ANKENY (AP) — An Iowa farmer says thousands of his honeybees died after someone vandalized their hives.
Jake Knutson said Wednesday that someone removed straps holding down three of his hives near the Ankeny airport last week and then damaged them with logs, bricks and cinder blocks, knocking off the tops. That left the bees to die in the rain that’s been covering central Iowa over the past several days.
When he returned to the hives, he found that one had been knocked over again and another was teetering on its stand.
No arrests have been reported.
In another incident of hive vandalism, Sioux City police arrested boys 12 and 13 after 50 hives were knocked over in December, killing at least 500,000 bees.