Bee swarm sparks Masterton arrest

PLACE WAS BUZZING: These hives, allegedly stolen, were located in a Masterton backyard.

An animal-control officer stumbled across a haul of more than 30 allegedly stolen hives that could have once housed more than a million and a half bees, in the backyard of a Masterton home.

Sam Rossiter-Stead, Masterton District Council communications adviser, said officers discovered the 32 hives in Kitchener St on Monday after complaints from neighbours about swarming bees.

Warren Peat, chief executive of Masterton honey company Watson & Son, said the animal-control officer was "the hero of the piece" after he approached the company for advice about the hives.

"He came here with a picture of the hives and asked if they were ours.

"We pointed him in the right direction and by the end of the day he found the companies who claimed the hives as their own and an arrest was made," Mr Peat said.

The man arrested in relation to the hives was believed to have been an experienced beekeeper, he said. Police could not be reached for comment yesterday but Mr Peat said the hives and other equipment had been seized.

In April, the Wairarapa Times-Age broke a story about the theft of numerous hives belonging to Kintail Honey Wairarapa, Priestley Reid and Kiwi Bee Wairarapa from areas such as Waingawa, Carterton and Mauriceville.

About 20 to 60 hives had been stolen on each occasion during the preceding two months and several hundred hives belonging to Watson & Son also had been poisoned in the same period, Watson & Son operations manager Shane Baker said.

A $1000 reward was posted for information leading to the return of the plundered hives, which was about the maximum value of a hive containing honey.

Mr Baker yesterday said warm temperatures on Monday afternoon could have brought the bees out of their hives, after much more subdued activity over the past several months.

The hives would have remained undiscovered because bees did not leave their hives over winter, he said, and there were three beekeepers living in the same area "who had nothing to do with it".

"Two of them are our boys and the other one works for another company. He [the arrested man] was really well-camouflaged, wasn't he? He had legitimate people living around him."

The last known thefts were reported in the region about two months ago and some hives had been stripped of their innards and "literally gutted", he said.