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How Bees Revealed a Pot Farm Beneath the Maraschino Cherries

thedailybeast.com

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Re: How Bees Revealed a Pot Farm Beneath the Maraschino Cherries

#21

Post by DarkTree »

hlfw0rd wrote: post #10
DarkTree wrote: post #4

Every time an event like this happens, or kidnapped victims are revealed being hidden in a house for the past 15 years, or a previously unknown serial-killer is finally caught, it makes me wonder how many of these events are still carrying on unnoticed.

How do you relate cannabis plants with serial killers?

I wasn't intentionally equating all of those scenarios. The only relation that they have is that they are hidden from society and illegal. The point I was trying to make is that if large operations like this are taking place behind the curtains of society, surely there are more that will eventually be revealed (or never at all) in the future.

Re: How Bees Revealed a Pot Farm Beneath the Maraschino Cherries

#25

Post by trhway »

among the big themes in this tragic story, a minor gem :

"Cote went on, “Beekeepers (particularly the hipster versions) in Brooklyn sometimes (often?) lead a myopic sort of existence wherein only their world view, or their set of needs, is valid or important.”"

while it may seem only hipster related, one can see how DA/LE behavior in this story pretty much lends itself to the same "myopic" description. And in general it is among the main characteristics of our species.

Re: How Bees Revealed a Pot Farm Beneath the Maraschino Cherries

#26

Post by nosuchthing »

cthalupa wrote: post #14

I'm glad we're spending so many resources and so much time to find people growing pot in the US. It's time well spent to battle the stoner scourge, and people growing it domestically represent a much higher risk than dealing with drug dealers in Mexico. It's a bonus that we got this menace to society to commit suicide when confronted, too. He might have tried to fool us with his having a family, and working with the…

If you're vying for satire, it's not immediately obvious. :(

  Poe's law is an Internet adage which states that, without a 
  clear indicator of the author's intent, parodies of extreme 
  views will, to some readers, be indistinguishable from 
  sincere expressions of the parodied views.

Re: How Bees Revealed a Pot Farm Beneath the Maraschino Cherries

#27

Post by logfromblammo »

cthalupa wrote: post #14

I'm glad we're spending so many resources and so much time to find people growing pot in the US. It's time well spent to battle the stoner scourge, and people growing it domestically represent a much higher risk than dealing with drug dealers in Mexico. It's a bonus that we got this menace to society to commit suicide when confronted, too. He might have tried to fool us with his having a family, and working with the…

Once again, I'll endorse the use of the tilde ('~') as a punctuation mark to indicate sarcasm or satire. To use it, replace the end punctuation of a single sentence with the tilde, or wrap an entire block of text in two of them, like quotation marks.

~It's so very difficult to use.~

Fortunately, the previous post is written such that a Poe's Law check would probably confirm my suspicion of satire.

Re: How Bees Revealed a Pot Farm Beneath the Maraschino Cherries

#28

Post by thaumasiotes »

So...

1. Bees start to turn red, causing people to think of the maraschino cherry factory. They're tested and found to be carrying red die #40.

2. The cherry grower looks for help with all the bees coming into his factory.

3. The New York Times runs an article implying that the bees are red because they're harvesting factory runoff.

4. The bees are found to be harvesting from vats of cherries in transit within the factory. Those vats are sealed, and the red bee problem is no more.

5. The Brooklyn DA's Office notices the Times coverage. They've investigated the factory owner for marijuana production already, but failed to find anything they could stick him with. They suggest to the Department of Environmental Conservation that this merits an official check of the factory for illegal syrup runoff.

6. The DEC checks for illegal runoff, and also for marijuana. They find neither.

7. A new DA is elected and decides to drop unresolved cases. This prompts the Office to try one last time to get the cherry factory guy.

8. Although it is now definitively established that there was no illegal runoff and the bees were feeding on in-production vats (which they're not doing any more), the DA's Office gets the DEC to investigate the factory once again for, you guessed it, illegal syrup runoff. They justify this based on the old news coverage.

9. The DEC finds no illegal runoff. They do find marijuana this time, though.

Truly, a high point in good governance. How exactly can the DEC investigate this guy for a problem that (a) it's already investigated and found no evidence of, and (b) is supported only by a theory that is already known to be false? :/

Re: How Bees Revealed a Pot Farm Beneath the Maraschino Cherries

#29

Post by thaumasiotes »

j_m_b wrote: post #3
stephengillie wrote: post #2

But the bees didn't reveal the cannabis farm. The Brooklyn DA used the bee incident as a pretext to search the farm and plant twice, while accompanying another agency, and used a third-hand 6-year-old tip to find where a hidden staircase was. And the rest of this story is so tragic.

Exactly. The bees were just a ruse for them to raid the factory. Tragic ending indeed.

The bees weren't just a ruse for them to raid the factory. They investigated him for illegal runoff based on speculation in the New York Times that that was how the bees were turning red, even though the cause of the red bees had already been determined to be something else.

Usually, when you have a pretext to do something, at least the pretextual reason is, you know, true.

Re: How Bees Revealed a Pot Farm Beneath the Maraschino Cherries

#30

Post by monochromatic »

> You have to think that were it not for the instantly accessible gun in an ankle holster, the moment of panic and perhaps shame might have just passed. He might even now be producing cherries with the method that became prevalent after Prohibition made alcohol as illegal as pot has been.

Of course the anti-gun Daily Beast couldn't go an entire article without blaming a gun for something a person decided to do.

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