Boeing 757: Bees on Russian plane panic passengers.

Causing a buzz: A Russian airport official smuggled a hive of bees on to a plane, panicking passengers when they escaped.

(AFP, Saif Dahlah)

Talk about an odd plane incident.

Passengers aboard a Moscow-bound Boeing 757 flying from Blagoveshchensk were in for a nasty shock when bees started buzzing around the cabin mid-flight, Yakutia Airlines said Thursday.

A tipsy business-class passenger, it turned out, had smuggled two beehives on board at the request of the Blagoveshchensk airport's deputy director, who wanted them shipped to Moscow.

The shipment did not go smoothly, though. As soon as the Yakutia jet reached cruise altitude, the bees began to creep out of the two cardboard boxes that served as their hives, the airline said by e-mail.

The flight attendants managed to seal the bees inside the plane's wardrobe in the business-class section — where the boxes were held — by taping shut the wardrobe's doors.

It was not immediately clear whether the bees had actually stung anyone during the 10 hour, 40 minute flight, but several passengers panicked, the airline said.

The incident took place on May 28 but was first reported Thursday by Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

The jet arrived at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport on schedule, but passengers had to wait two hours to collect their luggage because the flight engineer and airline officials had to kill the bees with an anti-bug spray, Dichlorvos, after police either failed to call sanitary and emergency officials on the pilot's request or failed to respond to it.

Consequently, the next leg of the plane's flight, to Barcelona, was delayed. When the plane arrived in Barcelona, the next crew discovered five bees that managed to survive the insecticide in the cabin.

The beehive smuggler, whose name was not released, said the airport's deputy director, Anatoly Smirnov, had asked him to hand the bees over to an unidentified person in Moscow, the airline said.

Another passenger said the man with the bees was "slightly drunk" upon boarding, documents provided by the airline said.

Blagoveshchensk is a city in the far eastern Amur region and located on the border with China.

After the incident, the airline requested that Blagoveshchensk prosecutors check the airport's observance of safety rules. The subsequent check found unspecified violations that the airport's management was ordered to eliminate, the airline said.

The violation of flight safety rules carries a fine of 2,500 rubles ($86) for officials and up to 5,000 rubles for legal entities. It was unclear whether anyone had been fined over the beehive incident.

Source: http://www.themoscowtimes.com