A supermarket chain's headquarters in Pennsylvania has been robbed of nearly 60,000 bees.
The bees were taken between Jan. 28 and Jan. 30 from the Giant Company's corporate field on the Harrisburg Pike in Carlisle.
"Bees are an essential part of our food supply chain and having these beehives were one way we were helping to address the declining bee population here in our hometown community," Jessica Groves, community impact manager with Giant, said in a press release.
"We are extremely disappointed that this happened and are continuing to cooperate with Middlesex Township police department," she added.
The Giant Company, which operates 190 supermarkets under the Giant brand, announced the completion of a seven-acre pollinator-friendly field at its Carlisle, Pennsylvania headquarters in the summer of 2020. In addition to planting over 20 different types of wildflowers, the company collaborated with the Planet Bee Foundation to install and manage many beehives in the field.
Bee theft isn't unheard of: almond growers in California, who rely on honeybees' natural pollination skills, reported an increase in the number of beehives stolen from their sites in 2020. A million acres of almond blooms demand twice as many apiaries, according to the California Farm Bureau's AgAlert. As a result, up to two-thirds of American beekeepers rent their hives to almond producers on an annual basis.
According to the nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership, run by the University of Maryland, bee numbers have been declining in recent months, with beekeepers reporting a loss of 45.5 percent of their colonies from April 2020 to April 2021.
The decrease of bee populations across the country is raising considerable concern among the agricultural industry and environmentalists, as bees pollinate plants that provide about one-third of the food supply in the U.S.
Pennsylvania beekeepers lost roughly 41% of their colonies, a little lower loss than the national average. Between April 2020 and April 2021. beekeepers in Iowa were the hardest hit, losing 58.4% of their colonies during that same period.
Why would someone take beehives? It's likely that they'll be taken and sold to other farmers or beekeepers that require extra colonies or need to make up population numbers after their own bees died.
This incident followed another bee theft in January 2020, when 92 hives were stolen from a single field in Yuba City, Calif., according to Food and Wine magazine.
Anyone with information regarding Giant's colonies being stolen is asked to contact the Middlesex Township Police Department at 717-249-7191 or send an anonymous tip online.
