Abigail Margulis

amargulis@citizen-times.com

ASHEVILLE – Employees at the French Broad Co-Op suspect that someone broke into the building, gained access to the roof and stole honey, dismantling the beehives in the process.

Sage Turner, French Broad Co-Op CFO, went up on the roof Monday afternoon and found a missing box of honey and several broken boxes with about 20,000 honeybees gone.

“It’s so random,” she said. “There’s a lot happening in downtown right now and it might be that someone was able to access the roof without our knowledge, which is a safety and security concern.”

Since Monday, Turner has cleaned the area and put the hives back together. There is also another nuclear beehive on its way to start the rebuilding process.

Turner estimated the damage to be a couple hundred dollars, but also said it’s relatively costly to rebuild what they lost.

No police report was filed though, Turner said.

“I don’t know why someone would steal honey,” she said. “The access to the roof is difficult, so someone went through a lot of trouble.”

Turner joked that she should have called police saying, “Someone stole 20,000 pets,” but now she is focused on rebuilding the hives and using this incident to educate the community about honeybees.

For Turner, rebuilding the hives wasn't a question because she feels that it is important to the community.

"We're seeing an overall decline in honeybees globally," she said. "We were the first honeybee project in town and we feel that the honeybee is crucial to the food movement. We're not hesitating to rebuild."

Not only will the co-op now be working to rebuild their beehives, but they are also in the process of an expansion project, which they are having a meeting for on Sunday at the Orange Peel. The meeting will be 3:30-5 p.m. and Turner encourages people to stop by to give input to the project.