'The Bee Hives Are Burning!'

One Sunday night in the middle of February I got the kind of phone call that you dread.

It was about 10.45 and I was just about to go to bed when my mobile rang.

The caller ID said it was our allotment secretary and a fellow beekeeper who said 'There's been an arson attack on the allotment - the bee hives are burning!'

 

Any tiredness I might have been feeling disappeared and my wife and I jumped into the car and made our way to the allotment. We live about 10 minutes drive from the plot, and so by the time we got there the fire brigade had already put the fire out.




It turned out that of the seven hives on the apiary, six had been doused in some kind of thinners and one had actually been set alight. The firemen thought that this had probably gone up so quickly that it scared the villain away before they could set fire to the rest.

All that is left of the stand

The hive that had been torched was a complete loss - it had been a poly hive with plastic frames and
so there was nothing left of it at all, just a badly charred stand. The plastic hive which had been next to it had partially melted on one side, but was intact. there is no lighting on the allotment, so we had to scour the whole site using head torches and reflected light from the nearby residential flats for any clues.

There were no signs at the usual points of entry - we had previously piled up spikey branches and wet manure directly under the fence corner where kids had gained access to the site before, and these were undisturbed. The only other easy ways into the site were through the main gate, but that is covered by CCTV (later checks showed that no one had come through that way) or through a gate that leads directly onto the allotment from a neighbouring back garden.


This gate is unfortunately right next to the apiary, and could have been used without the neighbour's knowledge.

It is very unlikely that anyone would have come over our wall and walked past three sheds, two poly tunnels and two greenhouses without causing them any damage just to enter the apiary to burn hives, so this gate seems to be the most likely place the arsonist got onto the plot.

Some charred brood cells in the ashes

The next morning I went back to the allotment to inspect the damage in the daylight - the six hives that had been doused belonged to the other two beekeepers on the site, the only one missed was ours, perhaps because it was on the other side of the apiary and had been missed, or possibly the attack had been targeted against the other two beeks?


We were very concerned about the other hives as petrol fumes are often used as the best way of disposing of a diseased colony and we weren't sure how the colonies would fare. I made a quick call to the Regional Bee Inspector to inform him of what had happened, and he advised us not to open the affected hives until Spring as there was nothing we could do - if the queen had been killed we couldn't replace her so early in the season, but if she hadn't then opening up the boxes in the cold was likely to do more harm than good. We spent the next few weeks on tenterhooks, hoping to see some activity to show whether we had thriving colonies but the weather was too bad for the bees to venture out much.

Orientation flights from our Hive

March came, and we had a couple of days of warmer weather, and to our relief there were signs of life from most of the hives. Bees were seen bringing in pollen into two of the doused hives which is a good sign that the queen has been laying as the pollen is used to feed the growing brood. Our own hive was extremely busy with hundreds of new bees taking to the air on their first orientation flights. It does look as though the majority of the colonies in the apiary have survived this cowardly attack, and we still have no evidence that can point us one way or another.

Lots of activity

The local council sent their allotment officer down when they heard what had happened, and when he saw the unofficial gate next to the apiary he wasn't best pleased, and is in the process of getting it blocked up which should help with security. We are also looking at setting up a trail-cam or even wireless CCTV just in case anything else happens.

A week or so after the incident we set up a donation page for the beekeeper who lost both his hives and at least one full colony - we still don't know about the second. I was completely gobsmacked when, against all my expectations, it reached it's goal of £350 within four days, mainly small donations from complete strangers.  If anyone else wants to contribute, additional funds over the target will be used to go towards providing security on the apiary. Help Fund John's Bees

Events like this shake your faith in human nature at first, only to have it renewed even stronger by the generosity of strangers. Thanks to all who sent messages of support, and to those who donated as well. We won't be beaten by this, and will return even stronger.