This message was from ANDY NACHBAUR to ALL originally in conference WN-BEENET on WILDBEES (WILD BEE'S BBS) ---------------------------------------- Hi All, Most of you don't know and may not want to know. Last winter the members of the California State Beekeepers Association found out that they had lost their life's saving, $80,000.00+- because of the dishonesty of a trusted long time elected secretary of the association. The money is gone, and in my opinion should have never been there, but thats not the end of the story. Now the local DA has not and does not seem inclined to prosecute the person responsible even with the support of persons appointed by the association to do so. 1994 may well set a new high or low in beekeeper crimes depending on how you view this sort of beekeeping activity. In the last 40 years that I have been involved with keeping bees, only one person has done hard time for bee thefts in California, and that was only because the thief had the gall to steal the truck and forklift to do the job with. He has been free to take up from where he left off, and this season he rented some bees to a almond grower, and then stole them out of another almond orchard, also managed by the same grower to fill his contract and collect his money. This time the beekeepers missed their bees and were able to recover them and return them to the orchards they were removed from. The almond grower paid twice for the same bees and had to find more to replace the ones that were stolen back by the original owners. With 800,000 hives of bees in California for the almonds it is to be expected that some will get lost, what is hard to understand as to why their is a little done to punish the thieves when caught. Having worked with the local county police on several bee thief cases I do understand some of the problem with the location and recovery of stolen bees. At the time one of the cases I worked on, one resulted in the biggest recovery of stolen bees to that date. The thief was passed through the judicial system and put on a work furlough program and worked for his dad. In another case the thief spent one night in the slammer, only because of the timing of his arrest. The beekeepers involved, including me, did recover a few of the hives, but never could get the honey, in drums, the thief extracted from them. In this case I did not know that any of my hives were involved until one of the other victims reported it to me. Part of my hives were stolen the 2nd time before I could recover them the next day.<G> In todays society the stealing of another's property is given very low priority. This is compounded with bees because law enforcement people can not understand that theft of beehives do NOT indicate a secondary market for stolen bees as with most other stolen property does. Only beekeepers steal bees which have little value to others. One of the unsatisfactory solution to this problem is to stop ALL trucks loaded with bees and require proof of ownership. This is not a viable plan as bees are moved at night or early morning hours when the majority of law enforcement people have better things to do with their time.<Zzzzz> ttul Andy-