Who Stole All These Fucking Bees?
Did you steal millions of bees from California beekeepers this year? If so—buddy, why’d you do that? You just stole millions of fucking bees.
Nearly 2,000 of California’s beehives, which hold tens of thousands of vicious, godforsaken bees at $200 a pop, have gone missing this year. And California’s beekeepers, who should really just be thankful to have a few less venom-soaked merchants of hell in their backyard, smell foul play. According to NPR:
Bee brokers who arrange contracts between beekeepers and almond growers are discovering that there are not enough beehives to go around, driving up demand, rental costs — and thefts.
Because of the expertise required to steal hives, the general consensus is that beekeepers are behind the heists.
“Beekeepers have the knowledge and equipment to go in and take the hives and the market to profit from them,” Qualls says.
One county in California was the target of multiple “large-scale” hive heists, in which thieves have taken up to 200 hives at once. And since most of these buzzing boxes of death are unmarked, it’s impossible to know whether or not a hive was stolen. Plus, even if they are branded, bee-loving assholes can still “remove the frames (the guts of the hive that are covered with bees and laden with honey) and put them in new, unmarked hive bodies.”
According to Detective Jay Freeman, who must have done something unspeakable to be assigned the task of actively seeking out winged barbs of poison, “someone who knows how to handle them can move 200 hives in a matter of minutes.”
For what it’s worth, someone who doesn’t know how to handle them can probably move 200 hives in a matter of minutes, too. Though it’ll probably be the last thing they ever do. Because afterwards, they will be dead.
