"Revenge is a dish best served cold."
Bees are dying out already and they are critical plants and fruit trees, to pollinate so we have food.
So bees are very useful.
Why would someone decide to kill them. Evil.
Sounds like something PETA or those ELF Freaks would do.
I hope they catch the POS that did this and severely punish them!!
500,000 bees is somewhere between 10 and 20 hives.
hardly a big deal. As a crime, Its on the scale of someone’s motorcycle being stolen.
One healthy double deep hive can contain 50K bees - that’s one hive. Im thinking the loss of dozens of hives would be way more bees than that, unless they were early spring hive splits.
I had 18 hives last fall but lost 2/3 of mine this winter due to not being able to work them - injury and a brief illness. So I know that I probably had AT LEAST a million bees.
There are three main issues right now with bees. Number 1 is varroa mites. The other two are lack of variety in foraging areas and hive beetles.
They aren't. And I see the article states that the number of bees are declining which isn't true. However, killing this many bees is awful and pointless.
That’s a lot of bees.
But thee’s between 3 and 5 trillion bees in the US.
It still sucks and is wrong but there’s plenty of bees.
Also, beekeepers lost their lowest number of colonies since 2011, a good thing.
We’re in find shape bee-wise :)
senseless act of violence, probably for a thrill......
OMG, must be Satanists.
My guess: Somebody tried to steal them or their honey, got stung, and the accomplices went to town.
Some clown who was out for some fun, not knowing what he was doing is my guess. That is only about 5-8 beehives, despite the large number.
$15,728 raised so far. New hives and bees will be settled in by fall.
I can’t speak for honeybees but here where I live carpenter bees are ubiquitous right now
"Revenge is a dish best served cold."
I have to believe it was kids who thought it would be fun/funny to do this. Sad.
ENVIRONMENTAL TERRORISM.
Also, if every honey bee disappeared off the planet plants and fruit trees would still be pollinated.
Putting that aside, the person who set the fire is indeed evil.
I’ve driven past this location several times recently and wondered what those containers were for. I thought it might have something to do with raising fish in the pond. Didn’t know they were for beehives.
I recently moved back to Alvin, Texas where I’ve lived for the greater part of the time I’ve lived in Texas (about 25 years total, with about 10 in Alvin).
When I looked this up I discovered it happened practically at the end of my street. The national news gets some things wrong. Alvin is not “just south of Houston.” It is separated by Pearland or Friendswood—both fairly large towns—depending which direction you take from Houston. New York Times describes the location as “near a farm on the outskirts of the city of Alvin” which is also inaccurate. Alvin is a very large area, and this location is pretty near downtown Alvin (which is small but not tiny). So the location is not on the outskirts but pretty near the heart of the town, even though the location is still very rural and undeveloped.
It is just across the railroad tracks from one of the main highways (Hwy 6) that goes through the town. The farm they are talking about is probably Froberg’s which is also a farmer’s market. They have annual strawberry picking where folks go to pick their own. That’s a mile or so from the bees. There are plenty of other small farms or home gardens close by also. In fact the school district has a farm-related facility across from a junior high that is practically across the street from this location. There are no sidewalks, so children do not walk past this going to or from school. It is surrounded by mostly undeveloped land.
I happen to know a beekeeper here who goes to my gym. (He actually removed a beehive from the house I previously rented here.) Haven’t talked with him in years, but I saw him a few weeks ago at the gym. I’ll have to look out for him and see if he has more info.
In this small town I’d expect somebody knows who did this and might be incentivized to turn them in for the reward money. Hope they get to the bottom of it.
Flipping idiots!
How many bee hives would muzzies have to destroy before it affected our food supply?