PALM CITY — A longtime honey and bee company on the Treasure Coast is having problems at its Palm City site for more than a year with people knocking over its bee hives.

Gruwell Apiary has been watching over bees for about three generations in the Treasure Coast. With about 900 hives on 30 different properties, this family of beekeepers doesn’t understand why people would want to hurt the bee hives.

“We are just helping the community,” said David Gruwell, a third generation beekeeper. “A third of the fruits and vegetables we eat would disappear if all the bees die. Everything would disappear after four to five years. It’s just a matter of time and we are over.”

For the past year, Gruwell has been finding ATV and golf cart tracks on their Palm City property after multiple hives were knocked over. Alcohol and beer bottles have also been found on the family’s property.

The most recent incident was this week. When Gruwell checked on the Palm City property located on Mistletoe Lane Wednesday he found five hives knocked over. The colony in one of those hives died and $2,500 in bees and honey was lost.

In the past year the Gruwell family has lost about $5,000 in honey and bees because of the incidents.

Family members think young kids may be throwing items such as bottles and rocks at the hives. But eight-foot-long logs and sticks have also been used, knocking over the hives. Out of five hives that get knocked over, one usually dies, said Gruwell.

And every time a hive gets knocked over, all the honey is lost and some bees die.

“If the hive opens up, enough other bees will come and the bees for that hive will fight to the death,” said Gruwell. “Other bees kill the hive off if it can’t defend itself and they steal the honey.”

In the meantime, Gruwell is looking for suitable locations for the 24 hives in Palm City in case the vandalism doesn’t stop. If that’s the case, he hopes to move them sometime in July.
Monique Mattiace, TCPalm.com

Tags: atv, beehives, business, honey, vandals

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 9:31 am and is filed under Crime, Economy, Palm City. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.