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posted by martyb on Friday May 03 2019, @06:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the these-are-varroa-bad-people;-why-can't-they-bee-nice? dept.

On the night of April 26th, an unknown person or persons destroyed beehives that were home to over half a million bees in Alvin, Texas.

With the advent of Colony Collapse Disorder early this millennium, and the resulting drops in bee populations across the USA, Europe, and Asia, people and organizations have been making efforts to house, protect and nurture honeybee populations for the sake of their crops, the good of the environment, or as a service to humanity at large.

Use of the land for the bees destroyed was donated by a private citizen and the location is visible to the road so passers by can watch and enjoy the bee keepers working with the bees.

Then we get people that do things like this:

Over the weekend, someone set fire to two dozen bee colonies in Alvin, Texas belonging to the Brazoria County Beekeepers Association. The perpetrator also dumped some of the bee boxes into a nearby pond.

According to one of the beekeepers:

I broke down in tears when I saw a floating brood frame in the water with bees still caring for the brood.

It is expected that the perpetrators were very likely stung and the community is on the lookout for individuals with bee stings.

Perhaps more remarkably, this is not a completely new idea. Multiple Facebook comments speak of past attacks on bees elsewhere attributed to teenagers and rival bee keepers.

We've already seen bees persevering through fire and smoke, according to beekeepers the surviving bees are stressed and many will have lost their queens, but is also possible some hives will survive.

Previous coverage of Bee troubles:
Some Honeybee Colonies Adapt in Wake of Deadly Mites
Backyard Beekeeping Now Legal in Los Angeles
Honeybees Pick Up 'Astonishing' Number of Pesticides Via Non-crop Plants
Bees Dead from Aerial Zika Spraying in South Carolina
Pesticide Companies' Own Secret Tests Showed Their Products Harm Bees
Extensive Study Concludes Neonicotinoid Pesticides Harm Bees
EU Bans Outdoor Use of Pesticides That Harm Bees


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @07:08AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @07:08AM (#838333)

    I don't care the reasons for this, but the guys responsible should go to jail until they have made up for all the damage, and I don't care if it take them their life and their offsprings'. This is the fate that should await intentional polluters and destroyers of nature, regardless the debate around the impact of human activity on the climate (that I personally deem scarcely relevant).

    • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @11:43AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @11:43AM (#838360)

      It was Trump on one of his drunken nazi rampages.

      • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @01:27PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @01:27PM (#838380)

        Displaying your continued butthurt will get him re-elected.
        Get this: people will vote for him, not because they think he's a capable president, but just to spite crybabies like you.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday May 03 2019, @06:02PM (2 children)

          by bob_super (1357) on Friday May 03 2019, @06:02PM (#838487)

          Democracy* sucks, since there is never a test to prove that the properly weighed well-being of the country is the primary driver for your choice of A vs B and C.

          *: It ain't a real democracy if the person with less votes wins, anyway. Some people should not be more equal than others.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @10:21PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @10:21PM (#838606)

            Good thing the US isn't a democracy then...

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @08:20PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @08:20PM (#839344)

            Too soon?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @03:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @03:35PM (#839243)

      Advocating the punishment of an innocent for crimes committed by another is evil. I don't care how egregious the crime, harming innocents to satisfy your emotional need for revenge isn't acceptable. Please kill yourself.

  • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @07:13AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @07:13AM (#838334)

    Probably a neighbor whose child is allergic to bees. I know if my child was allergic and some dipshit set up hives containing millions of bees next door I'd burn that shit down too.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @08:22AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @08:22AM (#838344)

      Right, and hitler couldn't stand jews either.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @10:20AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @10:20AM (#838349)

      It was a neighbor wanting to put down oil drills and being denied by the county over the bees presence.

      • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @05:28PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @05:28PM (#838465)

        stupid fuck should have shot the fucking county parasites instead of harming innocent bees like a coward.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @11:35AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @11:35AM (#838358)

      or, you know, you could talk to the people who put the bees there, figure a way out of the situation.
      in any case, children don't need to be allergic in order to die from a bee attack (grown-ups who are not allergic can also die).
      but I'm under the impression that sane people who are allergic to bees tend to leave in cities, not in the countryside. not necessarily because of the lack of bees in cities, but because of the proximity to hospitals.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Friday May 03 2019, @03:28PM (1 child)

      by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 03 2019, @03:28PM (#838433) Journal

      I would think killing off the non-aggressive honeybees so that the Africanized ones can spread easier doesn't sound like a great plan though.

      --
      В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @07:49AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @07:49AM (#838340)

    It was those darn anti-apiarists, or the anti-μέλισσες, racist and speciesist scum of the earth.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by SpockLogic on Friday May 03 2019, @11:43AM

    by SpockLogic (2762) on Friday May 03 2019, @11:43AM (#838361)

    Texas trying to out stupid Florida.

    --
    Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @12:49PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @12:49PM (#838372)

    "Honeybees are not indigenous to North America".

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @02:51PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @02:51PM (#838423)

      Neither are humans, so... your point?

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @03:07PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @03:07PM (#838427)

        and neither are horses ...
        but oddly camels are ...

        • (Score: 5, Informative) by HiThere on Friday May 03 2019, @04:08PM

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 03 2019, @04:08PM (#838441) Journal

          Actually, horses *are* indigenous to North America. It's true they died out for awhile, but North America is where they evolved. They've been here ever since hyracotherium (i.e. eohippus).

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday May 04 2019, @02:24AM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Saturday May 04 2019, @02:24AM (#838672) Journal

    The politics around bees, and nature in general, is crazy. There are so many possible motives, from allergies to bee stings to hatred of environmentalism, to the sort of malicious teenage behavior of committing vandalism just because they were bored and it was easy, that we'll have to wait for the perp or perps to be identified and questioned to find out why.

    Two things that could help bees greatly is end the extremism about lawns, and the lying about pesticides. It's upsidedown nuttiness that lawns are such burdens. All through history, rain and green growing grass meant good times. More food for the herds. Then in a few short decades, lawns somehow became high maintenance accessories. Maybe it was the advent of the power mower that enabled the current idiocy around lawns, very well summed up here [richsoil.com]. It's so bad that if you don't care for your lawn in a manner deemed fitting, you could even be punished, with large fines.

    As for pesticides, particularly sick was the reporting on and the whole idea of Colony Collapse Disorder. They gave it a label, as if only bees were affected, and made out like it was some big mystery. It wasn't. It was pesticides, in particular, neonics. Pesticide manufacturers tried to sow confusion about the causes, and it worked, for a few years.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 04 2019, @11:02AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 04 2019, @11:02AM (#838784)

      CCD has been around longer than neonics, and the causes are inbreeding, over-large hive boxes, and mites.

  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday May 04 2019, @05:27AM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday May 04 2019, @05:27AM (#838720)

    What else is there to say? Only in America does such stupidity exist. Well, maybe some other backwards places like Somalia can compete with this level of stupidity, but you won't see this kind of idiocy in any developed nation.

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