The Bees won in Denver!

Want to know what I'm thankful for? I'm grateful for the Denver City Council passing legislation that allows Denver residents to keep bees in their backyards. This was the result of a recent snafu with a local resident who had a couple hives in her yard and was slapped with a $950 fine if she didn't remove her hives. (See previous post about it here.)

Although the proposal passed 10 to 2 in the council, there were still two councilwomen who opposed it, Marcia Johnson and Jeanne Faatz. The women expressed concern that beekeepers don't have to notify or get permission from their neighbors, and were concerned about people with fatal bee allergies. This is an understandable concern, but my hope is that most beekeepers will give a heads-up to neighbors, and encourage them to come check out their hives. This is also a great way to get neighbors excited about bees, and perhaps even provide an opportunity for education and inspiration. If beekeepers do find a neighbor with a fatal bee allergy, then I think they should consider moving the hive somewhere else.

The city will now allow up to two hives per city lot, and the ordinance also removed honeybees from the definition of wild or dangerous animal in the city's municipal code. (Wild or dangerous animals? Come on! If we're going to talk wild and dangerous, I'd like to ban my neighbor's dog who frequently attacks another neighbor's chihuahua, and any other small dogs she sees on her daily walks. You should see this beast of a Great Dane. She's as big as my bike and could probably swallow me whole.)

Check out the full Rocky Mountain News article here. (Warning: The article appears next to a kind of creepy picture of a girl that died in jail from bleeding to death...sad!)

Finally, I dare you to count how many cheesy bee metaphors the writer used during the article. It starts with: "Bee enthusiasts were buzzing with joy Monday after the City Council approved a proposal that allows Denver residents to keep honeybees in their backyards" and goes from there.

I counted four.

Councilwoman Peggy Lehman to the rescue!

In one of my previous blogs, I wrote about a local beekeeper who was fined by Denver for illegally beekeeping in the city. Well...some interesting things have happened as a result of Marygael Meister's decision to not simply back down and let Denver win the fight. You can read the whole article here, but here's the synopsis.

Angry about the fine, especially given the current honeybee decline, Meister resisted the fine and bee hive removal. Trying not to provoke a big fight, the city encouraged Meister to get a special permit for her hives from the board of adjustment. (Sounds like the principle's office, if you ask me. Do they whack you with a paddle for bad behavior?) Anyway, Meister didn't want to do this because she felt it would leave other Denver beekeepers vulnerable to the same ridiculous laws. Yeah, that's right, I said ridiculous.

Anyway, so Meister decided to make this big. She sought out help from Haagen-Dazs (sorry...no umluats in Blogger!) and Smuckers (the first of the two has been donating marketing and money to the bee research cause) to let them know about her plight and to encourage them to throw their weight behind her.

She wasn't super crazy about their response (nada), but she eventually found the support of Denver council woman Peggy Lehman (cue chorus of singing angels). Anyway, wonderful Ms. Lehman (that's right, this in my blog and I get to have a bias) has been receiving all kinds of calls from other aggrieved beekeepers and is now working to craft legislation that will allow
Denver beekeepers to have a maximum of two hives per lot, with some other rules involved. This would be fabulous!

There are still some obstacles to this. One Denver resident was stung fifteen times when a beekeeper agitated their hive, and doesn't think it's right that a bunch of amateur beekeepers should keep bees where they can sting others. Point taken. I wonder if there's a way to get a permit that might require the signatures of your neighbors (in case anyone has a bee allergy)? This is a tricky issue, but I hope that people will find ways to find compromises to these challenges, rather than avoid them altogether.

One council woman, Jeanne Faatz, does not support the measure because she was stung once by a bee and, while she recognizes that bees are facing a decline, she doesn't thing it's up to Denver to solve the bee problem.

On the contrary, Ms. Faatz, I disagree. It is up to Denver to solve the problem, as it is up to every city and every person to solve this problem. We're talking about saving our food supply here, and for that kind of change, every little bee hive counts.

Denver Officials Threaten to Jail Backyard Beekeeper

Here I am, innocently--yet illegally--working in my urban beehive in Denver.

Apparently, I'm not alone among the ignorant. Another Denver woman, Marygael Meister, took a beekeeping class at the local botanic gardens and decided to try her hand at beekeeping as well. She invested about $1,500 in hives and bees and established three bee colonies in her backyard rose garden.

Sounds great, right? Especially since bees are facing a mysterious, historic decline all over the world, one that may be mitigated by small-scale local beekeeping efforts. Good for Marygael!

And yet, not so good. I read in a recent article that a local neighbor complained to the city about the bees, and the city promptly slapped her a fine of $999 and a possible YEAR IN JAIL if she didn't remove her boxes by June 25th. A year in jail. That is where our tax dollars are going.

This is disturbing news for two big reasons:

First of all...laws against urban beekeeping? Hello? Government policy makers need to craft legislation that allows beekeeping in cities so we can have as many small beekeeping operations as possible. We NEED to allow beekeeping because we need to allow beekeeping everywhere.

Reason number two...This so could have been me. I also had a bee colony in Denver, but unfortunately it died in the summer for various reasons. I hope I would have had the cojones that Marygael had when she refused to cooperate with the city and decided to seek outside help. More on that in the next blog. But seriously--a $1000 fine for keeping these fantastic insects. I was this close.