The journey of around five million honeybees on their way to Alaska ended in tragedy recently as they were redirected by Delta Air Lines. After missing a connecting flight, the bees were left outside for days during which time most of them died from overheating and starvation.

The bees were being sent from Sacramento, California, to beekeeper Sarah McElrea in Anchorage, who has a honey business. The bees aren’t native to the region, so pollinators such as these bees are imported for commercial, hobbyist, and pollination purposes.

Disaster struck as the bees’ flight path was changed, instead sending them to Atlanta where they would catch a connecting flight to Anchorage. However, the plane carrying them didn’t land in time and instead the bees were left sitting with the airport’s cargo.

Some bees then escaped from the containers, so airport workers decided to move the crates containing the millions of insects outside of the cargo bay on hot tarmac. Here, the bees were exposed to high temperatures and kept without access to food for three days, reports The Washington Post.

When the bees didn’t arrive as scheduled in Anchorage, McElrea called on the help of the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association (MABA) to see if anyone could get to the bees in time and monitor the situation. Hobbyist beekeeper Edward Morgan answered the call.

“It had been really hot outside and the bees needed to be kept cool and they needed sugar syrup to survive,” Morgan told the Post. “[McElrea] told me it was urgent, so I hurried over to the airport with my bee vacuum, my bee boxes and a bunch of other equipment. I had no idea what to expect.”

Morgan realized the bees’ containers had been placed upside-down, reports The New York Times, which had made it impossible for them to reach the food contained within them. After being removed from the cooler by airport staff, they were also exposed to temperatures of around 83 °F (28.3 °C) which was too hot for them to tolerate.

Around a quarter of the five million bees were already dead when Morgan arrived, and in an attempt to save the others he put up an advertisement online for free bees for collection. Around 20 beekeepers rushed to the airport to assist but further inspection of the 200 crates revealed more and more dead bees.

While the total number lost isn’t known, Morgan and other members of the MABA did what they could to recover the survivors.

“I thought I was going to go help this woman get her bees on a plane,” he told the Times. “But it turned into something totally different. The bee community came together. Everybody was trying to make sure that these bees got a home.”