There is a meeting Wed July 29th in Millcreek Twp, near Erie PA @ 7pm to decide wether or not to ban beehives in residential areas. The zoning board is holding the meeting they want to limit beehives to agraculteral zoning. Any ideas we can use to keep beehives legal?
If it is that easy can they ban black flies horse flies, wasps and yellow jackets also?
Why? How did this come up? Go to meting and give your prepared statement on the value of this wholesome hobby. Perhaps you are grandfathered in. If banned go stealth. Cooler bee hives
Maybe some folks here can give you the rules for the towns they are in that allow beekeeping? You could go with list of places that allow it and the rules they use. perhaps a compromise between none and some could be reached?
What is causing this? If someone has the idea that it is to keep AHB out, in an area that has them, which you do not, the exact opposite is true. The AHB will fill the void.
Don't you have a lot of fruit trees (apples, pears, plums, grapes) and don't people have gardens? Ask how well they are producing. There is a close relationship between the bees and production.
Do your home work, find out who has bees and check with the surrounding area. Let the people know that if the hives are removed, unless there are feral hives, their fruit production will seriously drop. When my wife first grew her garden, I did not have bees and she had lots of flowers but almost no fruit. There were no feral bees here. As soon as I got bees, her garden did real well.
Most areas of the U.S. lost most of their feral honey bees and native bees over the last 16 years. A lot of places are still void, especially if they don't have Beekeepers who do not treat.
The state of FL took over control of beekeeping to stop local areas from banning beekeeping. This prevented void areas which the AHB (African Honey Bee) would fill in plus FL is a major crop producer, commercial and residential. It is not uncommon for people to have a lot of fruit trees in their yards.
Jim
the people who have the hives don't own them. keeping them for another person whose yard isn't ideal for bees. The people who have the hives checked with zoning before getting the hives and were told they were OK. After they were there the neighbors started complaining that they were afraid of getting stung. They said 15 stings can kill. One neighbor is allergic. A friend of my told me of the problem. I don't have hives but a neighbor a few houses up does. I've noticed more bees in my yard lately. My friend said his berries did much better this year after the hives were set up. The area were the new hives are is high density with 1/4 acre lots or smaller. I know that anyone that has fruit trees, berries, gardens, or flowers benefits from bees. I've lived here all my life(59 years) and noticed the lack of bees last few years. I don't have my lawn sprayed, I have dandilions and clover and milkweed. I also have apple, pear and rasberries. I will go to the meeting and give my opinion on the benefit of bees. Just looking for facts to base my opinion. Thanks, Steve
Time to start painting your hives camouflage. Maybe strategically place some shrubs around them?
Townships banning insects is just ludicrous.
I'm assuming someone has voiced the opinion that for the safety of the public bees should not be allowed in residential areas, and I'm sure that someone will have some statistics or horror stories relating to bee stings at the meeting.
Don't tackle this head on by explaining how beneficial bees are, try this approach instead.
Point out these statistics:
On average 5.7 million people are attacked by dogs each year, and nearly 900,000 require emergency hospital treatment, 27,000 required reconstructive plastic surgery and there are on average 30 fatalities a year, mostly children.
Now ask the meeting when they intend to ban dogs as well as bees in residential areas :wink:
See this article in PA beekeeper
http://www.pastatebeekeepers.org/pdf/Zoning.pdf
http://patch.com/pennsylvania/plymouthwhitemarsh/plymouth-tweaks-draft-beekeeping-ordinance-reduces-requirements
Google Plymouth Township PA bee ordinance and you should get a few related articles. I think they came to a decwent compromise,but I lost track.
I thought the Federal Government had or is considering banning that type of regulation by towns and allowing up to three hives per household. Am I dreaming?
I have not heard this,but I also would not like the fed getting involved in what should be decided by each municipality.
Give the facts and counter the hype.
I think the most important point is that there WILL be bees in the residential areas. Those bees may be in the trees or they may be in peoples hives. They are much easier to manage in peoples hives. They are usually much LESS of a nuisance than a dog and most neighbors will never notice.
If they ban one form of livestock, will they ban others?
Jay,
A lot of communities all ready do. Right now, Jacksonville has trial areas where you can have 4 hens with a permit. Most other farm animals are banned.
Jim
I've posted this before. a week after I placed 3 hives in my yard the local health dept. knocked on my door ( bees are under his domain ). a neighbor had voiced concerns. I'm on 1/2 acre & the closest house to the northwest corner is on a full acre & the house is 200 ft. from the hives. that's where I put them. on my east line I'm looking at a full block of back yards & all of those houses are rentals & that's where the call came from. again the closest house is 200 ft. from the hives. the inspector informed me that my hives were legal & I replied that I had checked the city's livestock rules before I placed them. ( we cannot have chickens here unless you have a full acre ). he thought everything looked proper. I asked him what he'd tell the neighbor & he replied he'd tell them to keep their kids the h*ll out of my yard. he also sprays for mosquitos & told me he will not spray my block. he's been back a few times saying his boss wanted to know what they could do to help beekeepers. there are 4 of us in town that he knows of. I've never had a problem here except for one time when the girls took over a birdbath for the water. I told that neighbor to drain it for 3 weeks & I put out more water sources & with a new batch of bees the problem sorted itself out. they do frequent another neighbors garden pond but that neighbor does not care & says the fish get an occasional bee snack. I do make sure that I do not inspect any hives when kids are outside playing in case a hive gets cranky. I did have one neighbor come by with a dead yellow jacket complaining that his kid had been stung. I informed him that the bug in question was a yellowjacket & for future reference that all of my bees wore collars. he believed me about the collars & left. I think that keeping low key, being diligent with swarm management, & using common sense when working the hives goes a long ways in avoiding problems. my current neighbors are all supportive.
livestock are already outlawed. The neighbor that complained gives the bee keeper the finger any time he sees him. I heard 2 of the 3 supervisors are in favor of the ban. I've been active in the Township for 30 years so I have a good relationship with the supervisors. I will call today and talk to 1 to see if the zoning commission can make a decision or if they make a recommendation to the supervisors. I'm trying to get as many people that garden to go to the meeting as I can. I heard this is the 2nd time the supervisors got a complaint about hives. I'll tell the supervisors about the Plymouth ordinance. Thanks for the support. Steve
When I registered my hives here in Florida I actually had the regional inspector say "if anyone gives you any crap pass them my cell # I will set them straight" according to her Florida law allowing backyard beekeeping supersedes any local municipality or HOA regulations and as long as we abide by distance from property line regulations and obstruction height regulations no one can ban hives....Florida doesn't always do it right but as far as the bees go it seems they have.
Good luck to you Steve!!!
Good luck Steve. Get as many people that will support beekeeping as you can. Politicians work on numbers, no common sense.
KLB,
"Florida doesn't always do it right but as far as the bees go it seems they have. "
That is because without bees, Florida will lose billions in revenue from a serious drop in crop production.
Quote from: sawdstmakr on July 27, 2015, 12:23:30 PM
"Florida doesn't always do it right but as far as the bees go it seems they have. "
That is because without bees, Florida will lose billions in revenue from a serious drop in crop production.
Ahhh... Gotta love that orange blossom honey!
In my experience people, including congress, the senate, town councils and even CEOs are often under they impression that they are deciding one thing when in fact they are deciding something entirely different. The town council probably believes they are deciding whether there will be bees in their town. They are not. They may think they are deciding how many bees will be in their town. They are not. They have no control over that. The environment decides how many bees it can support. What they are deciding is WHERE those bees will be. Will they be in a hive where they are easily requeened if they are a nuisance, or easily moved. Or will they be in the trees and walls and soffits where they will not be easy to manage.
If I were the OP, I would print MB's reply and carry it to the meeting. That is as perfect an explanation as I have seen. Then I would ask them if they wanted the bees in town manageable, or unmanageable.
Seems to me that most areas do not have the full population of native pollinators, including honey bees, that they can support. From what I have read, it doesn't seem to be a lack of food, and too much competition, that has caused a lower number of colonies. It seems to be disease. If a town doesn't allow hives at all, they will still have bees. Valid point. But they will not have as many bees. There could be one colony in the old tree on the corner of my block. That is what nature put there. My new hive doubles the number of colonies. Whether my bees are there or not, nature has the same number of colonies in the area. But there is also the "danger" that my girls swarm. If so, I have added to what was there naturally on two counts.
I agree that bees will be present naturally. But we do add to the number of bees in an area when we bring a managed colony in. No getting around that. So what? I've got nine colonies in my back yard right now. That is in addition to the "wild" colonies in the area. I've had bees back there for three years. My young children play back there all summer, and haven't been stung once.
I run from 8 to. 16 hives in my back yard. My 2 grand daughters played back there, barefoot, with them since 2010. Only one has ever been stung and that was when she stuck her head right next to the observation hive while we were working on it. She came up real fast and scared one bee.
Jim
>Then I would ask them if they wanted the bees in town manageable, or unmanageable.
And that is what they are really deciding... even if they don't know it.
Quote from: Michael Bush on July 28, 2015, 11:26:23 AM
>Then I would ask them if they wanted the bees in town manageable, or unmanageable.
And that is what they are really deciding... even if they don't know it.
It all goes back to my first post on this. If it is that easy to ban honey bees then it should be just as easy to ban horse flies, deer flies, black flies, wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets.
When I was growing up I knew of no managed bee hives in town, but I knew of two or three bee colonies. I got stung regularly as I ran barefoot all the time and the bees were working the clover or the dandelions. We didn't have any hives. My kids mostly never got stung except the one son who never did watch where he was going and he would step on one now and again. Now there are four grand kids living int he house and one has been stung by a paper wasp and one was stung once by a bee that crawled up his sleeve and he pinched it when he panicked. My point is that they get stung less than I did, probably because they are aware of bees. I was not that aware...
What people imagine bees to be is so far from what they really are... they have trouble realizing that bees do not go out every morning looking for someone to sting...
Quote from: Michael Bush on July 28, 2015, 12:10:47 PM
What people imagine bees to be is so far from what they really are... they have trouble realizing that bees do not go out every morning looking for someone to sting...
Truer words have not been spoken.
The other day I went to help a commercial beek work through some hives. There were about 40 hives in this out-yard. Bees flying everywhere. Even before starting to work the hives, there were a handful of bees that were a distance from the yard, and bumping veils. After working the hives, we went to the other side of the field hunting for some melons. Came back 30 minutes later, and a few hundred yards from the yard, I got stung. One lesson I have learned, and tell folks, is that when you are dealing with hundreds of thousands of anything, there are always going to be a few who have had a bad day.
Yes, there are going to be bees and other stinging insects in the town. If you bring in hives, you are increasing the number of bees. This is a valid concern, within reason. If my son were severely allergic, I would not have nine hives in my yard. I would not want my neighbor to have 15 hives in his yard, 200 feet from my house. Why? Because there will always be that one or two mean bees out of every 50,000. And, the more bees in a yard of clover, the more chance there is that you accidentally step on one barefoot, or grab a drink off the swing, and get a sting in the finger. It probably won't happen, and we can take precautions to make it much less likely, but it is still more likely when you increase the number of bees in the area.
I see both sides of the argument. I believe it is best handled at the local level, as in across the yard. Talk to your neighbors. Educate them on the facts of the gentleness of the bee, and the rarity of a sting. Bee sure that folks know about the proper use of an Epi pen. Try to be sensitive to their feelings and concerns. If you have to, find another location for your hives. The location of your hive isn't worth stirring up anger and hard feelings in the neighborhood.
Chug,
So you are saying that if my neighbor is afraid of bees, then I cannot have them. I thought that I owned this land that I live on not my neighbor. I have a neighbor that went berserk on me when I was planning on getting bees. He was fanatical and threatened to kill me if his wife got stung.
Trying to be nice, I told him that I would not put them in my yard. 2 days later he went on another rant.
After that all bets were off and I keep as many bees as allowed in my yard.
Jim
So you are saying that if my neighbor is afraid of bees, then I cannot have them.
>No. There are many more variables to consider, and more options than you are setting up. If you "can't" have bees on your property, you could have bees on a different property. As to whether you "should" have bees on your property...The argument that we all make that it is our property and we should be able to do whatever we want on it, doesn't stand up. Set up a scenario. You move into a neighborhood and decide that you want bees on your property. You set up an apiary with 120 hives, 200 yards from your neighbor's house. It is your property. You should be able to do what you want on it. Your new neighbors have been in their house for ten years. They are all severely allergic to bees. Having 120 hives 200 yards from your house will greatly increase the danger that someone will be stung. In fact, I say they will be stung at some point over the course of future years. You cannot have that many thousands of bees in a tight area, and not expect one to bee mean every now and then. You decide to go ahead with your new apiary because it is your property. Do they not deserve any consideration? Do they not have rights on their property too? Consider an oak tree on the property line. The oak has been growing in your yard for 200 years, but now the branches are hanging out over your neighbor's house. During an ice storm (if you lived farther north), the branches of that oak are in danger of falling through your neighbor's roof and into his daughter's bedroom. He wants to remove the possibly fatal branch from his property, but you know that if he cuts the branch, it will kill your tree. Who gets to exercise their freedoms here? If your right to have a shade tree in the yard more important than his right to protect his family and property?
I know this scenario is ridiculous, but what I am trying to show is that we are talking about drawing a line. At some point, there needs to be protection from idiots on both sides of the debate. It's not as simple as saying, "It's my property." I wish it was. Sounds like your neighbors are ignorant about bees, and don't care to learn the truth. It's up to each one of us how we deal with that. I'd like to say that if I ran into that problem, I would put my bees in another yard. Especially if I knew that their objection was due to severe allergic reactions to bees. But I haven't been there yet. If the guy started threatening my family...
> and threatened to kill me if his wife got stung...
Yea. I think most DAs are calling that "Terroristic threats" these days... I think I would call the cops over a death threat...
I think the meeting went very well tonight. I didn't stay for the verdict. It went until 10 pm, and they had 4 different appeals to consider after listening to everyone. It looked like at least 2 to 1 in favor of keeping bees. The room was standing room only. The people against it said the bees were all over their flowers. Some were allergic, but put flowers near their front door and all around their pool and then complained when the bees came in their yard. The hives were installed in March and no one said they had been sting. There were two experts on bee keeping that spoke very well and answered questions for the board. They explained the difference between honey bees and yellow jackets and bumble bees and wasps. The people in favor talked about how docile honey bees are and how much better their berries and gardens are after to hives were set up. I will let you know when I hear how they decide. Thanks for all your input. Steve
We will keep our fingers crossed for you.
Jim
WE WON! The board voted 3-0 that hobby bee keeping is not an agricultural use and is allowed in residential zoning. There is no mention of bee keeping in the zoning ordinance, so I believe that may change. We will watch and make sure any changes are fair and reasonable. We all learned a lot about bee keeping at the meeting. Steve
Great Outcome
groovy
Congratulations.
Jims
Now go out there and get some bees. Don't deny it you are already hooked :grin:
Jim
What a great result. You guys handled that great! Educated the community, and probably swayed several people to be in favor of bees and beekeeping. Awesome!
The non agricultural designation may not be the best, but as long as it only applies to a "hobbiest" it may be okay.
Since they had no ordinance forbidding it, grandfathering existing hives may be pursued if they decide to draft a ordinance. Keep vigilant and learn all you can about the benefits to the community with Urban beekeeping. I think Philadelphia allows it now. Do some research to stay armed for battles that may still loom on the horizon.
http://www.headspacemag.com/greens_bee.html
http://www.pastatebeekeepers.org/pdf/Zoning.pdf
Glad to hear this outcome. Thanks for sharing
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One of the best things to present too, are samples of laws in other, especially, bigger cities, that allow beekeeping. Although I think the best is that beekeeping is not mentioned in the law at all and they just take care of it as they would any other nuisance such as dogs that attack or bark all night or people playing music so loud it keeps the neighborhood awake. If someone has really aggressive bees it won't be hard to tell and they can be asked to remove them or face a fine. Of course we always face the confusion between hornets, wasps and bees, but some common sense and facts can clear some of that up. Wasps and hornets don't leave stingers behind...
Good to hear Steve. I take that you already have bees, if not at least put up some empty boxes. No one will know the difference.
yea we won
the first round
what is next