When a Choteau beekeeper lost his hives to bee rustlers in California in January, he expected he’d never see them again. What he did expect, after speaking with the California beekeeping community, was that Ukrainian-Russians may have been behind the bee heist.

And they were right. A pair of Ukranian-Russians have been charged with possession of stolen property – over $150,000 in beekeeping equipment, his hives included – in an agriculture law enforcement sting that could draw attention from federal authorities.

Choteau beekeeper Lloyd Cunniff reported his bees stolen in mid-January, after his 488 hives vanished from a property in California. Cunniff, and many more beekeepers during this time of year, had transported his bees to California for the almond pollination season.

On Sunday following the work of an agriculture crime task force and the local beekeepers community, most of Cunniff’s equipment had returned to the Treasure State.

“We got about two-thirds of the equipment back,” he told the Tribune on Thursday.

Cunniff's honey bee operations is about six miles north of Choteau, within eyeshot of the Rocky Mountain Front. But he's keeping his recovered bees in a fresh green field a ways south of town, in case they are infected with disease or mites. He said determining whether or not the recovered hives and bees can still be used will take time and he won't know for sure until fall. For now, he’s quarantined the bees away from his new hives and will continue to monitor the bees’ health as he sprints to recover the lost income he had planned on from almond season in California.

In January, Cunniff, owner of Beeline Honey in Choteau, was one of about 10 victims across seven California counties in which Fresno County law enforcement believes Ukrainian-Russians have turned to agriculture thefts, particularly bees, to fund organized crime rings.

“For us, it’s kind of new to us, too,” said Fresno County Detective Anders Solis, a member of the county’s agriculture crimes task force that handled Cunniff’s case. “This has been going on for about three years.”

Most of the bee rustling has reportedly occurred north, in Sacramento County, Solis said. Cunniff’s bees were stolen from a property even further north, in Yuba City, California. An ongoing investigation by the Ag Task Force reportedly found that Ukrainian-Russians were often stealing bees from each other.

“Usually they’ll steal from each other, then if they steal a large amount, they’ll steal from American companies and people like Lloyd,” Solis said during a phone interview Thursday. “There were victims that were Russian-Ukrainian, also.”

There are plenty of Ukrainian-Russians running legitimate bee operations, Solis said. So, naturally, much of the Ukrainian-Russian community is angry with those who make them look bad in the overall farming and ranching community.

“From talking to a lot of the Russian beekeepers, they say (the alleged Ukrainian-Russian thefts) give them a bad name and farmers won’t trust them,” Solis said. “All of the (Russian) victims we’ve dealt with have been pretty forthcoming.”

Solis said for years, these theft numbers have gone up around January right before the almond tree pollination, and mostly around Sacramento, where Cunniff’s bees disappeared.

When Cunniff’s bees vanished into the night back in January, he believed the rustlers were organized based on the two sets of 2-ton semi-trailer truck tracks pointed away from the scene. He also feared he’d never see them again. The hives and equipment were brand new and not marked by any identifying images, like his business name, phone number or address.

“Once I saw what they do down there, don’t make any difference if they’re stenciled (with identifying marks) or not,” Cunniff said. “They take it and paint over it.”

Then, a couple weeks ago, the Fresno County Ag Task Force caught a break. One of the American hired hands on one of the Ukrainian-Russian bee farms noticed one of the hives matched the description of the hives reported by a friend in Missouri. The Missouri beekeeper flew over to California, contacted local law enforcement with matching photos of his stolen hives, and the investigation picked up quickly.

Law enforcement officials found three locations connected to the alleged thieves: a bee nursery space the suspects had reportedly rented, a cow pasture owned by a person not related to the suspects (“They were basically out there trespassing,” Solis said) and a third property along a freeway, where the hives had been hidden in a drainage.

Fresno county detectives uncovered hives from 10 different victims on the properties and made two arrests, charging two men with possession of stolen property. More arrests and charges may be coming, as the investigation is still ongoing, Solis said.

“As it develops we may be have to get to the theft charges,” Solis said. “There’s a few things we need to get with the original agencies. Federal has interest in the case because of the monetary value, the fact that it may be organized crime and there’s been some leads that the suspects were contacted in North Dakota and there were hives in that location.”

Of the $224,000 worth of bees and equipment reported stolen, about $170,000 worth was recovered, about consistent with the two-thirds return Cunniff estimated. While some parts were never found, many hives were simply so damaged that they’ve become unusable.

“I think it really affected Lloyd in particular,” Solis said.

Much of the equipment is mixed-and-matched with different pieces, Cunniff said. Some of the hives aren’t even fully assembled anymore.

“It’s just totally mixed up,” Cunniff said. “It’s the biggest mess you’ve ever seen.”

Cunniff last week received a photo from a California beekeeper who was working with law enforcement. Although Cunniff’s hives were not marked, he said he recognized the nearly new equipment and custom-built handles he had fashioned onto the hives. So he flew down on May 2 and identified the hives as his. They had been found in all three locations. After hiring a few trucking operations to get the bees back to Montana, Cunniff’s hives were back in Choteau on Sunday.

Cunniff and Solis said the bee thieves used his bees in the almond tree pollination, like Cunniff had planned. Cunniff estimates the bee thieves earned about $100,000 in the process.

So despite having his bees back, he feels like the score isn’t yet settled.

“I don’t feel any justice until the guy ends up in jail,” he said, looking for a conviction. “But it is nice to get the equipment back. We put a lot of time and money into it.”

Since his things were stolen, Cunniff’s insurance company had covered the costs for him to get his operation started again, providing the funds to get more bees from California, as well as a semi-truck load of new bees, about 508 new hives in total. So when Cunniff told the insurance company his bees had been found, they actually told him to leave them in California. But since more than half of his hives were recovered, Cunniff decided to see what he could do.

“It just ended up being so much stuff, we couldn’t leave it down there,” he said.

Cunniff still plans to truck his bees down to California for the almond pollination next summer, although he said he’ll be more cautious about leaving the bees there for extended periods of time. Cunniff said he’ll have to wait and see if his recovered bees will still be able to produce honey, which he won’t know until fall. By then, the bees will have died off if they are in fact diseased. If the bees survive, he’ll negotiate with the insurance company, who technically owns the recovered bees, to buy them back.

“They left it up to us,” he said. “If it’s not worth anything, then we’ll walk away from it.”

He has hardly been able to monitor the recovered bees anyway; he’s busy feeding the new colonies, preparing for a honey crop this year. He has to split hives accordingly, making sure enough queens are appropriated to certain colonies, which he feeds with a mixture of liquid sugar and water.

Coming off a winter with more snowfall than the two years before, Cunniff said conditions are ripe for a healthy, hearty honey crop this year. All in all, Cunniff said it looks like his business should have a pretty sweet summer.

"We've been getting spring rain, a bit at a time," he said. "Things are looking really good."