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Wanted: the bee killer of Brazoria County.
On Saturday, in the darkness of dawn, a sheriff's deputy on patrol in a rural area in southeastern Texas spotted flames spouting from an uninhabited piece of land in the county.
It was nearly two o'clock in the morning. The deputy stopped in the fenced area, which he knew was surrounded by hive beekeepers, and saw that they were on fire. He grabbed a fire extinguisher in his vehicle, climbed the fence and smothered the flames.
He then investigated the damage, according to a report released Wednesday by Lieutenant Varon Snelgrove, spokesman for the county sheriff's office. Most of the 20 hives, once flourishing with bees that fed mature colonies, were cremated, but some were thrown into a pond or overturned. About 600,000 bees have died, according to the Brazoria County Beekeepers Association.
"I was just shocked that someone is actually doing it," said Steven Brackman, president of the organization, whose 300 beekeepers make up one of 50 groups of this type existing in the state. "That's what we do not understand. They had been there for three years and most neighbors know it.
He said that vandals had already knocked on occasion, but that a living hive had never been burned or drowned. "You can not recover," he says.
In Brazoria, a coastal county south of Houston with a population of about 350,000, the bee massacre captivated locals and mystified fire officials and MPs.
As for the crimes, it was not so bad: there were no deaths or injuries, not even superficial burns as a result of the member's firefighting efforts, said Lieutenant Snelgrove. There were no surveillance cameras on the scene near a farm on the outskirts of Alvin, and the authorities do not know if there is one or more culprits.
The motive is even more confusing.
"You can see it in two different ways," said Lt. Snelgrove, before a meeting with investigators on Wednesday.
"Was someone creating harm for anything other than destroying something?" Asked he. "Or did anyone have a problem with someone?" Could it be another beekeeper? It could take a lot of different ways.
Drowning and fire knocked out the hives in the middle of a crucial time of the year. In recent weeks, blooming plants has triggered honey flow, and queens lay thousands of eggs a day, Brackman said.
The honeybee, which is the bee species that has been the dominant pollinator for decades, is threatened by pesticides, malnutrition and other causes. In 2017, US beekeepers lost about 40 percent of their managed honeybee colonies, according to the Bee Informed Partnership, a non-profit association that advises beekeepers.
Pesticides and genetically modified plants speed up the lives of bees, Brackman said, and fewer nutrients are brought into the hive for the rest of the brood, which is now fed nectar and pollen infused with chemicals.
In southeastern Texas, the warm climate attracts beekeeping enthusiasts from around the country, who bring their hives into the state to escape harsh winters.
The bees slaughtered Saturday belonged to four owners, who raised them as hobbies, as part of educational programs, or to sell honey and its derivatives on a market hosted by a farm nearby. They set up their hives on wooden supports located on a plot of three acres of land because they had no space on their own property.
Sam Degelia, 69, a retired welder, completes his income by selling honey at the farmers market for about $ 8 a pound. He lost about 1,000 pounds of honey from his Buckfast bees, which are a bee species.
"If you can get through the multiplication, it's a bit," he said in an interview.
The sheriff's office called him on Saturday around 2 am to talk to him about the fire. Mr. Degelia went to earth when it was still dark, using a flashlight until it became incredibly overgrown with homeless and homeless bees.
"Boxes burned, grass burned," he said. "A very big loss."
"I do not want to say that it's like losing a child, but you put all your work and your pride, and someone kicks you behind the bucket," he said. . "First of all, there is the shock of losing the bees, then we say to ourselves: 'Here, my honey flow'.
The remains of four hive structures have been recovered. But the future of their societies is in question because queens and their eggs have not been detected, said Brackman.
"The pheromones are gone and the colony is dispersed," he said. "When she's killed, the colony goes into panic mode. They know without the queen that they will die.
He added that members of the group at the place of beekeeping had never had to complain about their activities. The nearest residence is about 50 meters away, he said.
"Far enough not to be bothered by bees," he said. "You could stand near the fence, and a bee might land on you, maybe trying to lick you off the sweat."
It's only when you play with the hive that problems occur by swarming hundreds.
"Then they defend the colony," he said.
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