A Riverside County beekeeper lost millions of bees in last week\u2019s Verona fire and warns that the effects of the devastation will be widespread. <\/p>\n
Brandon Teller, one of the county\u2019s most prominent beekeepers, saw a Watch Duty fire notification on May 19 and headed straight to his apiary. <\/p>\n
A brush fire had been reported in the Juniper Springs neighborhood of Riverside County at 12:20 p.m. that day, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection<\/a>. That blaze, dubbed the Verona fire, prompted evacuation orders<\/a> in the community of Homeland.<\/p>\n One firefighter and one civilian sustained minor injuries in the fire and were transported to a hospital for treatment.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I got up there, my landowner was already in active firefighting mode,\u201d he told The Times. His entire field was on fire, and the flames shot up as high as nearby palm trees \u2014 some 40 feet into the air.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bees were in that field,\u201d Teller said, \u201cand once the fire passed through, we tried to save whatever hives we could that weren\u2019t on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n In all, Teller lost 80 established hives as well as 16 hives with bees he has rescued as part of his bee removal business. With each hive containing roughly 40,000 to 60,000 individuals, total losses were estimated at 3 million to 4 million bees.<\/p>\n Nine hives survived and will need rehabilitation for the remainder of the year. <\/p>\n Teller\u2019s bees were used for pollinating crops such as almonds on farms, and he also rescued bees before rehabilitating them and later renting them out for pollination. <\/p>\n Although farmers in Riverside County should be able to turn to other companies to rent their honeybees for pollination needs, Teller anticipates downstream effects for bee removal customers. <\/p>\n Because his bee boxes \u2014 the structures used to house his colonies \u2014 all burned, Teller\u2019s costs will go up. \u201cExtermination usually is about the same price as a live bee removal,\u201d he said, so increased costs may drive more people to exterminate rather than relocate the bees on their property.<\/p>\n \u201cWe could look at millions of bees dying because we can\u2019t perform that service at the price that we used to,\u201d Teller said. \u201cI didn\u2019t realize the ripple effect of something like this until it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n If people exterminate hives, native pollinators such as monarch butterflies, bumblebees, wasps and more can also be affected by the insecticides used. Exterminators charge extra for extraction and often leave contaminated hives behind after applying insecticides.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of California\u2019s native biodiversity go into that contaminated hive,\u201d he said, and can be killed off as well.<\/p>\n Teller stressed that native insects are critical to local ecosystems, and that his imported honeybees in fact depend on native ecology. \u201cWhen we have a healthy ecosystem with healthy pollinators, our [bees] will do a lot better,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n After the destruction of the Verona fire, Teller was taken aback by the support from neighbors and even his competition in the beekeeping business.<\/p>\n Many people have used the services of Teller\u2019s company, bought its honey, asked for bee removal. Now, some competitors are donating their extra bees to him, he said. He has already brought in 30 donated hives and is establishing them on his property.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just amazing, the community support,\u201d Teller said.<\/p>\n Times staff writer Clara Harter contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Riverside County beekeeper lost millions of bees in last week\u2019s Verona fire and warns that the effects…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[27637,139124,139121,2877,3802,139122,83873,48,52,51,47,50,49,8189,45944,592,139125,139123,139126,4747,134832],"class_list":["post-337126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bee","tag-bee-removal-customer","tag-brandon-teller","tag-effect","tag-fire","tag-hive","tag-honey-bee","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-million","tag-other-company","tag-people","tag-pollination","tag-riverside-county-beekeeper","tag-same-price","tag-service","tag-verona-fire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}