AGRICULTURE: Inland beekeepers getting stung by hive thefts
By Sarah Burge, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif. | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
Unless, of course, the thief is a beekeeper.
In
A recent bee caper in
The plaintiffs are alleging a sheriff's investigator was hoodwinked into helping a known bee thief, "the Jesse James of the beehive industry," steal their bees from a
"It's ones on the fringes," he said. "They're just making a quick buck."
Because bee boxes usually are left unattended among crops or at other remote locations, they are an easy target for thieves who know how to handle bees.
"For the most part, beekeepers are pretty honest people," said
But for some, he said, the temptation is too great.
"At almond time, you could pick up a hundred hives and get
BIG DEMAND FOR BEES
Beekeepers say thefts have spiked as the price growers pay to rent hives during the almond bloom has more than doubled since the mid-2000s. Beekeepers are now getting up to
The increase is driven by competing trends. There are fewer bees than there used to be -- a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder has led to mass die-offs over the past decade. Meanwhile,
It takes some 1.5 million hives to pollinate
Statistics on bee theft are hard to come by, but beekeepers, speaking anecdotally, say the
Wickerd said 180 to 200 of his hives turned up missing in
The man wasn't prosecuted, he said, because authorities didn't think they could prove the bees were stolen.
"He's a small-time beekeeper," Wickerd said. "His bees probably died so he was trying to replace them to keep his numbers up."
Mikolich said there was a rash of thefts in the rural
"Somebody drove in and took the bees off the pallets and carried them away," he said. "There were two or three hundred stolen within the period of about a month, but they couldn't prove anything. Nobody saw anything. I don't even know if the sheriffs got notified. All they could do is go off tire tracks."
In another case, about 100 hives belonging to a
Mikolich said he had heard of one wild case in the
Officials with the sheriff's departments in both
"We haven't paid out a reward for several years because nobody gets convicted," he said.
When hives are stolen, usually they're never found.
"They just disappear," Brandi said.
Even when they do turn up, it can be difficult to make a case. Many beekeepers don't follow the rules for marking their boxes and keeping sales records. Likewise, equipment changes hands so often it can be hard to determine the rightful owners.
Brandi said he knows of an incident in which
In a rare case this year, a man was arrested after a beekeeper posing as an almond grower discovered his stolen bee boxes in what he described as a "chop shop" for bees, Brandi said.
Deputy
"Do you have tracking devices on them? Do you have DNA? No. You can't say, 'Oh, this bee belongs to this beekeeper.'"
Though prosecutions are rare, Brandi said he thinks more and more people appreciate that bee theft is no laughing matter.
"I think, by and large, the general public, including law enforcement, are more cognizant of the fact that bees are ... a valuable part of our agricultural economy and our ecosystem. They realize that it's tough to keep bees alive, that a lot of bees have been dying. So they are not as nonchalant about it as maybe they were 20 years ago."
The bee theft that prompted the lawsuit against the
Investigator
It all started when
Months later, he called the
Deputies didn't take action until Allred complained again. In
According to Grassel's report, he and Allred returned to the farm a short time later and hauled away 160 hives after the insurance company representative agreed to take responsibility for them until the investigation ended. The insurance company immediately turned the hives over to Allred.
Meanwhile,
Allred, when he was 23, had been sentenced to prison in a 1976 theft of
Allred also had been convicted of possession of stolen property in connection with the theft of 400 hives in
"The most basic investigation by the
After learning of Allred's checkered history in the bee industry, Grassel consulted an investigator with the
Weeks later, after perusing receipts and interviewing beekeepers, Grassel concluded that he couldn't prove the bee boxes had been stolen from Allred and ordered them returned to Olney and Manning.
But by then, many of the boxes were missing and those that remained were in poor condition.
In May, Olney and Manning sued the
"They put the fox in charge of the hen house by turning these bees over to Allred," said attorney
The
Repeated efforts to reach Allred for comment were unsuccessful. Olney and Manning, through their attorney, also declined to comment.
Marchetti said Olney got into beekeeping several years ago and last year began working with Manning. The two had invested
"They're doing their best to revive their business," Marchetti said
Their lawsuit accuses sheriff's officials of acting as accessories to a crime.
"They took Allred at his word," the complaint says, aiding and abetting him in what the suit describes as the theft of the plaintiffs' bees.
Marchetti said his clients believe Grassel assumed they were guilty because they both have previous felony convictions unrelated to beekeeping. He faulted the investigator for not doing a proper background check of Allred, not obtaining a search warrant for the hives and for failing to ensure the bees would be secured and properly cared for after they were seized.
"I do think that the police feel they were taken advantage of," Marchetti said. "If Detective Grassel was doing his job in the first place, this wouldn't have happened."
When Grassel came to see her about the Allred case, she said, he seemed to be working hard to get a handle on it.
"It was a real mess for the detective to even remotely sort out who was telling the truth," she said. "It's kind of a crazy business."
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Contact the writer: 951-368-9694, [email protected]
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