Vandals smash beehives, killing 500k bees | Hacker News Reader

Vandals smash beehives, killing 500k bees

beta.latimes.com

196 pointsDoreenMichele97 comments

This doesn't seem like vandals, but more a competitor or someone who wanted to hurt them for something they did.

Destroying 50 beehives is a job.

My other thought was it was someone stung by a bee in the area.

It's winter. Someone was stung by a bee during bee season and has been stewing until now? Besides, whose reaction to a bee sting is to anger half a million more bees?

You have to make sure they get the message the first time.

Ender versus the hive queen, eh?

"When you strike at a queen, you must kill her."

The article is published by the Los Angeles Times, but the incident occurred in Iowa.

Commercial hives are normally sealed during winter in places that are in even the slightest way cold.

That doesn't really seem plausible.

lostlogin posted some links to better stories, but the short of it is that the 50 hives were knocked over into the snow, which probably led to the tops falling off, etc. and the death of the bees. It's quite possible that there's not a huge amount of physical damage to the hives themselves unless they're large and heavy enough to have broken badly when they hit.

I believe you're referring to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16042243

It mentions other related equipment also being destroyed, which also strongly hints that this isn't just plain vandalism.

Technically, they're vandals. They vandalized someone else's property. The motive doesn't change that fact.

Would there not be different, added charges if the perpetrators were competitors trying to sabotage the victim?

Technically, they committed criminal mischief and theft, maybe other crimes.

'Vandalism' isn't a legal term, but rather a lay characterization of a kind of criminal damage. It's also associated with casual destruction/damage of property rather than criminal enrichment. Motivation matters a lot in criminal law.

Envy, boredom, anger, signaling to others or showing off were good enough reasons for vandalism amongst many of the kids I went to school with. Financial gain wasn't a requirement for them to be destructive.

Smashing 50 beehives is a lot for plain vandalism. Smashing 1 or 2 you'd get the haha, but you'd have to be particularly motivated to go after all 50. Plus, you'd need at least some planning to not get stung.

> Plus, you'd need at least some planning to not get stung.

That is just what I was thinking.

Without a bee suit, attacking even a single bee hive seems like a very bad idea. Last year, I got stung by a bee that got trapped under the straps of my bike helmet, and it really hurt. Plus, I had to remove the sting. And that was just a single bee.

EDIT: Yeah, I did not take the winter into consideration. When I got stung, it was summer. facepalm

It's winter, the bees were hibernating. They won't be able to fly for more than a second or two in the cold if they were warm enough to get going.

It happened in Iowa.

You get better at getting stung (except for the rare individual who gets worse). The first hurts, then it declines over the season. The ones I get in my hands I sometimes don’t even feel but come across later when cleaning up. The ones in my legs hurt. I got 6 or 7 last week and it swelled too. Maybe don’t wear shorts and jandles.

I never considered getting stung by insects a career. ;-)

I got stung by a wasp when I was like 6 years old, and it kind of traumatized me, so I was rather careful ever since.

The 10,000 stings thing has been disproven Im told.

Unless you have very aggressive bees, you can open them up and do stuff without them getting too upset. You can see their posture change, then you get the odd one bumping into you, and then it’s all on. However squash a bee and it stings, open them in bad weather or get water in there and you will be punished. Having smoke handy helps and having a veil on keeps your face beautiful for work the next day.

Wasps are a different story and they seem to have aggression and no other state.

But this is in Iowa with snow on the ground. I would think that lower than 50 degree F, insects can't really move too much at those temps?

I can't help but be reminded of this classic /r/legaladvice thread:

> My niece has gotten into veganism and animal rights. She basically destroyed a bee farm near where she lives by sneaking in there in the middle of the night, trying to release the bees and destroying all the hives and the honeymaking equipment [...] She is not 18 yet but the cops are going to charge her as an adult. They say she caused almost $100,000 in damage.

https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/3xalu0/texas_m...

Are bee farms a target of animal rights activists? That's the closest thing to a credible motive I've come across for this incident so far. If so, the top comment from that thread sums up my reaction:

> Of all the animals to "free," she chose... bees... The insects that basically go about a normal life in "captivity," except that they're more protected from predators and other issues that could cause them harm...

One of the top comments in that thread, however, calls it a troll:

> A clear villain, a moronic crime, a clueless OP, and a legal question that basically boils down to "can a person who is caught doing something illegal be punished for it". This posts checks all the boxes for a troll.

The fact that I never heard about that case, while this is at least the third time I've come across this one (at half the damage) today, would appear to support that hypothesis.

Perhaps the present incident is just another case of life imitating reddit?

Juvenile "animal rights" activist releasing bees? That's dumb. The bees were free to roam as they please anyway. This is exactly how African killer bees "escaped" from several experimental hives. They were set free by someone.

Beekeepers do care a lot for their bees' well being, by providing a hive and moving it in a place where the bees can thrive. Otherwise they'd go out of business.

If that company provides any pollination services at all to local farms, the $50k is nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars of potential economic damage depending on what sort of crops they assist with.

How much damage does it take to, say, get the FBI looped in on this?

It has to be a federal crime. If the bees where pollinating across state lines, then there might be a case. An arbitrary dollar amount doesn’t make something federal.

It does in one way: priorities.

Really? I've heard of the FBI becoming involved in the investigation of a crime seemingly due solely to its large monetary impact.

Me too it was on x files

Everything is a federal crime. It's enough that some of the fruit they pollinated might or might not be sold within the state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

Typically bees are used for honey or pollination, not both. Benefits to the local farms from a honey operation like this are a positive externality. If farmers were (knowingly) relying on it they'll hire pollinators (as they would if they honey people weren't there), not let the crops fail.

I've purchased honey from pollinators, never knew they were mostly separate.

The market value of their pollinating services is likely built into the damage figure (It's a competitive market and there probably won't be a shortage due to this one act of vandalism).

A lot of field crops wind or self pollinate, so bees aren't doing anything for them anyway (corn, wheat, soy, stuff like that).

> because insurers don't offer beehive insurance

This surprises me. Is it just a matter of "nobody thought to get into this market yet"? I'd thought this was the role that Lloyds of London already played. If a bunch of Black churches from Alabama had access to Lloyds of London back in 1956, what are the barriers to a farmer from Iowa in 2017?

Canadian here: the government offers insurance here for bees. It's not particularly profitable, so the gov't had to pick it up as a service.

if it's not profitable, what they should do is raise the premiums, not subsidize it by operating it at a loss.

edit: downvoters:

i'm all for the government running a insurance program if nobody is willing to, but it shouldn't do it at a loss. subsidizing beekeepers distorts the market to the detriment of other crops (that don't need bees for polination) and other polination methods (humans? drones?). it's the same with free roads subsidizing the trucking industry (trucks cause disproportionately more damage to the roads compared to what they pay in taxes) to the detriment of other transportation methods, and low cost flood insurance subsidizing housing in flood zones to the detriment of low risk areas.

I don't think you've thought this through, generally insurance premiums are high if there is a lot of risk and low if there is not much risk. If risk is low and you have a small market, like say beekeepers, your profit is small. If you increase your premiums at this point you would decrease your profits even further because people get insurance based on a calculated trade-off regarding risk and premiums. In other words nobody in a low-risk insurance market is going to buy your policies if they have a high premium.

Why? Does every single human endeavor really need to make a profit for someone? Can it not be possible that the Canadian government feels that a Canada with beekeepers is better than one without, and has chosen to allocate some of its money to make it a little easier to be a beekeeper?

> Does every single human endeavor really need to make a profit for someone?

No, but endeavors that are profitable tend to be more self-sustaining and less fragile and less susceptible to the grace of politicians and special interests.

Note, I'm not saying that markets are the solution to everything, nor am I saying they are the most optimal solution to everything. I just think it's important to consider what you give up when you give up a profitable enterprise.

Not every human endeavor has to make a profit. However, most do have to make a profit, otherwise total wealth decreases until we all starve to death.

If an activity doesn't make a profit, generally people unconnected with it shouldn't be forced to subsidize it unless there is a really good reason, like specific and well-understood positive externalities to the activity.

I have no issue with people doing beekeeping (or skateboarding or painting or snowshoeing) as a hobby. But I see no reason I should be forced to do more work I don't want to do in order that someone else can do their hobby that they do want to do.

It's ironic that you're commenting on bee hive insurance, something that is essential in nearly every kind of food production, by claiming that the state offering it at a loss will lead to everyone starving to death.

If "bee populations are declining, we need bees to make food, we should encourage people to keep bees by limiting the amount of risk they have to take" isn't a really good reason, I don't know what is.

>we should encourage people to keep bees by limiting the amount of risk they have to take

or you know, by the beekeepers charging more for the service. if pollination is really that essential, they shouldn't have any problem getting farmers to accept the price increases. otherwise it's just another subsidy that distorts the marketplace (against other pollination methods, or crops that don't require bee pollination)

You can't possibly be comparing companies subsidized by the government and the critical natural importance of bees. This can't be real.

so you're saying we should subsidize beekeepers (keeping european honeybees, by the way) as a environmental protection program, because otherwise there's nothing else to pollinate the natural native plants?

Honeybees are not native to North America. They actually may have a negative impact on native species.

Not only honey bees polinate crops. In fact there are thousands of bee species around the world and particularly in Brazil, where they produce honey and the european/african honeybees are non-native as well. I think we both can agree that the Amazon and Atlantic jungles and rainforest managed to be polinated just fine without the bees you talk about. When you consider only honeybees you know in North America you are artificially restricting the problem that is much more widespread.

When you plant tens of miles in each direction with a single crop that needs to be pollinated at a specific time there is no way for native insects to pollinate it well. Where would they live? What would they feed on the rest of the time? It’s a green desert most the time then in need of massive pollination for a short, sharp period. Bringing in hives or other forms of pollination is how it gets done and it’s done this way because it works.

Bees are vital to our food production. Is that a big enough positive externality?

It doesn't matter if this is done for profit, for charity or just to irritate the neighbors. Bees are a vital pollinator.

You pay for food. Farmers pay for bees (where they need the bees more than the beekeepers need bee food). Say "it doesn't matter" all you want, but the cost of an input to food production is not an externality.

Food is not just for humans. Bees pollinate plants that other animals consume. Animals that help the ecosystems that we as animals depend on ourselves.

Problem with economics is that not everything can be easily priced. Economics has an inherent flaw where anything that can't be priced is assumed to be $0

Sounds like a waste of resources to me.

Bees provide a service to society, not just to the bee keeper. Why shouldn't society help offset some of the beekeeper's risk?

By that standard, what economic activities would be outside the province of state intervention?

s/intervention/regulation/

Basically anything where the tragedy of commons can result in worse outcomes than where free markets do.

Historically free markets themselves need regulation or collapse into monopoly/cartels.

It's also possibly hard to estimate risk. My understanding is that insurers don't like insuring things they can't confidently assess.

Not everything has to be marketized. I'm absolutely fine with subsidizing things that the market doesn't value properly.

blockchain...something...insurance...something...HoneyCoin!

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

You can't always make a market. If the beekeepers and insurers can't agree on a price (premium) that works for both of them, then they won't transact. Here, I think there's too much information asymmetry, with the insured having the upper hand, for it to be profitable for an insurer.

This is probably part of the problem. If the insurance company doesn't have enough knowledge or data on beekeeping, they'll need to charge higher premiums to offset the risk of the unknown.

Also, my understanding of insurance is that there needs to be enough beekeepers that are buying insurance out there to spread the risk around.

"there needs to be enough beekeepers that are buying insurance out there to spread the risk around"

That's not the case. The ones bearing the risk (insurance companies or reinsurers) need to diversify their risks overall but they don't need to do this within risk types.

If you put aside the scale economies of doing the calculations, an insurer would have less overall risk (by which I mean variability in outcomes) if they were to insure one beekeeper, one driver, one baker etc.

No need to have a large beekeeper market from a risk perspective. Maybe from an underwriting efficiency perspective, though.

True about diversifying risk, but most brokers simply guard against the risk of a payout by… taking out an insurance policy from another broker.

Brokers don't bear the risk. Insurers and reinsurers (and Lloyd's syndicates) bear the risk.

Brokers are agents; they aren't a principal in the insurance contract.

Yeah, that’s why they reinsure with another syndicate, like I said.

No. Brokers don't ever carry the risk. So there is no risk for them to reinsure.

I don’t follow. I think brokers have enormous risks of valid claims needing to be paid out, which they hedge by taking out insurance themselves. You seem to be saying the same thing, while claiming that you are saying something else. Could you please try to restate your point in a way that might be clearer to me?

The money raised is a fair bit more than the hives are worth, assuming everything was destroyed (unlikely). At least some bases, lids, mats frames and boxes are likely salvageable, and I’d guess most. Assuming the hives have been properly wintered, they are currently small, so there wouldn’t have been much gear out there. Paying absolute top dollar would get those hives replaced would use about half that raised money. I had a look through Californian supplier sites. Eg $320 for a complete hive at https://billsbees.com/products/bees-complete-hive However a hive is unlikely to be needed, a $220 nuc would be fine, and could be split into 2 or 3 during the season quite happily and a decent beekeeper would be splitting them fast, reducing the cost significantly. Decent hives here have been split more than 20x this season (admittedly it’s a very good season).

It is interesting to see the costs as they aren’t too different from here, though queens are cheaper in New Zealand, and buying boxes of bees to dump into your hive isn’t a thing here.

As others have said here, why was it done? Hive vandalism is a thing all over the world, but it’s usually a few hives knocked over or mass damage by stock. Messing with 50 is unlikely to be much fun.

Edit: The story linked here isnt complete or very good. Yes, most the hive equipment looks salvageable though the bees are now dead. However a storage shed was broken into and vandalised, gear was smashed. Extractors and processing equipment can be very expensive and it’s a hell of a mess in there. The focus on the bees is likely because that’s what the beekeepers focused on. Having 50 hives killed when you have nursed them from a frame or 2, saved from disease, wintered etc would be heartbreaking. Yes, an extractor and store shed could contain very expensive gear but it’s soulless steel and tools.

http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/vandalism-destroys-ha...

https://www.google.co.nz/amp/whotv.com/2017/12/29/vandals-de...

What I like about this is that they made a point of closing the donations and suggesting that people donate to other causes. They're not trying to ride this for all they can get, they got enough to let them recover (and maybe a bit more?) - and even if they did get a little more than absolutely required it's not like it's "take the money and run" levels.

Heartened by this:

"Since news of the vandalism got out, however, Go Fund Me efforts on Wild Hill Honey's behalf have raised more than $35,000. Engelhardt posted to the company's Facebook page that the money would allow them to rebuild and start operating again in the spring."

Too many beehives to believe for pure vandalism. I could believe one or two.

Imagine someone tipping 50 cows, or spraying 50 buildings. The high amount makes its weird.

FWIW, it's an urban legend that you can (easily) tip a cow.

I buy meat from a farm directly. According to a couple of farm hands, drunk bored people still try.

The urban legend is that cows can't get back up on their own. Even if you tipped a cow (or 50), the cows could still just stand right back up.

It's terrible that you can buy expensive security camera systems that still store the data locally so thieves can steal the evidence too. Even an old cellphone with motion detection and a cloud uploading app might have helped identify the people.

It really takes a special kind of asshole to go and do something like this. I hope they are made to pay for this.

This is a thoughtless crime which obviously fills one with outrage on multiple levels. I trust in the Iowa state police to locate the offenders.

I can't for the life of me think why anyone would think this is a good idea. Bees perform a useful service and are not inconvenienced as this is what they do anyway. Everyone wins. Then again there are people who don't care who gets hurt.

Perhaps the bees died to some other cause (e.g. a mistake related to the cold), and the owners, fearing bankruptcy, embarrassment, smashed their own hives in a last-ditch effort to save themselves.

Possible… I'll go with the bees, after years of guilt for enslaving humans to care for them realized the only way to free the humans was to kill themselves, so they hired a hit from Craigslist to end their existence and free the poor humans from a lifetime of servitude.

Just watched the last season of 'Black Mirror'- the one episode with the Bees on it. Incidents like these surely triggers persons like me to think that somebody please start building artificial alternatives to bees and avoid the Colony Collapse Disorder from happening.

I feel bad for the bees.

Hope they hire security

I'd be interested to read a followup in the spring, about where the GoFundMe money goes. Perhaps I am just cynical, but although it certainly could be senseless vandalism, it also checks the boxes for a "bust out", wherein a business is destroyed in order to obtain cash. Typically these are insurance schemes, but the GoFundMe angle provides the same result.

I hope the press attention causes the police to focus investigatory attention on it; I could imagine it simply being written off as a victimless property crime and swept under the rug, as so many things are.

Nah, the article says they lost $50K, and raised $35K and closed the campaign, saying "Between the contributions and the equipment we were able to salvage, our needs have been met. There are so many great causes to support. Our wish is that this spirit of compassion will be used to help others now. All fundraisers for Wild Hill Honey are now closed. Thank you."

The cynicism on HN is just jaw dropping.

Not really. In a world where self interest is put above most things. It's pretty difficult to not be at least a little cynical.

There's no end of people who have such low morals they'll exploit any situation for their personal gain; such cynicism (or realism) is born by contact with such people and their actions.

People who would do the exploitation can also be inclined to expect others to be sociopaths.

The outrageous things people do in real life makes the cynicism of HN seem trivial.

It's a cynicism born of experience when it comes to crowdfunding.

Funny that this thread was censored (i.e. collapsed) without any apparent reason.

Myself I also believe this to be the case. Vandals don't just burn 50 beehives. And the fact that the farm says this is vandalism, instead of wondering "how is it possible that vandals destroyed 50 beehives for no reason", just reinforces my suspicion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com