美国国家公共电台 NPR Beekeepers are setting up sting operations to find stolen hives

（单词翻译）

California beehive collections are rented out to almond orchards¹ this time of year. Since beehive theft has been on the rise, beekeepers are using technology so they can track down hives.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

OK, I'm aware of car rentals², vacation rentals, Airbnb rentals. Turns out that in California's Central Valley, there is a business in beehive rentals. Bees are essential in helping³ so many things grow, and during this time of year in the state's almond orchards, things are abuzz.

(SOUNDBITE OF BEES BUZZING)

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The state's entire almond yield is completely dependent on honeybees.

CLAIRE TAUZER: Bees are actually brought in by farmers and growers to pollinate many different types of crops, so there would not be a nut that would come off of the tree without honeybees.

INSKEEP: Claire Tauzer helps run her family's bee business, which is called Tauzer Apiary⁴ (ph). It provides bees from Bakersfield to Chico, and this is one of their busiest times.

MARTIN: They rent out boxes of bees. Each one can have as many as 80,000 bees inside for a couple hundred dollars each, and the value explains why the hives have been disappearing. Tauzer says theft has always been a problem, but lately it's gotten worse.

TAUZER: We had 384 hives stolen this year.

INSKEEP: Tauzer says the thieves are trying to hijack⁵ the stolen bees to make money during these short and lucrative⁶ pollination⁷ events. But beekeepers are not helpless. They can set up a sort of sting operation.

TAUZER: There are a lot of preventative measures we do to prevent theft. I mean, we use cheap GPS trackers. We use cameras. There's even this invisible ink that you can put on beehives that you can identify later.

INSKEEP: Oh, my gosh. It's like marking your money with - this is incredible. Anyway, Tauzer Apiary has been able to recover and restore most of its missing hives, which are worth about $100,000 during a pollination season.

(SOUNDBITE OF WYNTON MARSALIS'S "THE FLIGHT OF THE BUMBLEBEES")