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Police are looking for any info on the theft of multiple breeding queen hives from Keaau early this week.
If anyone is thinking of buying or using pollination services, this theft included genetic-recorded numbered queens, stolen from the Hawa`i Island Honey Co. Keaau farm lot.
[color=var(--blue-link)]https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2021/11/05/hawaii-news/police-seek-info-on-stolen-bee-hives/[/color]
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We used to hang horse thieves...
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I'm guessing it's a group that are releasing bees to save them from involuntary servitude !
It's Puna after all.
All joking aside this is very sad to hear.
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You'd think that the list of suspects must be quite small.
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If I see any missing beehives around I'll let them know.
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I was surprised to see the value. Wonder if that is calculated with the honey? How many wooden hive boxes would have to be stolen to amount to 22k?
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@Or1on: I think the value might include a time span of production value, plus one report I read mentioned that the hives were breeders producing new queens which might up the amount. Having said that, dollar values declared in police reports tend to be exaggerated, with drug busts being the most fanciful by far.
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11-08-2021, 05:50 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-08-2021, 05:56 PM by Carey.)
Orion, as I mentioned in the initial post " this theft included genetic-recorded numbered queens",ANY honey bee queen has value, a genetic recorded numbered queen (ie, the bee that creates future known genetic trait queens for normal beekeepers) have great value, so much of the value is the YEARS of genetic work that was put into making these queen producing bees to create colonies that are uniquely adapted to honey production in Hawai`i, with the stressors that are upon the girls that work here...
Although honey has value, the pollination services of a colony can actually have greater that the honey value for some producers.... anyhoo this is to alert anyone being offered pollination services or honeybee colonies.... if the queen marker has a number, you are being offered a stolen property (not one queen breeder I know of offers their numbered queens to anyone outside of the queen breeders. & it is very rare to be in that circle & be offered a numbered queen without very close acquaintance!....
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fwiw, the Western Honey Bee is an invasive species... this is aimed towards the Punatic boneheaded who come here assuming much is native..
fact is. all of the bees on the USA endangered Species list are the smaller Hawaiian Yellow Face Bees... Hylaeus sp.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/anima...low-faced0
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hawaiis-onl...cies-list/
they are being pushed out by the Western Honey Bees...
the Western Honey Bee is an invasive species in N. America, C. America, S. America, Oceania, Australia, most of Europe, most of Asia, and most of Africa..... there are over 4,000 dif native indigenous and endemic bee species in North America, but most you see now in Anytown USA are the invasive species...
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11-13-2021, 01:28 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-13-2021, 01:29 AM by Carey.)
The honey bee is an introduced pollinator, is not as destructive to native bees as are the introduced ants (no ant species is native) AND introduced pollinators now do pollination for many of the endangered plants species (mostly taking over for smaller lost bird species, as the Hylaeus isa much smaller bee specie.
Of the 18 Hyleaus species seen in East Hawaii, 3 are listed... many of the more common Hylaeus are seen in the coastal & even the developed areas, just most folks have no idea that they are looking at Hylaeus!
The true reality is that this is one of the only intentional insect introductions, made for the benefit of honey production & agricultural crops. It is a pollinator in areas where native pollinators no longer exist in the numbers needed to keep native ecosystems.
The best way to reduce pollination competition with native bees is to make sure that ALL of your flower plantings are native & plant up as much as you can with those native plants... if you have planted (or eat) non-native plants, you might want to look at your role!
A GOOD manager of their bees should manage their range & try to reduce their swarming tendencies... unmanaged bees will swarm...
Ant Competition:
https://neobiota.pensoft.net/article/58670/
Honey bee pollination endangered plants:
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3228&context=icwdm_usdanwrc
https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA598425040&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00308870&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Eec4faf87
https://www.fs.fed.us/research/highlight...gh_id=1013
https://bioone.org/journals/pacific-scie....4.8.short
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cla...-Areas.pdf
