 Alaska Airlines accepted the load as it was. He said the airline loaders came up to load his shipment of live bees and as the forklift driver started picking up the pallet of bees, he dumped 12 packages on the floor of the cooler.

“I righted the bees and cleaned up the mess and took care of the bees then loaded them back on the pallet,” he said.

When Radford left to get his second load, he said he got a call from a Portland International manager and notified him the load got bumped by an estimated 1,400 pounds. She said it would fit in the night load but Radford said he thought it would not fit and didn’t want to take a chance of having the whole load not show up in Anchorage.

He said a station manager said he could set up a travel flight to send the shipment into Alaska later that day but it would go through Seattle/Tacoma International Airport.

Radford said he later got a call from his son in Alaska that Alaska Airlines damaged boxes of bees on the flight he was going to meet. There were a few damaged boxes and bees found on the outside of the boxes.

He got another call when returning with a second load for the evening flight that Seattle had grounded an airplane because of bees found outside another damaged box.

“(The manager) then informed me no bees would be flown to Alaska,” he said. “I later found out it meant I was banned from flying bees to Alaska.”

Fragile cargo

Radford said he later discovered other freight had fallen into the boxes when the load was in the belly of the aircraft and had shifted, falling on the screens of boxes holding the bees allowing some to escape.

He said he told aircraft personnel to put the bees in a cooler of 50 degrees because otherwise they would get too hot from flying.

“They can’t be hot; when they fly they get hot,” Radford said. “They melt down they can’t get away from their own heat.”

Radford said the bees were put in sealed baggage carts on a ramp while they vacuumed up the loose bees. The bees in the baggage carts became too hot and died due to overheating and no air circulation.

Radford said 72 of the 200 packages of bees made it to Alaska but 128 packages did not. He found dead bees in the 128 packages of cargo that got bumped from Portland International to Seattle/Tacoma.

In pictures he presented, he said the bees should be swarming around the queen at the top of each box but instead he found most of them clumped together and dead at the bottom.

“The bees should be clustered around the queen,” he said.

He said he was told by airline personnel that when his shipment was dropped on the ramp before the flight it caused the load to be late to the gate and that is why his shipment was bumped.

“They never should bump livestock like this,” Radford said. “Because of this fragility is why I put them on a direct flight and follow the bees up to Alaska on the same flight so that I can monitor the progress if anything happens along the way,” he added.

Radford said he was handed a damage claim form to fill out so he could be reimbursed for the loss of his shipment.

Radford said he sent in the damage claim form on Monday, May 22, and has received a shipping reimbursement from Alaska Airlines but still is waiting to be reimbursed from the insurance he had on his shipments.

Shipments banned

On May 8, Channel 2 News KTUU (Anchorage, Alaska) corrected a story they reported that outlined the possibility of beekeepers in Alaska who may not be able to receive orders of bees because of Radford’s ban.

Alaska Airlines operational communications manager Ray Lane issued a statement that said, “To clarify earlier reports that circulated, Alaska Airlines and Alaska Air Cargo have NOT banned shipments of bees.”

“We’ve supported bee movements to Alaska for years, shipping on average 24,000 pounds of bees a year. Just two weeks ago, we moved three shipments of bees and three more shipments went out the next day, with several more shipments planned before the season ends.”

But in the statement Lane did detail Alaska Airlines’ side of the story regarding Radford’s bees:

“It is true that we banned one bee shipper from Portland when he repeatedly did not pack his insects correctly in two separate shipments. The packaging of his shipments arrived in Anchorage on May 4 with loose netting, causing a number of bees to escape. Our employees did a great job of containing the bees without injury, but it was an unfortunate situation that we go to great lengths to avoid.

“We did offer to work with the shipper and train him how to safely package and ship his bees; however, he refused our offer.”

Radford read this response from KTUU and said the airline blamed him for the damage. He refuted their claim they offered him training on how to ship bees.

“They say it was inferior packaging because the freight fell on it and it didn’t survive,” Radford said.

“If they don’t want the load, they don’t have to accept it.”

This is a similar statement given to KTUU on May 8 when the news outlet requested information from Alaska Airlines about the issue.

“Alaska Airlines told all the newspapers that it was my fault they destroyed my load on their planes,” Radford said. “In reality, it was due to mishandling of the bees and then setting the bees in baggage carts sealed up in the heat and not getting them to a cooler before they heated up and died.”