Bees in the News!

http://www.crdailystar.com/crNews.cfm#2806

It's always been astonishing to me that many property tax agencies ignore
beekeeping as an agricultural entity.  In the face of estimates that
honeybees are responsible for up to 33% of the food on our table.
It's like saying we don't exist as farmers.  Yet we do exist, do pollinate,
do sell honey, do sell beeswax, and DO work the land just as hard as the guy
next door with cattle.

For those that don't know the story about beekeping and property tax issues:
Up to now in Colorado the land you placed your beehives on would NOT qualify
for agricultural use unless you had another ag concern.  So property owners
get taxed at  high rates just as if it were land waiting for development,
while the land next door with cattle or hay would be taxed at a fraction.

Why wouldn't taxing officials acknowledge honeybees as an ag concern?
The arguements against include:
- "Bees don't graze" - which fools the honeybees while they're 'pretending'
to graze on both pollen & nectar;  Evidence of course is in our pollen traps
and in our supers.
- "Bees leave property boundaries and can't be proven to return" - written
by someone whom obviously has no idea what the word "colony" means or why we
have wooden beehives;
-"bees cannot be proven to graze the area they're placed" - (too silly to
reply to);  Anyone ever see a bee working a flower just outside their
beehives?
-"bees are not domesticated" - despite many dictionaries & encyclopedias
explaining the opposite - that honeybees are the ONLY domesticated insect,
the only insect we've changed dramatically from native species to
commercially selected varieties - 'trained' to work our frames, our hives,
in our manner, with the temperment that we select...fitting the very
definition of domestication.
-"bees harvest from weeds" - and as do goats, cattle, etc - just as bees
work PLANTED clover, Vetch or alfalfa  - again, written by someone whom has
no idea of the complex use of honeybees in our food supply - both for
pollination and harvest.

It's obvious from last weeks supreme court decision that taxing officials
were jerking property owners around and they got caught.  I've been told
that this was the first instance of a land-owner taking the issue of bees &
property all the way through the Colorado courts.

I'm not naive enough to suggest that taxing authorites simply don't know the
facts of beekeeping.  But it's either give them the benefit of the doubt or
suggest that those authorities could care less about beekeepers as an
agricultural entity and complete concern over what they could squeeze($) out
from property owners with land under beehives.

  Which would you go for?  Perhaps a little of both?
At any rate, here in colorado the playing field has been leveled.  We're now
farmers both when we work and when we get taxed on our property.

Matthew Westall - E-Bees-

     //        Earthling Bees
 >8(())))-     "Take me to your feeder"
     \\        Castle Rock, CO,  USA

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