Bee-rustling: Thieves steal 5,000 honeybees from Houston restaurant

Source: mnn.com

Keep the honey, just give me back the bees, says chef.

Talk about your daring robberies. Unidentified thieves backed up their pickup truck to Haven Restaurant in Houston before dawn on March 10 and took off with a 500-pound beehive.

Co-owner and executive chef Randy Evans said the hive, which was worth about $1,000, held as many as 5,000 bees. He raises them to use their honey in his restaurant. Evans also grows his own fruit and vegetables in the small plot behind his establishment.

In addition to providing honey, the bees help pollinate the restaurant's lemon trees.

Surveillance cameras caught the pre-dawn robbery on tape, showing a truck with a camper cover back up to the hive with its lights off, remove the hive from its protective crate, and take off. The crime took less than a minute.

The hive-nappers seemed to know what they were doing, choosing a cold, rainy day when the bees would be less active and less inclined to fight back. "You can steal [a hive] without knowing what you're doing, but you'd be in for some problems," local beekeeper John Berry told local ABC affilate KTRK.

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