The Queensland sun was yet to rise, but a new week had begun and it was time for Robert Black to tend to his bees. He dragged his weary old bones out of bed and shuffled across the hardwood floor of his farm house and put the kettle on to boil.
For thirty years, Black had spent each long day in service of his brood and business; caring for hundreds of bee colonies, transporting hives between farms around Bundaberg and robbing the white boxes of their golden honeycomb. It was hard work for an old man but it came with its own rewards.
As he stirred honey into his tea, the silence of the morning was shattered by the telephone ringing. It was his son, Stephen, calling from a nearby macadamia plantation.
“Hey Dad, y’know those fifty hives you were gunna move today?”
“Yea.”
“Don’t worry about it. They’re all fuckin’ dead.”
When a bee senses that a man is a threat to her hive, she will sting him. Even after she has tried to fly away and torn out half her intestines in the process, her little three-pieced barbed stinger still burrows into his skin, squirting apitoxin as it digs. With her Kamikaze attack, she sacrifices her life to save the hive. In this light, it makes sense as to why a bee would poison a man.
But why would a man poison a bee?
Unfortunately, it’s pretty common for bees to get accidently killed by insecticides. This, however, was no accident. By the light of the moon, some sneaky, bee-hating son-of-a-gun crept into the macadamia plantation, pried open the lids to fifty of Robert Black’s hives and poured insecticide into all of them. That’s all we know. As the son of a bee keeper, I’ve made the additional mental leap to assume that the perp was wearing gloves and a veil. Anyone who is familiar with the distinctive sound of thousands of bees buzzing in unison knows: if you’re cracking the lid of a hive, you better be protected.
If the world was flat, the Australian state of Queensland would be the edge of that world, a place where things fall off, things go missing and things wind up dead. It’s a prehistoric land of rainforests, deserts and deserted beaches, where only the most determined survive and a natural order of checks and balances reigns supreme. For every introduced cane toad, there’s a native kangaroo. For every sun-scorched failed crop, there’s a bountiful yield. For every racist redneck, there’s a farmer with a firm handshake and a heart of golden honey. And for every stinkin’ hot night, there is a colossal thunderstorm. Except tonight. Tonight, it’s hot as hell and it’s pouring rain.
After ten hours at the wheel, I find myself driving along a high ridge, flanked on either side by fields of sugar cane. Lightning is flashing all around and with low tree branches hanging overhead, it feels like I’m driving through a dark green tunnel. At the end of that tunnel, I see a light.
The farm house is dark and looming, built up off the ground in a style known as the Queenslander, which is useful for avoiding floodwaters and deterring the free passage of snakes. In the doorway stands the silhouette of a large man that I assume is Robert Black. I kill the engine, stride across the wet grass and up the stairs to be greeted by Black, whose giant paw engulfs my hand. He leads me through the stale, dusty air of his cavernous home, to the kitchen, where a naked bulb hangs over a table in the centre of the room. Every inch of the countertops are crammed with beekeeping frames, gloves, veils, smokers and hive tools. Fanned out on the kitchen table are a bunch of photographs, many of dead bees. I pick up one that shows a pile of honeycomb frames so high that it reminds me of one of those holocaust pictures showing mountains of shoes or eyeglasses.
“I had to burn all those frames,” he says, as he joins me at the table with two steaming mugs of tea. His silver hair is combed back with Brylcream and his skin is leathery and creased, except on his nose, where it is red and peeling. He hands me another photo and looks at me over the top of his glasses, speaking slowly in a soft, gravelly voice, “You can see here that they’re all dead. All the bees are dead. There’s hardly any out on the ground, they all got trapped inside with the poison and died in there. They got stuck in the doorway. Fifty hives…” he waves one of his giant hands through the air, “Over two million bees, just gone. It’s sad, very sad. The bees aren’t just insects, y’know, they’re kinda like pets. You put in a lot of effort to keepin’ them all good, then someone goes and kills ‘em all.”
The next day I am sipping a Bundaberg Rum and ginger ale on the front porch of another local beekeeper, Greg Lassig. Several small signs are nailed to the front of the house, signs that warn about private property and the right to enter, citing local by-laws.
He sits beside me with his body pivoted away, staring out at the horizon, motionless. His skin is loose and saggy, his belly is as big as Buddha’s, covered by a stretched and faded blue tank top. His bald patch is surrounded by tufts of dark grey hair and with his big round beard and crazy eyes, he reminds me of Hemingway. I ask about Robert Black and a torrent of words explodes out of him:
“Yea, I heard about Blackie. I feel sorry for him, but I lost hives, too. He lost fifty and I lost a hundred an’ fifty. But I didn’t go squealin’ about it, did I? What’s the use of squealin’? I’d get nowhere. Bring the cops in, you get nowhere. They don’t care. Farmer tells me I think all your hives are dead, boy, and I says why, and he says they were sprayin’ insecticide across the road an’ it blew over. I said thanks very much. A hundred and fifty hives. Dead. We got a shortage of bees in Bundaberg; we can’t afford to lose any more!” He takes a breath.
“Y’know, this year I thought of gettin’ out of bees. I lost too many. Losing that many bees is heartbreaking, just heartbreaking. I said that’s it – I’m finished. But I couldn’t quit; I love it too much.” Curious, I ask about the trespass signs. “Me neighbour, he’s moved out now, he was evil. I’ve been feedin’ birds here for fifty years and he didn’t like me feedin’ the birds; the crows, the sparrows, the parrots. He said: you feed the bastards; I’ll kill ‘em. That’s what he said. He put insecticide into squished up pieces of bread and killed ‘em. Dead.”
I need to move on, so I thank Lassig for his time and encourage him to keep on beekeeping. “I’ll try. There’s not many of us left any more. I’ll keep fighting, but for how long, I don’t know.”
Beekeepers are a determined and dedicated breed. They work long hours to protect their brood from insecticides, diseases, parasites and predators, just to give them a fighting chance to do what nature intended. And just like her keeper, a female honey bee works tirelessly, too, flying from flower to flower to collect nectar to take back to the hive. As she nudges her way deep into the well of the petals, she brushes up against grains of pollen, which she then transfers to the next flower she visits, pollinating as she goes. The plant is able to reproduce and the bee is provided with a carb-rich energy source. It’s a win-win situation.
Every bee plays an integral role in the hive and every hive plays an integral role in the business of pollination. Hives are transported thousands of kilometers and thousands of dollars change hands in order to secure a successful crop. Pollination is the big business behind the even bigger business of fruit and vegetable production.
The owner of the macadamia plantation where Robert Black’s bees were poisoned is unavailable for comment, so I am meeting with his representative at the offices of the Bundaberg Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association. Inside, the air-conditioning is cranked so high, you could store meat in here.
Peter Hockings, the acting executive officer of the Bundaberg Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association abandons his high-backed leather office chair to sit with me on my side of the desk, in the plastic visitor’s chairs. He throws one of his shiny brown Blundstone boots up onto his opposite knee and leans back, interlacing his fingers behind his spiky crew cut. If he was wearing a badge and a gun, he’d be the sheriff of Bundaberg.
I raise my voice over the office photocopier and ask about Robert Black and the macadamia nut plantation. Hockings nods slowly with his eyes and his wide mouth closed. “The farmer of that particular macadamia plantation wasn’t spraying at that time. When the Bundaberg police inspected Mr. Black’s hives, they found that it was a deliberate poisoning. The big problem here is pin-pointing the person who actually poisoned the hives. The chances of catching somebody who’s gone in at night and left no fingerprints, well, y’know…”
How careful are farmers when it comes to bees and insecticides?
“Agriculture is the biggest industry of this whole region and brings in a farm-gate value of $500 million dollars a year. When 70-80% of the crops are dependent on bees for pollination and we already have a shortage of bees, you can almost be guaranteed that farmers are doing what they can to protect bees.”
So how do you explain accidental insecticide sprayings?
“Crop protectants.”
Sorry?
“Crop protectants. You said insecticide. If a crop protectant is applied to a crop where bees are foraging and it specifically says on the label “Do not apply to a crop where bees are foraging”, then that is an inappropriate use of a crop protectant, which is a finable offense.”
Okay. So what happens if crop protectants wipe out all the bees?
“No crops. It’s as simple as that.”
Later that afternoon, I am trying to look as casual as possible as I loiter in the lobby of the Bundaberg Police Station, half-reading a brochure about forensic evidence at crime scenes. I’ve requested to meet Dave Warden, the officer in charge of the bee poisoning investigation, but instead, I am greeted by Sergeant Mike McLellan, who ushers me into a small interrogation room. After sitting opposite me, he stares down at the handful of pages in the case file, his large frame hanging heavy with the weight of the stripes on his shoulders. He stares down at the file for a long time, poring over the pages as if he’s never read them before.
“Right. So, Dave Warden is the investigating officer but I don’t think he’s done much; he’s very busy.” He scans down the page. “Okay, so there was a deliberate poisoning of hives. A white chemical residue, poured in from the top of the hives.” I ask about the particular chemical used in the poisoning. “Ahh, here it is: tests by Biosecurity Queensland revealed traces of Chlorpyrifos.”
Sergeant McLellan looks up from the file. “Yea, there’s not really a lot to go on; no containers, fingerprints, footprints, nuthin’. Unless somebody makes an admission to doing the offense or unless there’s a witness to the event who can describe a description of the person or a vehicle registration, we’ve got nothing to go on. The case has gone cold.”
So what happens now?
“Well, it just gets filed.” Sergeant McLellan scoops up the pages and closes the folder.
I ask what he thinks a suitable punishment would be, if the perp was caught. The Sergeant smiles, revealing a gold crown on one of his teeth. “Maybe get stung by bees. Angry bees! Ha ha!”
To avoid being stung, early beekeepers used to weave a basket-like hive called a skep to house bees. Once the skep was full of honey, the beekeeper would place the hive over a pit of burning sulfur to poison the bees. After the bees died, the beekeeper would rob the hives of its liquid gold.
The Chlorpyrifos method is slightly more sinister. As an insecticide, it’s classed as an organophosphate; the same stuff the Nazis used to develop nerve gas. The Australian government has banned supermarket sales of products containing this chemical, because they pose an unacceptable risk to consumers. Chlorpyrifos is toxic to humans and bees but is still widely available as an agricultural insecticide.
This is the same chemical that was poured straight into fifty of Robert Black’s hives, one after the other. As the toxic nerve agent filled their cramped living quarters, the bees panicked and tried to escape the fumes. The entrance to each hive quickly became clogged with dead or dying bees and the rest of the colony was trapped inside. There was no way out.
Robert Black has been sitting here at the kitchen table, staring at the photographs for a long time, not saying anything. I ask him if he thinks that this sabotage could be the act of another beekeeper.
“Nah, beekeepers are trying to keep bees alive, not kill ‘em.”
Do you have any enemies?
“None that I know of.”
Do you think this could this be the work of just one person?
“It’d take about an hour, I reckon. I know how they did it, but I still don’t understand why. Why?” His big hands begin to shuffle the photos into a pile. “Not only am I out of pocket for me dead bees, but the spoiled honey, the ruined frames, the contaminated boxes and the loss of all the pollinating work I had lined up, too. I dunno. When I do me normal work, I’m fine. It’s when I have to strip back and repaint those fifty hives – that’s what makes me cranky.”
Were the Bundaberg Police helpful?
“They weren’t helpful at all. They’re not dreadfully bright down at the station. They didn’t do anything for the longest time because they thought I said the value of the hives was four hundred and fifty dollars. The hives were worth four hundred and fifty dollars each. Times that by fifty and I’ve lost over twenty grand!”
I ask whether insurance money has helped to pay for some of the damages and he throws his hands up in the air. “The insurance lady, she said we had to prove it. I asked how and she said video surveillance. Who has video surveillance on their bee hives? I mean, who does that?”
On my way out of town, I stop by the farm of Rob Wilkinson, the president of the local chapter of the Queensland Beekeepers Association. The property is a wide open expanse of grassy land with clusters of gum trees dotted here and there. The air is filled with birdsong and the smell of eucalyptus. As I roll up the drive way, I am awed by the sight of hundreds upon hundreds of empty white bee hive boxes, all stacked in tall crooked piles.
Wilkinson walks out from his house to greet me with a warm handshake. His skin is brown and leathery from a lifetime of working outdoors, but for a man over sixty, he looks incredibly fit and healthy. His silver hair is split in two by a black streak that grows out from his widow’s peak and his upper lip sports a moustache that makes him look remarkably like Burt Reynolds. Together we stroll up to his farm house, discussing the plight of Robert Black.
“It’s a pity, y’know, a real shame, especially for an old battler like Blackie. People need to know how the system fails to support beekeepers. In this case, the government and the police were pretty useless and no one else took much notice – it shouldn’t be like that. Really, Blackie’s civil rights as a human being and a business man were infringed by someone else’s act of vandalism. The system should be right on to that kinda stuff.” He slowly shakes his head. “It’s a big hit. Y’know, you can deal with it if it’s an act of nature, like a bushfire taking out a bunch of hives, but for someone to poison your bees deliberately, that’s gotta do a number on your head.”
I ask Wilkinson if he thinks someone was trying to hurt or scare Black.
“Nah. I reckon it’s the same reason you get supermarket rage in the parking lot, mate. Someone you didn’t have any idea about, someone you don’t even know. You drive in, you see a parking spot, you pull up, and next thing you know, you’ve got someone abusing you because you’ve taken their spot!”
We take a seat on his shady deck, where a jug of ice water and two glasses await us. “Y’know, mate, in Australia, people used to have the etiquette to talk with others, to reason. Now people just think, well, I’ll show ‘em, I’ll do it myself, right. And I believe it’s the same thing with Robert Black’s bee poisoning.” Wilkinson pours us a couple of glasses of cold water as a kookaburra watches on from a nearby tree.
“We all need to work together. Y’see, a single bee is an organism, but the hive is also an organism. It has all these separate parts, but it functions as a whole. If any of these parts stop working together, stop co-operating, then the hive will fall down, it won’t continue to succeed. It’s the same with us.”
Creative Nonfiction by Drew Clarke 