>For years, urban beekeepers in Los Angeles, such as myself, have been secretly keeping bees in the city due to unfavorable laws. But that is all about to change! Read my piece to find out more.
In my own city,
beekeeping inhabits a grey area of extralegality, in which it is neither prohibited, nor permitted.
This has encouraged an atmosphere of discretion, in which we ensure we have good neighbor relations, we prevent swarming, and try to practice beekeeping with an awareness of how it may impact others.
Which is how urban beekeeping should be practiced regardless of legality.
Legalization, as far as I can tell, is of greatest benefit to bee-entrepreneurs, who would gain access to a new market of folks now eager to throw money at them in the name of "saving the bees".
In Calgary our experience has been that bee-entrepreneurialism primarily results in beekeeping-tourism, and the inevitable nuisance complaints.
The beekeeping-tourists soon move on, often not even aware of the messes they've made, leaving the incumbent beekeeping community to deal with the complaints and prevent any of them from escalating into a crusade.
Meanwhile, back at the urban farm, a local publicity hound was starting a campaign to "Legalize urban chickens". He, and a handful of eager new chicken keepers campaigned city hall to evaluate the matter with a feasibility study. This campaign was launched without any consensus from the existing community of clandestine chicken keepers.
Subsequently, citizens who had never given a previous thought to the matter of urban chickens started thinking about it, decided they didn't want chickens around them, and started pressuring city hall to prohibit chicken keeping.
The end result was increased public awareness, unwanted scrutiny, and formal prohibition.
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