Honeybee Thievery Bewilders Keeper stung at losing 'her girls'

Not a good week for bees: Lil' Kim, the rapper known as the Queen Bee, went off to prison on Monday, and 90,000 honeybees are still at large.

"It's still a mystery," said Stephen Munshin, who manages Hamptons Honey of Water Mill, of the three beehives that were stolen from Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett two weeks ago, presumably on the day of the Great Tomato Taste-Off there.

Mary Woltz, a beekeeper for Hamptons Honey, said the beginning of September "was an odd time for them to be stolen," since it is the end of the bees' "production system" and thus not a high point for their population. If it had been May or June, there would have been 50,000 to 60,000 bees in each hive.

The beekeeper couldn't say for sure when someone had nabbed them, but Scott Chaskey, Quail Hill's manager, said he noticed them missing on Sept. 6, "as I was going by in my tractor, going hither and thither." That Saturday, Sept. 3, almost 300 people had attended the tomato taste-off.

"It wasn't like I was inspecting," he continued, "my eye witnessed something was missing, as if someone had cut down a tree. I thought Mary for some reason moved them."

But when Ms. Woltz came to the farm the morning of Sept. 7, the two realized the three hives had been stolen. They filed a report with the East Hampton Town Police that day.

The honeybees must have been taken in the morning, before they left the hive, or in the evening, because they are out flying during the day, Ms. Woltz said. Quail Hill has many entrances and is not secured at night, Mr. Chaskey said, unless you consider the "patrolling deer."

Hamptons Honey kept six colonies - or hives - at Quail Hill, and three colonies remain. Mr. Chaskey said they were "tucked in the middle of a wild area, in the middle of a cultivated area," on the farm. "You would have to know they are there," he said.

Ms. Woltz thinks there is "a strong implication" that the culprit was a beekeeper, "because it was not something someone would ordinarily take on," she said, adding, "I've been playing Sherlock." Her theory is that there were two thieves - a beekeeper and an assistant - since someone had to remove a 15-pound river rock kept on top of each crate containing a hive.

"For me it is very sad to think a beekeeper would do that to another beekeeper," Ms. Woltz said.

Hamptons Honey keeps close to 100 hives on the East End, on farms from Orient Point to Southampton. The three stolen colonies were a mixture of Italian and Russian honeybees, and two of the three were new colonies, Ms. Woltz said on Tuesday.

"They were doing well," she said. The theft "was such a shock. I have plenty of worries as a beekeeper, but theft was not one I considered."

Ms. Woltz's beekeeping burdens include keeping them healthy and free of parasitic mites and pesticides. "They are in peril," she said of the world's population of honeybees.

In the 16 years that Quail Hill has been open, only a sign and a solar light had been stolen. "That's not a lot of stolen goods in 16 years," Mr. Chaskey said. He used to keep bees in England, and "never heard of bees being stolen," he said.

Ms. Woltz has, although never in the Northeast. In California, she said, since honeybees are "essential for almond pollination, people [have] resorted to theft." Some beekeepers even put microchips in their colonies.

She declined to specify how much one of the Quail Hill colonies sell for, but did say, "It is a lot easier to get an established colony than to start your own." In general, however, Ms. Woltz said, stealing bees is simply not worth the trouble.

Mr. Chaskey called the bee and beekeeper relationship "a nurturing process" interrupted all too abruptly when "all of a sudden they're whisked away."

"It's kind of the heartache" for Ms. Woltz, he said, "with her girls disappearing. . . . She calls them 'her girls.' "