HANCOCK – Roughly $5,000 in damage was done last weekend to 50 beehives on the property of Merrill Blueberry Farms, officials said Tuesday.

Del Merrill, company president, said the damage on property off Thorsen Road was by someone driving a truck across the blueberry fields.

“Somebody drove a truck into 50 hives of bees and stove them all to pieces,” Merrill said. “There were thousands of bees dead. It didn’t kill them all, but it killed a good share of them.”

Merrill said the company had rented use of the bees to pollinate their blueberry bushes. Each hive was worth $100.

The incident occurred either Saturday night or Sunday morning and was discovered around 6 p.m. Sunday, Merrill said. Many of the bees appeared to have died in the bad weather Saturday night after the hives were struck.

Trooper Carlton Small is investigating the incident, according to Maine State Police Sgt. Tim Varney. He said he did not know if Small, who was unavailable for comment Tuesday, has developed any leads into the case.

Each spring, bees are trucked from Florida, Texas and California to pollinate the 60,000 acres of blueberry fields in Maine and other crops, such as apples, cucumbers and squash, according to state officials. Use of bees over the past two decades has been credited by officials for helping make blueberry growing a $75 million annual industry in Maine.

Merrill said last weekend’s damage mirrors a larger problem: all-terrain vehicles operated on private property. He said people ride ATVs directly over the blueberry bushes on his company’s land to get to gravel pits that abut the blueberry fields.

Similar concerns about ATV use on private property have been raised in neighboring Franklin, where earlier this year voters rejected a proposal that would have required property owners who set aside land for ATV use to get approval for doing so from the town.

“People are destroying property all over, and something needs to be done,” Merrill said.