Suspicions that ‘envious’ beekeeper is behind Gozo arson attack

The apiculturist whose bee colonies were burnt down on Friday suspects a local beekeeper to have been behind the arson attack.

Ermanno de Chino told MaltaToday that only an experienced beekeeper would have been able to navigate around the grouped apiaries without getting stung.

“I suspect that an envious beekeeper was behind the attack. The police found pieces of newspaper at the apiaries that could have been used to start the blaze, and hopefully they can be scanned for the culprit’s fingerprints.”

215 nucleus colonies and two brood banks were burned down at de Chino’s fields between Ghasri and Gharb on Friday; around 250,000 bees were killed, with damages amounting to around €12,000.

Parliamentary secretary for agriculture Roderick Galdes described the incident as “an attack against a private company which invested in our country, as well as a vandal attack against the environment”.

De Chino, the Italian owner of bee breeding company Melita Bees, has faced his fair share of setbacks and controversies since he resettled from Sicily to Gozo early last year.

He instantly had to fend off concerns by local beekeepers that his bees were imported from Sicily – where the deadly small hive beetle pest had ravaged beehives. He also dismissed concerns that the unprecedented scale of the importation of foreign bees – around a quarter of the entire bee population in Malta – threatened the unique genetic identity of the Maltese honey bee Apis mellifera ruttneri.

Backed by Roderick Galdes, he had argued that the bee’s DNA had survived previous large-scale importations from Italy, New Zealand and the United States. Galdes had suggested that beekeepers feared the competition from the Italian apiculturist, but this was dismissed by beekeepers who retorted that their business is honey while de Chino’s is bee breeding.  

Earlier this year, de Chino’s apiaries were targeted by thieves, who had made off with around 48 colonies in a spate of robberies. The apiculturist had back then suggested that the robber was familiar with the location and had extensive knowledge about the handling of apiaries.