T>The city of Pompano Beach Florida has an ordinance against a whole
 >host of agricultural uses, including beehives.  Mr. Michael
 >Rudunick of that city wishes to change the law from no beehives to
 >a few.  Seems the city fathers are tradtionalists in the urban
 >scene and not amenable to change.  What tactics can Mr. Rudunick
 >used to convince the city council to amend the ordinance?
 
Hi All,
 
Except for the old reliable camouflage and concealment of the beehives
there is little that can be done to reverse a city ordinance once it is
signed into law unless you can convince the majority of the law makers to
vote it down and that would be a rare occasion. They then would have to
have a new more liberal ordnance to replace it with. Most beekeepers
don't have the political will to do the work it would take no matter
how well armed with the facts. But it could be done if the beekeeper was
politically active. A change in an ordnance like this could take
notification of all who would be affected by the change, a public
hearing, maybe several if there was several city committees such as
"parks and recreation", "public safety", more hearing, and input from
committee to the city board and so on...thats why so many people vote for
"grid lock" and consider a year when few laws are passed as worthy of
notice.
 
T>There used to be little evidence one could point to of the
 >usefulness of honey bee activity.  Now that the word is out that
 >bees are scarce and as a consequence, home gardeners are berefit of
 >pollinating activities, perhaps this will add to Mr. Rudunick's
 >case.  I know Murray Loring wrote an update of his book, Bees and
 >the Law some time back, but I don't have a copy.
 
All the hype in the world about how beneficial bees are to man, or
how good beekeepers are as deserving giving people, direct descendants
of John Appleseed each one, is destroyed by any one person who
believes that it is only a matter of time before "killer bees" will be
killing the pets, children, and good citizens of Your Town, USA...and
there is one in every crowd of people, including we beekeepers sorry
to say. In a risk free democratic society bees are not an acceptable
risk and all the commerce and history they may bring with them will
not alter that.
 
One only had to watch the congressional debates on the death of the
Honey Support Program to witness how a few with as good arguments for
a "bee free society" as you will ever hear were able to nullified
50 years of work by hundreds of wise beekeepers and friendly congress
people with a few short speech's and mostly from men who represented
some of the best beekeeping pastures and oldest beekeeping families in
the US.
 
Score another one for those who hyped the anticipated arrival of the
African Bee for the sake of science and the grant money they would gain
when statistical and scientific information was available that these
bees would not necessarily be more then a challenge to beekeepers and
a curiosity to science, and I am sure some are still waiting to hear
of the deaths of thousands of innocents here in California and other
places. But then if we base what we believe and our science on what we
read in the TRASH papers maybe we should not complain. The majority of
people in South America have only the sensational tabloid type press as
their daily newspaper and even then we translated "Maw Maw" to "African
Killer Bees", and scored the death from bee stings the same way we
inflated the body count of enemy solders killed in Nam. Some in the
beekeeping research community still repeat the lies of 800 deaths in
countries so small that such a loss would be tantamount to a natural
disaster of the magnitude of a 1000 keys of nuclear bombs dropped on
their heads with pictures and testimonials to support. Bees do attack
chickens when they are tethered to the beehives, a proven, undisputed
scientific fact, but who would tether one other then someone looking
for a good picture of bees attacking a chicken. It was done...!!
 
T>I sent Mr. Rudunick a copy of my fact sheet on good neighbor
 >guidelines and ordinances.  It has a model ordinance which might be
 >of use, but he needs more ammunition.
 
Laws can be changed, it is much easier to de fund a program then change a
law, in this case the law would have to be replaced by a more liberal
law and it would require a lot of energy and effort that could be put to
as good use to find a locations outside the city limits and sometime
that would be several miles from the city line as today there are little
things called "sphere of influence" that prepare for future expansion
of cities that could have the same laws as the city. But a location
outside the city could be shared by many or one beekeeper or just hide
the bees in the attic, or garage, and live on the cutting edge of the
law as the majority of beekeepers do everyday in the US. I must admit
that a few hives or hundreds depending on the size of the city can do
very well in the public environment and I myself have watched my city
grow around my honeybarn but I am protected by the grandfather laws and
have had little problems in the past having 2,000 or more baby nucs
happy in their work and 100 hives full time out of sight in back of my
honeyhouse. Out of sight is the key, landscape to hide bees, honeybarns,
and bee junk.
 
My own home is only several thousand yards from my honeybarns but in
town and several blocks away. When I moved into town the first thing my
new neighbors asked was if I could bring a hive home so the bees would
work and pollinate their flowers. I did that the next night. At the same
time I had a hundred hives in back of my honey house that for years had
been working every flower in town and flowers for miles around,
including the darn old humming bird feeders with the red dyed syrup.
 
It may be time to go back in time and build very art'ee beehives that
can not be called less then good garden statuary with the bees concealed
inside and departing through concealed entrances.
 
                      ttul, the OLd Drone
 
 
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