5 March 2015
[Humor]
Didn't life used to be simpler? And, when
life was simpler, so was crime. In the
old days, if you were a criminal transporting illegal contraband -- a controlled
substance, like marijuana -- you could just put it in a container and write
“not marijuana” on the outside.
Sounds too simple, doesn’t it? But I have to admit, I’ve never heard of anyone getting caught with a controlled substance in a container labeled to assure the searcher that it wasn’t contraband.
But that simple world came to an end, last weekend, in Lincoln, Nebraska, when police searchers ignored the words, “Not Weed,” written on the outside of a plastic sour creme container and opened it. What did they find inside? Weed – also known as – marijuana.
Who could have suspected this bold move on the part of investigators?
See: Nebraska police find pot inside container labeled 'Not Weed'
Since the unraveling of the organized crime families in the late 20th century, wall after wall of protection for criminal activities has collapsed.
Organized crime was based on loyalty.
But as celebrity beckoned, insiders were willing to sell their stories
to Hollywood and enjoy their 15 of fame.
But many believe that the biggest issue was drugs. Organized criminals couldn’t resist their own
products, narcotics. And with drug-use,
everything unravels.
But some loyalties remained. Bronx neighborhoods are still close-knit communities in New York City. There, you can trust your neighbors to look out of you. And, then, there were the bees. You could always expect your neighborhood honeybees to “watch your back.”
At least, that’s the way it used to be. Maybe all the new bees flooding into the city in the last few years have made that sense of neighborhood disappear. Or maybe, what drugs were to the old crime families, high-fructose corn syrup has become to honeybees.
Not so very
long ago, bees from bee yards (apiaries) in the Red Hook section of the Bronx
began to turn . . . red.The bees didn’t become completely red -- just their stomachs, which seemed to always be filled with a red liquid instead of nectar and pollen. But where would bees find something so red that was so sweet?
Well, Red
Hook is, also, the home of Dell’s Maraschino Cherries factory. What are maraschino cherries? They are those bright-red sweet cherries used
to top-off ice cream confections and decorate mixed drinks. Again, they are bright-red and sweet with
sugar. Is this where the bees were
getting their stomachs filled with a bright red meal?To the factory’s beekeeping neighbors, this seemed like a joke. It was the factory’s owner who contacted the city to ask about problems with honeybees. More and more bees were invading the factory. The owner was worried that a bee might get into the cherries.
About this same time, local beekeepers were having the "red gunk" eaten by their red bees analyzed. And what did they find? Red Dye #40 – the same color additive used in the manufacture of maraschino cherries.
The factory owner allowed New York City Beekeepers Association (NYCBA) founder, Andrew Cote, unrestricted access to the factory. With a thorough investigation it was determined that the bees were slurping-up cherry syrup from cherry vats as these moved outside onto the sidewalk before being promptly moved back into the factory facility. The solution was simple: cover the vats. Problem solved.
Or, at least, one problem was solved.
During the investigation, the New York Times published a piece called “The Mystery of the Red Bees of Red Hook.” And this dredged up another mystery from the past. Six years earlier, an informant had told a postal inspector that there was a giant marijuana farm operating in the basement of the cherry-making factory.
Problem: this was “hearsay” and wouldn’t support a search warrant.
Six years earlier, the factory had been carefully watched, but no drug traffic hauling marijuana out of the factory could be found. The building plans had been consulted, but the plans included no basement. The owner had been followed, but did nothing incriminating. Still, the case file remained open because drug sniffing dogs had reacted outside the factory, but that wasn’t enough to justify a warrant and a search.
Now, 6 years later, after the story of the red bees broke, the District Attorney asked the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to investigate the possibility of illegal or unsanitary disposal of “runoff” from the manufacturing process. The strange case of the red bees had opened an opportunity, an excuse, for a search warrant.
The DEC searchers found nothing.
With the next election, there was a new District Attorney anxious to clear away old cases. Using the runoff, again, as an excuse, the DEC made a final search focusing on a garage attached to the cherry factory. Behind a false wall, they found a stairway to a basement -- a basement that wasn’t supposed to be there.
Down the stairway was the biggest marijuana farm every found in New York City: 2,500 square feet of farm with 120 grow lamps and a complex irrigation system. The farm was a multimillionaire dollar operation likely producing 3 to 5 harvests a year.
Without the red bees, the farm would have never been discovered. Why couldn’t the bees “lay off” the syrup for sake of their neighbor’s operation? Ok . . . ok! The law is the law. And a marijuana farm in New York City is illegal.
But there’s still the question of neighborhood loyalty. The bees and the factory were neighbors. They were neighbors! In the Bronx!
And . . . and . . . and . . .
What are we saying? These are honeybees. Asking a honeybee to stay away from sweet sugary syrup is like asking an ant to stay away from a picnic or asking a dog not to bury a bone. The bees can’t help themselves.
Conclusion: you can still trust your local honeybees to keep some of your secrets. But not when a sugar-sweet meal is at stake. They just can’t resist!
See: How Bees Revealed a Pot Farm Beneath the Maraschino Cherries
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