Hives smashed in vandal raid

VANDALS have destroyed a bee colony owned by the Tree Bee Society in Burscough . The colony was placed in Eller Brook field after its nest was rescued from outside a house.

The Tree Bee Society often remove colonies from homes or public places and rehouse them in colonies in the wild to save them from being killed by pesticides.

Abigail Reade from the Tree Bee Society told the Advertiser: “With numbers of bees rapidly declining, this sort of destruction of a colony totally undermines all the work we are attempting to do.

“The only explanation for the vandalism is that someone has approached the colony, not knowing what it is, and opened it.

“We would be surprised to think that anyone would deliberately destroy something that has cost us so much time and money in aid of a good cause.”

The Tree Bee Society was set up to aid the conservation of Honey and Bumble Bee species through education. It specialises in bee removal, swarm removal, beeswax products (hand cream and other cosmetics) and local honey.

Abigail said: “I paid a visit to the Eller Brook field to check on the hives and drop off some bags of leaf mulch for the Top Bar hives and came across this.

“All of our hives are ratchet strapped down so this wasn’t done by an animal or the weather. This was a human, opening a ratcheted hive and lashing it.

“We’ve lost out on about £300, not including the honey, wax and time we put into saving these bees from being killed in the first place.”

The bees will have attempted to huddle together to combat being exposed to extreme cold but even with that, they would not be able to survive.

The incident has been reported to Lancashire Police.

A spokesperson for the police force said: “We were called about a beehive being vandalised around 5.20pm yesterday evening at Sutch Lane in Ormskirk .

“At this time enquiries are ongoing into the incident.”