Page 3 - Bloomberg Businessweek July 2018

Bloomberg Businessweek
THE HEIST ISSUE
HOW TO STEAL

Apiarists from all over America rent their hives to farmers in California,
attracting a particular breed of thief

By Josh Dean
Illustrations by Alexis Beauclair

50 MILLIONBEES

L loyd Cunniff felt terrible, literally sick to his of the commercial honeybee colonies in the U.S.—are
stomach, about trucking his bees to California, but
clustered in a few California counties. Beekeepers com-
fate had painted him into a corner. Bad weather, bad mand as much as $200 per hive for the season, which
luck, scrawny, needy bees—a whole mess of headaches runs a few weeks. 71
had upset the economics at Beeline Honey, his third- Cunniff has a long-standing relationship with
generation apiary in Montana. It was colony collapse in Strachan Apiaries, a Yuba City-based business that’s
2015 that had really tipped things sideways. The mysteri- one of the most famous names in American bees. Don
ous affliction, which causes worker bees to vacate a hive Strachan, the founder, helped Cunniff’s grandfather
en masse, had destroyed half of the Beeline colonies. get his apiary up and running. For years now, Valeri
Cunniff and his wife, Brenda, were down to 489 hives, Strachan, Don’s granddaughter, has sent a few trucks
when he bit the bullet and did the thing he really didn’t of California bees to Montana to make clover honey in
want to do. the summer, when there’s little for those bees to eat or
In January 2017, Cunniff piled 488 of his 489 bee do in the Central Valley. So when Cunniff decided to
boxes—24 to a pallet—onto a semitruck trailer, strapped participate in the 2017 almond season, the Strachans
them down, and headed west to chase the sweet, sweet were happy to help out an old friend. They arranged for
almond dollars that were drawing so many of his beekeep- farmers to hire his bees and offered to keep them for a
ing brethren to California’s Central Valley. Loaning his few weeks until it was time to head south from Sutter
bees out for a season, 1,000 miles away, made him very County toward Fresno and the trees.
uncomfortable. But if your business is bees, California is When Cunniff arrived in Yuba City, the Strachans
where the big money is. Or it is at least in February, when directed him and his truck to a dike running along
1.2 million acres of almond trees don’t get pollinated with- some sunflower fields southwest of town, between
out the help of honey bees, which love almond flowers. the Sacramento River and the Sutter National Wildlife
California produces 80 percent of the world’s almonds, Refuge, and that’s where he unloaded his bees on
and over the past 15 years the trees have come to domi- Jan. 17, arranging the boxes in tidy rows. Leaving them
nate the valley, pushing out all kinds of row crops. There that evening, Cunniff felt better about things. The bees
aren’t enough California bees to pollinate them, so every seemed happy; that’s what he told Brenda when he
year the call goes out to keepers: Bring your boxes west. called her from his hotel.
An acre of almond trees needs at least two hives, mean- The next morning he rose early and drove back to
ing that every February, 2.5 million colonies—two-thirds the site. The fog had rolled in overnight, and Cunniff

July 2, 2018