Are The Terrorists Stealing Our HoneyBees? DATELINE AMERICA: On the lookout for Iranian agents in your own backyard? Well maybe you should be. terrorism comes in all shapes and sizes and unfolds in many diabolic ways. Will they get to our milk supply? The water? The baby formula? What about the bees? Honeybees vanish Honeybees are disappearing from hives across the U.S., and no one is sure why. "Box after box are just empty," said beekeeper David Bradshaw. "There's nobody home." The mysterious losses pose a threat to farmers, who depend on bees to pollinate $14 billion worth of fruits and vegetables grown in the U.S. every year. "Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food," said Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation. Yes $14 billion dollars are affected by honeybees! If you want to take a nation down a peg start by taking away the bees. Is their an investment idea here? I wonder if a biotech is working on a way to simulate pollinating plants without the bee. DRONE WARFARE Folks!!!!
BAD BUZZ An almond extravaganza fuels a swarm of honeybee heists The humble honeybee is facing an especially unnatural enemy -- the pollen-pushing gangster. The Guardian reports that loosely organized criminals are stealing hives in raids on unsuspecting California beekeepers. There were just 101 hive thefts in California in 2015, but they shot up to 1k+ in 2016. So what the heck is all the buzz about??? The real money isn’t in the honey… … it’s in your bag of almonds. (Hey, they call ’em Blue Diamond for a reason.) There are 1m+ acres of almonds that require pollination in California. They need about 2 hives per acre -- that’s a LOT of bees. Our insatiable almond appetite has turned the little pollinators into precious commodities. Hives used to go for $35, and now they go for $200+. One beekeeper almost lost it all Lloyd Cunniff was forced to get into the almond game when his hives were decimated by colony collapse disorder. On his trip to California’s Central Valley, thieves made off with all 488 of his boxes o’ bees. The police found them at a crime scene that was buzzing with ~2.5k hives from different owners.