A beekeeper driving a swarm of bees to their new home ended up having a tense trip when the insects escaped their containers inside his vehicle.

Wallace Leatherwood had just picked up the bees and was transporting them home to Waynesville, North Carolina.

Mr Leatherwood stepped away from his vehicle to get lunch and came back to find about 3,000 bees crawling around the cab of his truck.

"I didn't have any shady place to sit them," Mr Leatherwood told local news station WLOS-13.

"When I came out, [one of the boxes] was black with bees, and there were bees everywhere. I thought, well, I don't know what to do.

"I didn't want to lose my bees. They were $US165 [per box].

"The girls are out. We got a problem," Mr Leatherwood is heard saying on vision he captured while sitting in traffic.

"Houston we have a problem … I'm driving along the road here. We got bees everywhere."

Onlooker Brandon Singleton captured another video of the same scene while Mr Leatherwood was stopped in Canton, North Carolina.

A bystander captured the bizarre sight on video. ( Facebook )

"This fool has got bees in his damned truck turned loose," Mr Singleton is heard saying.

Mr Leatherwood said he drove "40 plus miles" (65 kilometres) with the bees loose inside the cab of his truck.

Thankfully he was not stung while driving, but he did suffer a few stings while removing the bees from the truck later.