How to handle bus bullies?

As a parent, the word which I do not wish to hear from my children is "bully". Apart from the little episode my eldest went through during Primary 1, luckily I was able to step in and informed the teacher to investigate further. Other than that, I seriously hate to see my children or other children being the victims of these bullies. I can't deny that there are bullies everywhere and how to handle these situations is beyond our control at times. That is why if parents have children who are very soft spoken or shy will tend to be the target of these bullies.

Now...I have been the chauffeur for my children for more than 2 years and its more or less part of our plan to put them back to school bus next year so that I can have more time dedicated to my work. When I try to tell YQ about this arrangement, she told me:" Mommy, my classmate XX told me that there are a lot of bullies in the bus and they even stole her basketball and twisted her hand....blah blah." When I heard these, negative thoughts started to form in my mind and I was seriously starting to worry about them. 

Maybe I was too paranoid, I started to imagine these scenarios whereby they will come home crying about these and that. All these students are coming from different classes and how is one bus driver going to control all these nonsense while he is driving? I consulted my hb about his thoughts and his answer was try to let our kids to handle these situations by themselves. After all, being too over protective is not going to solve all the problem. We'll just have to take one step at a time and observe.

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Have any of your kids encounter bus bullies before? How does your kid handle this problem?