Hi Chris and all
   
  Notwithstanding the dictionary definition of agriculture, the Canadian federal government defines the production (as opposed to the manufacture) of food to be farming.  Thus I have been a farmer once they figured that, if I did not give away all my honey, I was in business.  
   
  The bad side is that bees are thus farm animals and thus subject to all bylaws prohibiting farm animals.(while allowing allowing exotic pets such as pit bull terriers and boa constrictors).
   
  The good side is that losses can be deducted from my other income.  
   
  The humorous side is how this was determined.
  They spent hours phoning and phoning me - and perhaps other beekeepers, trying to figure out a farmer could earn a reasonably income without tilling ANY land.  
   
  Okay they decided I used land.  Sure I said just as my car does it parks on land.  Aha you DO use land.  I use land for my house exactly as I use land for resting my hives on..  How many acres?  Well I gave up and told her to phone back tomorrow.  At that time I had less 20 hives so I calculated the size of the footprint of the hives and paths over which I carried the honey.  
   
  What can you till THAT with?  
  I don't know I have never tried! 
  But you farm!  
  So YOU say.  
  Well you make an income farming.  So you say, because I had a hobby keeping bees and selling the honey to cover costs.  Impasse!
   
  A few days later She and her supervisor called.  Sir, on your income tax form you filed, we have to show how much land you tilled.  
  I don't till any land, just like my friend a little north of me.  He keeps free range cattle for beef but tills nothing.  
   
  He's a farmer for he raises cattle for food, like a dairyman.  You raise animals too to produce food. So you are a farmer to.  Your animals are bees.  
  Not insects.
  Insects are in the animal kingdom not the plant kingdom.
   
  If you say so but that does not mean that I till any land.
   
  Some weeks later, another phone call.  How much land do you use?  I told them I had already provided that and gave it again.  He told me to send in a correction and sign it.  I told him I would not sign my name to something untrue.  The line asks how many acres I tilled.  He gave up. 
   
  The farming tax return now requires me to specify how many acres I own as well as how many I farm.  
   
  Bottom line I guess that in Canada Bees are, by federal jurisdiction, farm animals.
   
  These crazy Canucks, eh? 
   
  

[log in to unmask] wrote:
  
Perhaps the township officials should be informed that bees are not 
'agricultural' but 'apicultural' and so are exempt. According to my dictionary 
'agriculture' is the art and practice of cultivating the land. The beekeeper is 
doing nothing to the land. It would be a pity if the beekeeper were to lose 
his home apiary through the ignorance or dyslexia of officialdom.

Chris


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