Bee theft goes up in smoke after insects fly home

Police suspect rival apiarist as thousands of animals stolen from country house return to estate within days

WHEN thousands of bees were stolen from a country estate, the culprits behind the heist failed to reckon with the insects’ homing instincts. Many of the 400,000 bees stolen with their five hives from Tresillian House in Cornwall last weekend have already been spotted making their way back to the estate.

Their owners hope that ultimately all the stolen bees will return to Tresillian, in St Newlyn East.

The bees’ journey home indicates that they may have been kept somewhere nearby, allowing them to make the flight back home. And in a twist likely to set local tongues wagging, police believe that this suggests the culprit, whose tyre tracks in the estate’s grass were the only clues left behind, maybe a rival beekeeper living less than a mile away.

Kathrin Barnes, assistant beekeeper at the 22-acre estate near the Cornish coast, said the bees were being put into a new hive. She said: “There are so many it indicates that they are nearby and are on their way back home. If bees are moved less than a mile they go back to where they were before.”

The hives were taken between 6pm on June 11 and 6am on June 12. Guy Barnes, Tresillian’s head beekeeper, said the theft left him “stressed and emotional”. He said each hive contained 80,000 bees and removing all five of them would have required expertise and a large vehicle.

Mr Barnes added that he thought the theft must have been at the hands of another beekeeper as beehives are heavy and hard to transport and handle.

“It might have been for the money, but I don’t know. Unfortunately my gut feeling is it’s another keeper,” he said.

“You’d need to know what time of day to get them, have multiple people, and have a vehicle big enough to transport them.”

Built in 1886, Tresillian House holds a Victorian kitchen garden, 22 acres of lawns, an ornamental lake, paths through camellia woods and orchards – making it an attractive spot for bees and visitors alike.

Mr Barnes recalled how he hurried to the scene of the crime, saying: “I got the devastating call on Sunday morning, and photos of this pair of tracks going into the field and just empty sites where all these hives were.” Sgt Steve Applewhite,

who is also a beekeeper, said that “some bees have returned to the site where the hives were, before being stolen, this means that it is likely that these hives have been initially relocated or stored only a few miles away from Tresillian House”.

He added: “This crime is of concern as not only has it meant that a person’s property has been stolen, but as a beekeeper myself, I am also concerned for the welfare of the stolen bees.”