Beehive Theft Prevention
- Mike James
- Feb 24, 2022
- 2 min read
February 24, 2022- Today's beekeepers seem to not be able to catch a break. With colony collapse disorder, poor honey yields, and now beehive thefts to worry about. Today's beekeepers are needing to turn to technology to help keep their bees safe from pests and now thieves.
Pollination Price Increases
With today's pollination prices increasing for beekeepers as the demand for pollinator heavily dependant crops, such as almonds increases and beekeeper service providers keep decreasing. The beekeeping pollination industry finds itself in high demand, and with that demand comes higher pollination service contracts for the pollinating honey bees.
What was just recently $50 per hive to rent for bees on these farms raising almonds, has recently shot up to $200 per hive for the almond flowering season. Why such a large increase in rental costs for only a month or so of service? Supply and demand. It takes over 90% of the entire United States Commercial Beekeepers hives to pollinate the Almond fields in California. That's right, all those hives get loaded onto trucks and hauled to CA for a month of work and at ~$200 per hive.
A Valuable Asset
Sadly thieves are informed of these high costs and have begun stealing hives at night right from where they sit, only to have the beekeeper come back in a couple days to check on them and see that they are gone.
Many beekeepers are turning to technology to help keep track of their hives in the event they are stolen. These add-on features are helping recover their bees in some cases, but thieves are also becoming aware and removing these add-on electronic devices.
Hyper Hyve™ takes its already amazing technology in process of market release and adds the security of devices integrated directly into the hive, making removal nearly impossible without damaging the hive the thieves are after. On top of GPS location, the Hyper Hyve has an accelerometer to immediately identify which hive is being disturbed, long before it even leaves the scene of the crime allowing several more minutes of notification. Often these added minutes increases the chances of the beehive thieves being caught in the act of the heist as they load the additional hives.
Sadly, this problem isn't going away anytime soon, and according to the AP, 1,036 beehives worth hundreds of thousands of dollars have been reported stolen in California, including a heist in which 384 beehives were stolen away in Mendocino county alone and within only a few weeks time.
Commercial Hyper Hyve™
We are working in tandem with our residential and backyard beekeeper product the HHPROv1.0 and a commercial product we hope to have launched shortly after the HHPROv1.0. For more information and to stay up to date on Hyper Hyve News, sign up by clicking the button below.
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