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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: 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.

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  • (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.