Cactus Wither in Scorching Heat, and Thousands of Bees Escape Hives

This afternoon (July 30), at a beekeeping farm in Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province, where a heat wave warning was in effect, thousands of honeybees were clustered densely around the entrances of over eighty beehives.

As the scorching heat turned the inside of the hives into a steam bath, the bees evacuated to the outside.

Farmers tried blocking the sunlight with shades and spraying water every hour, but it was far from enough to cool down the intense heat.

[Reporter Kwon Min-gyu: The honeycomb I am holding right now is one that usually has about 5,000 bees on it. However, right now there are only about 1,500 bees on both sides. Because the weather is so hot, the bees have either escaped toward the entrance or scattered in all directions.]

[Jeong Byeong-woo / Beekeeper: First, hornets come. Second, toads come. They come at night and eat the bees.]

They are also anxious that the extreme heat is hindering queen bees from laying and hatching eggs, which could lead to mass die-offs.

[Kim Seon-hee / Former Gyeonggi Branch President, Korean Beekeeping Association: Even humans are struggling to survive right now. How can speechless insects endure this? I feel like temperatures are rising by about 2 degrees Celsius every year.]

Flower complexes are sharing the exact same worries.

Succulents and cacti are suffering from the heat, with ventilation fans being the only facilities available to cool them down.

[Reporter Kwon Min-gyu: We are deep inside a greenhouse spanning over 1,200 pyeong (approx. 3,966 square meters). The indoor temperature right now is 36.5 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit), exactly the same as human body temperature, and even cacti, which thrive in hot weather, have ended up dying like this.]

[Goo Hwa-soon / Flower Farmer: Since cacti are 90 percent water, they turn mushy if it gets too humid. A huge number of them die during the summer. There is simply nothing we can do.]

Amid an already sweltering summer, the hearts of farmers are burning with anxiety.

"Why Are They Acting Like This?" Clustered Tight... Honeybees Suddenly Die As Heat Wave Continues (July 30, 2026, 8 News)

Reported by Kwon Min-gyu | Written by Bae Jun-hwi | Filmed by Yang Ji-hoon | Video Edited by Choi Hye-ran | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.