Beekeeper's relief after 14 stolen hives found in Denbighshire

A beekeeper has said he is "over the moon" after 14 stolen hives worth up to £11,000 were found about three miles away from where they taken.

The bees vanished earlier this month from Mynydd y Garth, near Llangollen in Denbighshire, and turned up on Tuesday.

Nathan Egerton Evans of West Coast Apiaries said the bees and nests seemed to be "in pretty good condition".

He said police were tipped off about the bees' location, but no perpetrator had been found.

Mr Evans, 28, from Machynlleth in Powys, runs the apiary firm, which has hives across north Wales and Shropshire - with co-director Gruffudd Tomos.

At this time of summer, they move some of their colonies to locations where there is a lot of heather, such as Mynydd y Garth.

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The pair said they did not expect to the see their bees again and had "sort of started to make peace with it".

Beekeeper Gruffudd Tomos (right) and Russel Jones checking the condition of the bees

Mr Evans added: "But I hadn't heard that much up until yesterday when they had a tip off to a PCSO [Police Community Support Officer]."

Mr Evans said they were "expecting to find masses of dead bees and that sort of thing, but that's not what we found, so that's a bonus really".

He believes that whoever took the bees has some understanding of beekeeping.

"It definitely takes at least a certain amount of basic knowledge to understand how to move them."

He described hive theft as "infrequent" and generally on a small scale.

"When we started to tell other beekeepers, more established beekeepers, that it was 14 hives, it was something that not many people had ever heard of.

"It was the sheer amount of hives that were taken that was such a shock."

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