Bee problems

[T.Smith]

Hello, I live in a community that is not inside the city limits and is classified residential/agricultural. I started keeping bees on my 2 acre lot. Anyway one of my neighbors is not liking the idea at all. I have got a couple swarms in my yard but do not know if any have landed in her yard. They have gotten tight lipped the last couple days and am thinking maybe there is a problem. With these circumstances are there any liabilities that I have with my bees, swarms etc.

[Keith13]

i am down in baton rouge and on a couple of acres i am not aware of any zoning laws outside the city limits. as long as your outside the city limits with no zoning ordinances, there aint a lot they can say. you may want to stick out the olive branch again to this neighbor and try to head off any problems be the first to try to come to a truce with your neighbor

[Alan Forbes]

I wonder the same thing.  I live in a very urban area and my neighbors are withing 20 feet on 3 sides of me.  Even though the flight path of the bees is forced up high by a fence and my house, there is more than a good chance that an errant bee will happen into my neighbors yard.  Two of the three know I will soon have bees, the one is cool about it and the other is reserved.  I don't think there are any local codes against keeping bees and if someone was stung, nothing could stop them from filing a suit against you.  The hard part for them would be to prove that it was one of your bees that stung them - unless they kept the bee.

I am trying to do everything I can to make my bees welcome.  I bought an extra bees suit and will invite my neighbors to work the bees with me and of course plenty of honey for everyone.  And most importantly, I keep a couple of Epipens handy in case anyone goes into anaphylactic shock.

In my search for information, I found the following (humorous? believable?) news note:


Breast goes bust after bee sting
(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-24 09:11

A woman in Taiwan Province lost the fullness of her bosom after a bee stung her artificially-enlarged breasts and broke the saline filled breast implant.
The woman, who went in for breast-enlargement surgery three years ago, was stung recently when she passed by a field. Two days later, she was shocked to find that her right breast had flattened out. Doctors told her that the salt-water bag embedded in her breast had broken and all the water had leaked out.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2...nt_6039683.htm

[amandrea]

Unreasoning fear is something. I think it has to do with superstitous behavior. I know people who if I told them, while they were visting my home, there was a gun in the other room would get very uncomfortable and leave. If I said there was a gun in the other room and a table saw in the garage they would not fear the table saw in the same way.

[DrKurtG]

..offer some honey... bring them to the hive and show them how cool it is to watch the community of bees... if you involve your neighbors and they begin to understand that bees are not evil pests that sting, they will gain and you wil gain. Most, if not all, misunderstandings can be traced back to ignorance. It may be that all of their experiences with bees center around being stung during summers as children. Involve them. You will both gain.

[Brian D. Bray]

Set up some chairs a few yards infront of your hives and invite the neighbors over for Iced Tea.  Warn them not to wear perfume or consume alcohol or banana's before they come.  Tell them that those items are similar to the alarm phernomes the bees use and that might be why they'd been stung in the past.  Most people will say they hate bees because they were stungs by hornets or yellow jackets.