An Alberta beekeeper says he feels “helpless” after 57 of his hives were stolen from several places in Fothills.
Jon Zwiers, owner of Honey Meadows Farm, said he visited four bee yards this week and hives were missing in each location.
He said approximately $ 30,000 on bees and the team are gone.
“It is definitely a rattle because we do not know who is doing it and we do not know when it will stop. You feel helpless because this is our cattle and we have no answer,” he said.
Zwiers believes that the hives were stolen between April 17 and April 30.
“We are not still sure how we will replace them because I hope someone still comes up and says: ‘I made a mistake’ and return them … we are just trying to win an honest life.”
In addition to honey production, missing bees were important for pollination in the area, according to Zwiers, which lives about 15 kilometers southeast of Calgary.
His family has been maintaining bees for 40 years and has never been attacked by that large -scale robbery, he said.
Zwiers posted on the missing bees on social networks and said that the messages of support they received have provided a very necessary impulse.
“It was also almost emotional,” Zwiers said. “I have never faced this magnitude of a problem. Therefore, it was the heart blow.”
He believes that another beekeeper is responsible for robberies because a non -winner would not appreciate the value of the hives or know what to do with them.
Who took the bees probably went through a closed door to clearly marked private lands to access at least one of the yards of bees, he said.
The theft of bees is unusual in the province, according to the president of the Alberta Beekeepers Commission, Curtis Hydema, but not unknown.
“It has happened in the past, where bees hives have disappeared. I mean, usually on a smaller scale,” he said. “This is quite rare to hear such a great robbery.”
“As beekeepers, it is definitely something that is a bit alarming, because we are quite exposed in that way. Our bee hives are out of the fields of different people.”
To keep their hives safe, Medema said that beekeepers can install tracking devices in their hives or inside their hives, but those products have a cost and can also be stolen, he said.
High River RCMP has confirmed that they are investigating what happened with Honey Meadows Farm bees.
Zwiers asks anyone who sees that a large number of hives appear in a new location to contact the police.
