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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Sat, 13 Feb 1999 18:38:15 -0700
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Hi Cesar,
 
Thought I'd send you a personal response to make sure you didn't skip
over  this BEE-L post - especially since I wrote about our own fine
city.
 
Matthew
 
---------------------
If it's a story you're after, and it involves a neighbor - I'm sure the
topic of  fear & panic
will hit home to many beekeepers:
 
After purchasing some downtown property in a rural community I was
surprised to learn this town(Castle Rock) was one of the only cities in
the state of Colorado with a bee-nuisance ordinance spelled out in it's
chapter (here, you can keep bees in downtown Denver!).
I found this out by an unfriendly visit from the local humane society.
They made me move off all 20 hives until I changed (?) the ordinance
(ugh....some of those were 300-400 lbs!).
 
Like many beekeepers, I've always had the opinion that when it comes to
bees, go ahead and keep them until someone says you can't.  These bees
were basically boxed in and had to fly up 10-15' to get out (high trees,
 
embankment & buildings).
 
At the end of last season I helped the city take down a tree (with bees)
 
and had them move the trunk of this tree to the back of my lot - bees &
all.  My neighbor (car-wash owner) came over to inspect why a tree was
placed between our properties and found bees!  He became so distraught
that he called the police dept, fire dept & humane society ALL on the
same night.
Since I've helped all of these departments & people with different bee
'problems', they all knew who he was complaining about & no-one would
help him in his 'panic' - but they referred the humane society to me as
they had an obligation to follow-up on a complaint.
After a discussion with the car-wash owner (who's 20-30' behind where I
kept the bees) he expliained his reasoning, that he "was worried about
the bees getting in his trash and stinging someone (?!)".  When I
confronted him on his 'speculation', he admitted he had never seen a bee
 
all summer long (even though they lived very close by) and didn't even
know I had hives there until he found the tree.  Fear does strange
things to people - not only the car-wash owner but also of the people
who thought of such an ordinance  as most of us would prefer not to live
 
in a sterile environment (we need bees in cities too!).
 
Matthew Westall (Castle Rock, CO) - approx 10 miles from Cesar in
Larkspur, CO
 
 
 
Cesar Flores wrote:
 
> Does anyone have any interesting experiences/stories about "neighbor
> relations" while keeping bees in urban areas?

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