Page 4 - Bloomberg Businessweek July 2018

Bloomberg Businessweek
THE HEIST ISSUE

couldn’t see 100 feet past his nose, so he wandered They share wisdom and are aware of one another’s
around to make certain he wasn’t fog-blind. Then he operations and equipment, particularly within a given
double-checked to be sure he was in the right place, area. Anyone new showing up with a bunch of hives for
because goddamn if something weird hadn’t happened: hire is going to stand out. “I wouldn’t steal my neigh-
The hives were gone. bor’s car and park it right next door,” Strachan says.
Almost 50 million bees, in 488 white boxes with “And it was pretty obvious that if you were going to
cedar lids, every one of them hand-crafted by Cunniff, take them from this area, they’re probably going to take
had vanished into the fog. them straight down to the almonds.”
Cunniff grew up around bees and hears their
T he first thing Philip Strachan, Valeri’s son, buzz in his sleep. His grandfather tended hives
thought when Cunniff called him in a
on the high plains of Montana, so did his father,
fugue state, muttering about stolen bees, was and so did he, as soon as he was old enough to
that this was the work of professionals. No nor- participate, at age 13. The morning of the theft,
mal criminal would think to steal bees or have Cunniff drove around in a daze, his hope dwin-
the equipment or know-how to pull it off. Cunniff dling. He stopped every time he saw a beekeeper
was thinking the same way, and the evidence was right tending to boxes, but their reactions sunk his spirits fur-
there in the dirt. He could tell by the thieves’ tracks ther. The bees, folks said, were almost certainly gone
that they’d used single-axle, dual-wheeled straight forever. Stolen bees just aren’t found. “One kid said that
trucks, and not semis, probably because they knew he’d lost 300 colonies the year before and never saw
there wasn’t room to turn a semi around in a hurry. He anything of them,” Cunniff recalls.
also saw signs of a forklift, so they’d come prepared to He’d hated the idea of moving his bees in the first
lift pallets. place, but this was far worse than anything he imag-
Hives go missing; that’s no surprise. But historically, ined. He’d lost so much more than the $100,000 in pol-
Strachan says, it’s been “one here, two there.” Just some lination fees. His entire livelihood was gone. One day,

72 drunk opportunists in a pickup. But this was a method- he had almost 500 hives. The next, he had one. “I was
ical operation. Cunniff’s weren’t the only hives taken. 57 years old, and I had to start over from scratch,” he
In total, more than 700 of them, valued at as much as a says. “Where I had been thinking about retiring, now I
million dollars, went missing in a single night. In addi- got to … there’s no way I can retire now.”
tion to the heavy equipment, the burglars needed the Valeri Strachan, a former president of the California
gear required to subdue and corral the boxes—namely, State Beekeepers Association, mobilized that organi-
full keeper suits and hand-held smokers. Whoever did zation. The CSBA has a fund for rewards, and it put
this knew how to handle bees. up $10,000 for information that could lead to an arrest
And this wasn’t the first time, either. What sounds and conviction for the hive thefts. More important, law
to novice ears like the plot of Fargo Season 4—a crew of enforcement took notice. Agriculture crime detectives
guys in white suits and beekeeper hoods boosting hives in Madera, Sutter, and Fresno counties were all put on
in the fog—is a small but growing niche of agricultural the case, and the FBI even offered assistance.
crime. Two years prior, someone stole a bunch of hives Around the state, bee people were on the lookout
in a neighboring county, and the next year more were for boxes that fit the description of those stolen from
taken, Strachan says. Counting the loss of Cunniff’s bees Cunniff and several others, but with 2.5 million hives in
in 2017, then, “it was three years in a row that we had a concentrated area, the task was daunting. California
large thefts in this area.” law requires commercial keepers to brand their boxes
Meanwhile, in New Zealand, hive heists are an by burning or cutting a state- assigned number into the
epidemic. There the motive is manuka honey, a wood. But the law isn’t strictly followed. Some bee-
highly prized variety that goes for $150 a kilogram (or keepers can’t be bothered, whereas others, such as
2.2 pounds), and authorities suspect an organized crime Cunniff, are from out of state.
syndicate may be to blame. “It doesn’t matter if it’s bee- Market forces wouldn’t help, either. Demand in
keeping or meth; this is just the new gold rush,” one api- almond season is often desperate, something thieves
ary manager told Reuters. can exploit. “You’re going to come across somebody
The culprits in California were almost certainly who may not have bees on his almonds yet, and you’re
not local. Beekeepers are a close-knit community. like, ‘Do you want bees?’ And that guy is not going to

“I WOULDN’T STEAL MY NEIGHBOR’S CAR AND PARK IT RIGHT NEXT DOOR”
July 2, 2018