Today, Explained - Honey, they stole the bees

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Humanity can’t survive without bees, which is why bees are big business for thieves. Today, Explained’s Haleema Shah heads to the capital of sting operations — California’s Central Valley — to find out who’s beehind these thefts and why they're happening. This episode was reported and produced by Haleema Shah, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Super Bowl Sunday has come and gone, but the Super Bowl of bees is just getting underway. This time of year, millions of honey bee hives descend on California's Central Valley to pollinate billions of dollars worth of almonds. For a few short weeks every year, California's Central Valley erupts in pink and white blossoms from the almond trees and they're truly beautiful. And thus, the bees are very, very valuable. Some like to say that without the almond pollination and the money that is going with it, the beekeepers in the U.S. would go broke. So valuable that people tend to steal them.

And the buzz around town, the beekeepers know exactly who allegedly stole from them. The sting operation is ahead on Today Explained. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Today Explained, Sean Ramos from Here With Today Explained producer-reporter Halima Shah, who is here to tell us about the bees. Halima, what's up with the bees? Last year, I got really interested in bees after seeing these reports that a lot of frustrated beekeepers had been placing GPS trackers and Apple AirTags on their beehives. Huh. Because in the dark of night, people were stealing honeybees.

A beehive heist in Yolo County ended with an arrest outside of Woodland. Sheriff's detectives turned up more than 70 stolen bee boxes from six different beekeepers. And there were reports of beekeepers maybe leaving hundreds of hives in a field one day and then coming back a few days later or even the next morning and finding that there were 20, 30, 90 beehives short. And the first thing I thought to myself was, why would you steal bees? How do you steal bees? Because wouldn't they sting you? I mean, I've never been stung by a bee personally, and that in my advanced age has me only more, you know, hesitant to even go anywhere near a beehive. Yeah, I have been stung by a bee once in like second grade. So it's really hard for me to

imagine why somebody would do this and why someone would risk the trouble of getting stung. But it turns out that people steal bees for the same reason you might steal a bike in the city or, as you heard on the show last week, might steal cows or horses. The incentive is money. It's cash. There's a lot of money surrounding honeybees. This is Rowdy Freeman. He's a beekeeper. He's also a bee detective of sorts because he's the deputy sheriff in a county in the Central Valley of California. And he investigates a lot of these hive thefts. Of course, there's an opportunity for thieves to steal honeybees

and turn around and make money off of those stolen beehives. Right now, California's Central Valley is having the world's largest pollination event. And that's why this is Hive Theft Central. Honeybees basically descend on the Central Valley because the Central Valley is the almond capital of the world. Be a pro snacker with a handful of heart-healthy California almonds. Honeybees love almonds and almonds love honeybees. The two businesses are very codependent. California produces 80% of the world's almond supply, and there's no other pollinator like birds or flies or even the wind that can pollinate almonds like bees can. But there's not close to enough bees in

California to pollinate all of the almond trees there. So beekeepers basically ship hives into the valley. They show up on semi-trucks and they rent these bees out to almond growers for pollination. What do they go for? What's the bee rate these days? It's in the neighborhood of $300 a hive. Okay, so real money. And in the weeks leading up to almond pollination, there's a lot of thefts. Here's an example of what happened to a beekeeper whose hives were stolen last month. He had 84 hives in a apiary, which is, you know, like a holding location or a yard where honeybees are kept. He was getting ready to move those bees into an orchard under a pollination contract the following day. And someone came in the night before and took 84 of them. So 84 hives, we're talking like 84

hives at 300 bucks a pop. We're talking like over 20k, yeah? Yeah, we're talking like 25 Gs. I'm just a little confused here. How easy is it to steal $20,000 worth of bees? It sounds really hard. So I went to the Central Valley in early February, just as pollination season was kicking off, to find out. What did you find? Are you now an amateur beekeeper? No, far from it. But I can definitely say that I've been to an apiary now. Oh, there's a bee. There's a bee. And what kinds of bees are these? Are these the kinds that want to sting Halima? Yes, they're honey bees. I have a phobia of bees. Like, and it's not something I'm proud of because no matter how many times people tell me

bees will only stink to protect themselves, bees aren't interested in stinging you, I can't get over the pinchers and like their fuzzy like coat and their kind of like cult mentality, like they're obsessed with their queen. And I think anything that's like so focused on authority is like you can't be trusted. It's like QAnon, but bees instead of Donald Trump. Yeah. I mean, there is like a cult documentary waiting to be made about bees. It is just dawning on me that I'm literally standing right by the hives. I'm standing like 40, 50 feet away.

Oh, I think I hear Max. And I hear a bee. Shit. Okay. Be a professional. Hi, Max. Yes. So good to finally meet you in person.

How are you? I'm doing good. I was sweating. Those are the bees. Everywhere you can see trees, you usually can see bees. Is this guy French? He is. His name is Maximilien Ebrard, Max.

He's 31 and first started keeping bees as a kid in France. And he works with a beekeeping company called Ubees. So let's go this way so we can, you know, look at some suits that you can try on to make sure, you know, you're protected. Yeah. And then if you want, we can pick, like, some hives. I can introduce you a bit to the bee world. Okay, perfect. Sounds good?

So I'm being all chipper here, but my head was honestly all over the place. I was remembering how when I was in elementary school, there was a close-up picture of a bee on my textbook. So I put a book cover on it and my mom tried to get me to get over my fear and she like took my hand and put it on the picture of the bee and I cried. Wow. So I was all over the place for this interview, which is why I asked this really stupid question. So when you put a bee suit on, do you wear the clothes you have on underneath the suit? Yeah, you don't get naked in a bee suit. Okay. What are you doing over there?

Anyways, let's move on. So we walk over to the yard where the hives are kept. And each hive is basically a stack of four boxes on top of industrial pallets. Here we are. So let's see. So we want to pick one that's alive. And a standard bee box, when you think about it, has 10 frames in it. And those frames are lined up inside the box the way folders are in a filing cabinet.

OK, let's see. I'm going to try to crack the box. And it literally looks like a wood picture frame when you pull out one of these frames. But instead of a photo and glass, there's a honeycomb and a bunch of bees. So this is the noise they do when they're not happy. So see, right now I just cracked the hive. I can tell, yeah.

One just attacked my knife. And it just, vroom. And what are you doing right now with the smoker? I'm smoking the hive. He smokes them? Classic California. He's using a bee smoker. So it's like any metal can, and it has a little billow attached to the side

and a nozzle on top that basically blows smoke out. And the smoke kind of settles between each frame of the hive. And they're distracted, and they think less about stinging whoever is disturbing them. Huh. So if you were to steal bees from Max's apiary, would you need the suits and the smoker? It sounds like a lot of work to do a little theft. Yes, you need all of that.

You need a smoker. You need a bee suit. You need a forklift. A forklift? Yes. Here's the anatomy of a heist, Sean, to answer your question. During the day, a bee thief might drive around and take note of where the hives are. They scout out a location where the beehives are easily accessible.

They're often out in rural areas where there's no one else around. And under the cover of darkness, the thieves return. And they have their flatbed trucks and some sort of a forklift. And the hives that are stolen are most often on pallets. And so they just pick up the pallets of bees with the forklifts and load them on trucks and drive away. And they can move into a yard and steal 100 beehives in, you know, 15 minutes. They don't have ring doorbells in rural America? I mean, some people have cameras out there, yes.

But like, think about it. The only person who could actually steal a beehive is probably another beekeeper, someone who's been in the industry, has the equipment, knows how to calm bees. And you can put a camera up facing the hives, but what is the camera going to catch? It's going to catch a person in a bee suit with a smoker. It just looks like the beekeeper who would own the hives. Oh, touche. If you were to steal the hives,

and almond pollination season were to kick off in full swing, all you'd have to do is say, look at these beehives, they're mine, and then rent them out to someone who needs your bees. Has your French friend Max had his beehive stolen? In the past, he has had beehives stolen. He told me that a friend had called him once and said he saw some bee boxes with his company's label on them in

a location they weren't supposed to be at. And he said it wasn't hard to figure out who took them because beekeeping is a very small business. People talk. And it was really awkward. Well, we had a difficult discussion. It's just, OK, it's clear that you have some of my hives. I want them back. And so I got the hives easily back. Because, you know, at some point, either you get the hives back or you involve, like, the ag sheriff or someone from the police. And nobody has interest, you know, in going there for something that's obviously not his. A thing I'm wondering right now is just how widespread is this bee theft issue in California? Well, Deputy Freeman said that bee thefts have been steadily increasing since he started his job in 2013. And last year, for example, there were over a thousand hives reported stolen statewide.

Wow. Yeah. So it's been a consistent problem. But this year has been kind of an outlier. Hmm. this year has been kind of an outlier. Deputy Freeman has only investigated one hive theft so far, which is extremely unusual. Honestly, one of the big factors, I believe, is the weather we've been having out in California lately.

Heavy rain and flooding, so the thieves haven't been able to go out there and steal bees like they normally would have if it was dry. And, you know, they don't want to risk taking their equipment in and getting stuck and having to leave it behind. I mean, extreme weather is good at deterring theft, but it's actually really bad for beesness. Shame on you. The most obvious threat to bees is climate change. Wildfires, floods, all that stuff destroys habitats. Think about Hurricane Ian in Florida. There were 400,000 bee colonies in its path.

Wow. And it took out 100,000 of them. So what you're saying is that while bee theft is an issue, it pales in comparison to climate change. Yes. Right now, beekeepers are reporting that they're losing 40% of their hives per year. That is super far from sustainable, and that's not because of theft. That 40% is a really scary number because a third of every bite of food that a human eats has to be pollinated by bees at some point. And so humanity really can't live without bees. And with bees dying at such a high rate, there are some really big questions about how we continue to feed people.

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Not the bees! Not the bees! Ah! I don't have my eyes! My eyes! Today explained back with Halima Shah, who just reminded us how vital bees are to our food supply, but also how threatened they are right now. So threatened that we're seeing the honeybee population decline by 40% a year. Yeah. Max the beekeeper said California's drought is one of the major threats. Bees need water, like every human being, and they need grain.

So they need flowers. And without the water, everything is dry and dead. So there is no bloom, no grain, And so there's no food for the bees. So, yes, it has affected the bees a lot. And it has become very difficult to keep bees year-round in the state of California, especially the Central Valley. I love how he says Central Valley. But, Halima, the Central Valley is green right now because of all the rain. Yeah.

California did have pretty torrential rainfalls. By the time I got there, the ground had mostly dried. And one rainy season isn't going to make up for over a decade of dry periods. And is this drought why we're losing 40 percent of honeybees a year? It's one of the reasons, but there are others like large-scale beekeeping itself. I mean, honeybees are working year-round. Normally, they would go dormant or die in the winter, but these bees basically never hibernate. And they're being shipped to different parts of the country that's warm so they never have a winter season. So in February, March, they're in California pollinating almonds. In April, May,

they're in the Pacific Northwest for the apples. And then in the summer, they'll go to the East Coast for cherries. So I asked Max if working without a winter break is bad for the bees. That's a big debate in the industry. I would say you have, you know, the natural way to look at it. They're naturally engineered to have a break. And we are pushing them probably a little bit too much. This is also, you know, what some people explain or put forward as one of the cause of, you know, the massive die outs, the colony collapse disorders, all the things that are causing beehives basically to die in intensive beekeeping countries. So how do you usually respond to those critics? What do you say?

I usually say, okay, maybe there's other ways to do it. But at the same time, I mean, we're not polluting and we're working on an insect that is non-destructive, providing sustainable service to nature and helping to produce food and achieve good yields so farmers can make a living in this country in a sustainable way. But there's other sticky, interconnected issues associated with these big beekeeping operations. When you have lots of bees in one place, that means the easy spread of disease. So the varroa mite, for example, is this pest that spreads incredibly quickly and it kills bees. And if that has you thinking, OK, then why do we have these concentrated beekeeping operations? The answer is that they're a byproduct of the way we farm, which is also in large concentrated operations.

We have monocultures where you basically have one crop in a field at a time in really large quantities. And that's great for feeding a lot of people at a low cost, but it also requires using pesticides. Pests eat these crops incredibly quickly, and farmers cannot expect to have a good yield without pesticides. The problem is that pesticides notoriously pose a risk to pollinators. So when your army of bees comes in to pollinate almonds, they're being exposed to chemicals that could impair them and lead to their death. Okay, so we've got a host of issues here. Shipping bees across the country like they're part of some sort of circus. You've got disease, you've got pesticides, a bunch of things that are

leading to this phenomenon where we're losing, give or take, half our bees year to year. What do we do, Halima? There are people trying to answer that question in Southern California. Oh, I love Southern California. So I went to CYBER, the Center for Integrative Bee Research at UC Riverside. And it's your usual science department, faculty offices, a lab. But their lab has live bees inside it. And they study everything from bee poop to bee sperm. And the grad student who was showing me around actually said that cyber is a non-traditional beehive, which has a queen and a king, who are Barbara Barr Imhoof. Assistant specialist at the Center for Integrative Bee Research.

And Boris Baer, her husband. I'm leading a team of people together with Barbara that works on all different aspects of bee health and how to save our six-legged friends. So Boris and Barbara are basically working on a host of different solutions to save the bees. And they have this one really fun one that I wanted to tell you about. It has to do with saving the bees from pesticides. Basically, Barbara is working on something that would repel the bees from any field that has been recently sprayed with pesticides. And what would repel them is a really nasty odor. What does it smell like?

Well, one of the smells smells a bit like a yogurt, that fruit yogurt, very artificially yogurt-y. The solution that they're really focusing on right now is actually on a special kind of bee that sort of has it all. It is able to withstand a lot of the issues that come with modern farming. You might have heard of a bee that was artificially created in Brazil in 1957, crossing two different bee types. That was the African bee and European bee. And it created a bee that was then termed Africanized bee.

And people became really afraid of that bee because it's very defensive. Is this the killer bee? Exactly. You name it. I don't even use the word anymore. I don't think it was necessarily kind of a bee that was out there to kill people, but people were not used to that type of bee

because it was more defensive. It spread. It escaped from that lab. It was extremely successful. It basically deals with all the environmental stressors that our managed bees struggle with. That's the reality. Now, the bee kind of was spreading north. It was spread north all the way to Southern California, where there are tons of these

managed commercial bees that we use to pollinate crops. And what happens when one kind of bee meets another bee and they love each other very much? They hybridize. And so if you look at the genetics of the bees that we have here, they are not those Africanized bees any longer. It's a very different genotype. It's made up of four different types of bees. It's the genetically most diverse bee in the world. And these hybrid bees are nicknamed survivor bees. They don't really need human management to make it in this world.

They're also from really warm climates, so they've actually never had a winter vacation. These bees actually can work year-round. And they're much less defensive than the original Africanized bee from Brazil, but they still have the resiliency of that bee. And they're especially resilient to drought. We suspect that they can upregulate certain proteins in their bodies to cope with heat, especially so that will help them to cope with warmer temperatures in the hive better. These bees behave very differently.

Our survival bees here prefer soil, so they go underground. And that could be one of the adaptations of those bees to regulate humidity much more accurately. Cyber is basically looking into breeding more bees that have these adaptations. Huh. We start to kind of artificially inseminate them and propagate them. And then also some of the queens we have already started to give back to beekeepers so they can test them in their own hives. Halima, no offense to Boris and Barbara, but I got to imagine there's lots of people like them out there trying to dream up solutions to deal with our bee crisis.

How real is what they're proposing here? It's pretty real because survivor bees already exist in nature. The question is, will they be effective enough once they're propagated and released out into the world? And could there be unintended consequences? But you're right that this is not the only solution that's out there. Some people think technology is the answer and are looking to drones to pollinate crops instead of relying on bees. Did Boris and Barbara seem reassured that there were solutions out of this crisis? They did. Boris felt like the chaos of the pandemic actually made food supply and bees

a much more top-of-mind issue. I felt that was quite traumatic for some people that they realized, okay, food can't be taken for granted. Barbara and me, we are both from Europe. Our parents lived through the Second World War. They said that is exactly like what we went through during the Second World War. We got little coupons that we had to use to go to shop and we only got 30 grams of butter per month or whatever it was. So in that generation, it was still present. But then there was this in-between generations and they got more and more used to it. It's just like everything is just available at all the times. And so the pandemic has clearly shown us that's not the case.

And we have all that follow-up hiccup now, these wars, these tensions between countries. And that will have dramatic effects on the distribution of food. Boris even said cyber started getting calls during the pandemic because people wanted to learn beekeeping so they could make their own honey. And because they love showing people how that's done, Boris, Barbara, and I got suited up and went to the cyber apiary, which is a little field around the corner from the building. Okay, the sign says, caution, do not enter. Honeybees will sting to protect their hive.

Are you going to open it? No, I'm not going to open it. I'm not ready for that yet. But Boris still kept trying to get me closer to the bees. Do you want to hold a frame? Oh boy, okay. I hold your things. All right, all right. She's now holding. I'm now live reporting from Riverside. I can do this? So you're taking over a frame. And how does that feel? I feel so powerful. I feel like I've conquered a new fear. They don't seem to mind me.

Wow, you love bees. I don't love them. Love is a strong word. I just don't hate them. You know what that is, Halima? What? Progress. Thank you.

Our show today was produced by Halima Shah. It was edited by Matthew Collette. What? Progress. Thank you. includes my co-host, Noelle King, our supervising producer, Amina Alsadi. We got Avishai, Artzi, Hadi, Mawagdi, Amanda, Lou Ellen, Miles, Brian, Victoria, Chamberlain, and Siona Petros. We had extra help from Jolie Myers, and we used music by Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam Hassenfeld. Noam helped me put together a little tribute to Afim, the dream Shapiro. It was our way of saying goodbye to Afim, but we thought we'd play it for you too. The show is over. You are not obliged to listen to it. But if you wanna, let me just set it up. Afim was here with us five years ago, almost to the day when we launched Today Explained.

At the time, he was our one and only engineer, and that's a sort of confusing radio term for a job that's essential to any audio program you've ever heard. What it means is that he makes sure everything sounds as good as it possibly can always. Or, as a theme would say, he butters the biscuit. He buttered the lion's share of the 1,200 or so biscuits we've published here at Today Explained. And this week he's leaving us, but he's leaving a lot of butter behind. So thank you, Afim, and Godspeed. And as you hear now, he did a lot more than just butter the biscuit. Okay, let's see wanna bang on the drum all day Give it to me tight

A-be-more A-be-more A-be-more A-be-more A-be-more A-be-more Whoa, let me see. Thank you for your hospitality.

Oh, and what else is in here? Rainbow fentanyl? Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Cocoanus organ shooter. Here we go again. Oh, Inspector.

Dude, I'm getting pop tarts for doing this. Just let me get my 15 minute break. Ah! Me fat bird! Wet One's moist towelettes they're convenient because they pop johnson and johnson dental floss every day Chop, chop, mutato. Today, the Academy has given us the greatest honor in podcasting. So, why now? No, no, no. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. There's a mistake. Today Explained, you guys won Best Podcast.

I'm afraid they read the wrong thing. Today Explained, Best Daily News Podcast. Thank goodness. Thank you to Afim. This is our dream, Shapiro. Read the wrong thing. Today Explained. Best daily news podcast. Thank goodness. Thank you to Afim. This is our dream. Shapiro, we did it, brother. Stop wasting our time.

All right. Harvey, thanks again for... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Cut the music. Come on. What's up? Isn't this Today Explained? What's going on here? Today is gonna be...

Explained. Yeah. Almost, yeah. Okay. Go. Infrastructure. Infrastructure. Infrastructure.

Week. We've got about eight minutes left. So make haste, scallywag. Duh. It's the future of... Duh. It's the future of... Duh. It's the future of... Outside we do nothing.

Inside we do nothing. So quarantine is just a boring... Fast thing of nothing. Fast thing of nothing. A long time. A fast thing of nothing. Don't stop the feeling. Hold on to that feeling. All the single patties, all the single patties, all the single patties Get your cheese out

Do the one that sounds fun, ding dong Wow, rude Oh, hey Zagthamar We have taken your crew Uh, what are you talking about? My crew is right here. Those are holograms! I can see them.

I can look. I can touch them. Ah! My hand went right through Noam's face! Are you still here, Breakmaster? Breakmaster has been a double agent this entire time! But, but, but how... And now, Afim, the dream, we are coming for you!

Don't take me. Take care of Swisher. Is it worth it? Let me work it. It's too early for this. So stop stifling your yawns. Oh, God. Open wide and yawn with pride.

We will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight. Today, we celebrate our yawn dependence day. You are so beautiful. Dirty projectors. Finally, you've got a minute left to wrap up the show. Phil, he's gonna live forever. He's gonna learn how to fly

Back in a minute, it's Today! Today Explained! Здравствуйте, Василий, это Фима Шапира. Здравствуйте. Здравствуйте, большое спасибо, что... No one at Today Explained speaks Ukrainian, but our engineer Afim Shapiro does speak some Russian, and he volunteered to translate. Would you tell me your full name?

That is in the in the I'm so sorry. So Mr. Vasil told Afim hold on a second let me call my niece, Yulia. Yulia, my name is Afim Shapiro. When I was young I would look up at the stars trying to take in the vastness of it all. Yulia, my name is Afim Shapiro. Ever since I was little, I have been a warrior.

I'm ready to step out into the unknown, to take on the ultimate challenge. I close my eyes. I know where I must go. Space Force Space Force Goodbye forever.