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had never heard of a beehive being stolen in the Ottawa area until two of hers disappeared from Kanata just before Christmas.
The bees were safely tucked away for the winter a week before Christmas, each hive clustered in a ball around its queen for warmth.
But sometime before Dec. 24 the two wooden hives vanished from an open field near Campeau Drive and Huntmar Road. They were on Minto property near the Arcadia development.
“I’m pretty upset actually,” she said.
The family business, Gees Bees, provides rental hives to business, restaurants and homeowners. They have a hive on the roof of the Brookstreet Hotel.
The Gees do all the work of caring for the hive and removing the honey, which they share with the property owner.
“We had put the hives there and now they are gone. Someone decided to steal them,” Marianne Gee said Monday.
Each hive would weigh about 25 kilos at this time of year, she estimates, and could have some 15,000 bees inside.
“It’s unbelievable that someone would steal them now. Maybe they don’t now very much about bees,” she said. Normally formed in a ball, the bees could separate if they are bounced around in the back of a truck, and would easily freeze to death.
“Even with the warm weather last week it wasn’t that warm,” she said.
For this reason, she said, a real beekeeper would never sell a hive at this time of year. The Gees are hoping that someone will notice if a neighbour claims to have received a new hive for Christmas.
The missing hives are unpainted beige wooden boxes (as opposed to traditional white hives), and each has blue Minto labels on the sides. Someone took both hives off a pallet base and carried the down a hill.
These are the hives that were stolen from Minto property near its Arcadia development in Kanata.
She’s pretty sure the hives weren’t mistaken for anything else. There are warning signs: “Caution: Honeybees hard at work.”
And she doesn’t know of any black market in hives. To replace them she estimates it would cost about $200 for a new hive and $200 more for a colony — a queen and a starter set of workers.
“It’s hard enough to keep bees in this climate, with bears and mites and pesticides and crazy climate. And then on top of that you have to worry about people stealing them. I was shocked, really.”
tspears@postmedia.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
The bees were safely tucked away for the winter a week before Christmas, each hive clustered in a ball around its queen for warmth.
But sometime before Dec. 24 the two wooden hives vanished from an open field near Campeau Drive and Huntmar Road. They were on Minto property near the Arcadia development.
“I’m pretty upset actually,” she said.
The family business, Gees Bees, provides rental hives to business, restaurants and homeowners. They have a hive on the roof of the Brookstreet Hotel.
The Gees do all the work of caring for the hive and removing the honey, which they share with the property owner.
“We had put the hives there and now they are gone. Someone decided to steal them,” Marianne Gee said Monday.
Each hive would weigh about 25 kilos at this time of year, she estimates, and could have some 15,000 bees inside.
“It’s unbelievable that someone would steal them now. Maybe they don’t now very much about bees,” she said. Normally formed in a ball, the bees could separate if they are bounced around in the back of a truck, and would easily freeze to death.
“Even with the warm weather last week it wasn’t that warm,” she said.
For this reason, she said, a real beekeeper would never sell a hive at this time of year. The Gees are hoping that someone will notice if a neighbour claims to have received a new hive for Christmas.
The missing hives are unpainted beige wooden boxes (as opposed to traditional white hives), and each has blue Minto labels on the sides. Someone took both hives off a pallet base and carried the down a hill.
These are the hives that were stolen from Minto property near its Arcadia development in Kanata.
She’s pretty sure the hives weren’t mistaken for anything else. There are warning signs: “Caution: Honeybees hard at work.”
And she doesn’t know of any black market in hives. To replace them she estimates it would cost about $200 for a new hive and $200 more for a colony — a queen and a starter set of workers.
“It’s hard enough to keep bees in this climate, with bears and mites and pesticides and crazy climate. And then on top of that you have to worry about people stealing them. I was shocked, really.”
tspears@postmedia.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
