Inserting a lot of big numbers into a mysql database

The tutorials online about inserting images and other binary data into a database have you put it in a character buffer and use mysql_real_escape_string() on it. The thing is, characters are 1 byte. I have 2-byte numbers, a huge array of them, that I need to insert into a database blob. I tried looping through and doing an UPDATE for each unsigned 16-bit number, to append it to the blob, but of course that was very, very slow.

How can I do this efficiently?

if(fwindex + (nmemb*size) + 1 >= CHUNK_SZ || do_exit == 1){
    MYSQL_STMT *stmt = mysql_stmt_init(con);
    MYSQL_BIND param[1];

    time(&rawtime);
    info = localtime(&rawtime);
    snprintf(dbuf, 16, "%d-%02d-%02d", 1900+info->tm_year, 1+info->tm_mon, info->tm_mday);
    snprintf(tbuf, 16, "%02d:%02d:%02d", info->tm_hour, info->tm_min, info->tm_sec);

    char *tmp = "INSERT INTO %s (date, time, freq, data) VALUES ('%s', '%s', %d, ?)";
    int len = strlen(tmp)+strlen(db_mon_table)+strlen(dbuf)+strlen(tbuf)+sizeof(dongle.freq); 
    char *sql = (char *) malloc(len);
    int sqllen = snprintf(sql, len, tmp, db_mon_table, dbuf, tbuf, dongle.freq);

    if(mysql_stmt_prepare(stmt, sql, strlen(sql)) != 0){
        printf("Unable to create session: mysql_stmt_prepare()\n");
        exit(1);
    }

    memset(param, 0, sizeof(param));
    param[0].buffer_type = MYSQL_TYPE_MEDIUM_BLOB;
    param[0].buffer = fwbuf;
    param[0].is_unsigned = 0;
    param[0].is_null = 0;
    param[0].length = &fwindex;

    if(mysql_stmt_bind_param(stmt, param) != 0){
        printf("Unable to create session: mysql_stmt_bind_param()\n");
        exit(1);
    }

    if(mysql_stmt_execute(stmt) != 0){
        printf("Unabel to execute session: mysql_stmt_execute()\n");
        exit(1);
    }

    mysql_stmt_close(stmt);
    free(sql);
    fwindex = 0;

Update Added code