Bees in Urban and Suburban Districts
Christopher Kelly (author), Sara Bronin, Jonathan Rosenbloom, Brett DuBois, Joseph Coffey, Lihlani Nelson, Claire Child, & Laurie Beyranevand (editors)INTRODUCTION
Since 1947, the number of managed honeybee colonies in the U.S. has dropped by over half, threatening over $15 billion of agricultural production dependent upon honeybees for pollination.[1] The U.S. Department of Agriculture has recognized the importance of efforts to maintain and enhance populations of honeybees declaring, “[n]ow is a critical time for efforts to support honeybee populations.”[2] The decline of the honeybee has coincided with a resurgence of interest in urban and suburban agriculture, community gardening, and community supported agriculture (CSA), generating enthusiasm for individual and community management of honeybees.[3] Similarly, demand for honey in the U.S. has doubled since the 1990s, but domestic production has fallen, leaving the supply chain heavily reliant on foreign imports and infiltrated by hard-to-trace fake honey.[4] Fake honey can present a host of challenges including, overcharging consumers as they may pay a premium for adulterated honey that may have less nutrition and more harmful contaminants, causing lost profits for responsible beekeepers, and harming bee populations when bees are not properly tended.
Bees and their products can be beneficial for urban and suburban communities, providing food, pollination, agritourism opportunities, and economic resources.[5] Several local governments have enacted ordinances to allow beekeeping activities. In doing so, these communities ensure standards of care that promote community safety. These standards are often implemented either as animal control regulations or zoning regulations. Animal control regulations typically require beekeeper permits in order to have a hive.[6] The permits usually set conditions directed at ensuring public safety and may include limits on the number of hives, flyway barriers, setback requirements, maximum size and height requirements, and general nuisance avoidance requirements.[7] When local governments choose to implement beekeeping measures in the form of zoning regulations they often take the form of conditional use permits or accessory uses.[8] Codes allowing the keeping of bees upon a conditional use permit typically limit such use to certain zoning districts, such as residential districts, so long as the conditions are met.[9] Some communities have also prohibited certain bee species. For example, the Africanized honeybee has been considered to have aggressive behavior, leading communities to prohibit that breed.[10]
EFFECTS
Encouraging local keeping of honeybees can produce several benefits for a community. First and foremost, it provides honey, a nutritious food source that has been shown to be a healthy alternative to artificial sweeteners.[11] Honey production is a popular method of supplementing the healthy food supply in urban and suburban communities, ensuring that there can be an affordable supply of real honey.[12] Honey production can generate economic benefits, including providing an economic opportunity for individuals to sell honey or other products derived from beekeeping activities, such as beeswax.[13] In addition, there have been reports that suggest consumption of local honey can help mitigate symptoms associated with seasonal allergies; however, these reports are largely anecdotal and been neither confirmed nor duplicated in clinical studies.[14] There is significant demand among restaurants and retail stores to provide authentic honey and other locally derived products, allowing individuals and communities that adopt beekeeping to become artisanal suppliers in their local economy.[15]
Aside from honey and wax, keeping bees can be a fruitful enterprise, helping pollinate local vegetation. Bees can provide valuable pollination services to plant life in the vicinity of their hive and in the community, including to the over 130 fruits and vegetables produced in the U.S. that are dependent upon honeybees for pollination.[16] Like many forms of agriculture, the very presence of beekeeping can provide an educational opportunity for the community, as people become interested in and learn about the importance of bees and pollination for sustaining food production and the food system.[17]
Despite these benefits, community members often have concerns about introducing bee colonies into densely populated areas. Beekeepers have a responsibility to conduct their activities “in such a manner that they will not annoy, injure or endanger the comfort, repose, health or safety” of their neighbors or anyone else.[18] The potential for nuisances to arise from mismanagement of bees in urban communities often requires that neighbors have some notice and input into the approval process.[19] There are potential dangers for communities as well. Ordinances may seek to limit confrontations between humans and bees, which can occur as bees leave the hive and when they aggregate near water. Some communities require installation of flyway barriers to obstruct the flight paths of bees and prevent bees from congregating near swimming pools and other sources.[20]
EXAMPLES
Milwaukee, WI
Milwaukee allows honeybees in certain districts, however, it requires a thorough notification and hearing process, which includes neighbors, for individuals wishing to obtain a permit. After submission of an application for a permit, the municipality provides mailed notice to every property owner within 200 feet, to allow them the opportunity to submit a written objection within 14 days.[21] Any neighbor who submits a written objection to the application is entitled to a hearing within an additional 14 days and a decision on the application within 10 days.[22] Among other things, the process is intended to be quick and provide a method to avoid a claim of public nuisance.[23]
Additional regulations pertaining to the operation of beehives are primarily directed at the physical structure of the hive. In addition, the regulations have a relatively strict limit of two hives per lot.[24] The hives are required to be surrounded by a flyway barrier at least six feet tall, unless the hives are located at least ten feet off the ground.[25] Such a barrier can be a fence, structure, or hedge.[26] Regardless of the flyway barrier, the hives are subject to setbacks from the property line and any structure or place of human activity.[27] There is also a specific requirement that the hives have a constant supply of fresh water, except in winter, that the bees can access by landing on a hard surface.[28] The beehive regulations conclude with a requirement that no beekeeper possess a hive that creates unhealthy conditions or interferes “with the normal use and enjoyment of human or animal life of others, any public property or property of others.”[29]
To view the provisions see Milwaukee, WI, Code of Ordinances § 78-6(2) (2016).
Boston, MA
Boston regulates the keeping of bees through its zoning code.[30] The code allows beekeeping as a conditional use in most zones so long as the enclosure is at least 50 feet from any residential building on another lot.[31] If at any point the hive comes within 50 feet, even if it is the result of a new building being built, the use of the enclosure must stop.[32]
In addition to having to comply with the existing conditional use requirements, beekeepers must comply with additional regulations.[33] The regulations limit beekeeping to two hives per lot, and have strict hive size maximums of five feet tall and twenty cubic feet in total.[34] The City has additional regulations depending on whether the hives are at ground level or on a rooftop. For ground level hives, the ordinance mandates a five foot setback if there is no wall or barrier between the properties.[35] Additionally, the hives are not to be placed in a front or side yard and must be at least ten feet away from a public sidewalk.[36] The final ground requirements apply if the hive is located within twenty feet of a building opening.[37] If this is the case, the hive opening must either face away from the building or a flyway must be constructed in front of the opening encouraging the bees to fly upward.[38] The standards for rooftop hives are very similar. The code maintains the same requirements if the hive is near a building opening, and a setback of six feet from the edge must also be maintained.[39]
To view the provisions see Boston, MA, Redevelopment Authority § 89-10 (2018).
ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES
Chicago, IL, Zoning Ordinance and Land Use Ordinance §17-17-0270.7 (2018) (permitting up to five honeybee colonies on any residential lot as an accessory use as part of a zoning definition).
Cleveland, OH, Code of Ordinances § 347.02(d)(1)(E) (2018) (maintaining a ban on the keeping of Africanized bees).
Minneapolis, MN, Code of Ordinances § 63.100 (2016) (using animal control regulations to allow beekeeping so long as permits are obtained and certain standards for maintaining hives are kept).
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Louisiana State Univ. Agric. Ctr., Model Beekeeping Ordinance for Louisiana Local and Municipal Governments 2009), https://perma.cc/YX5G-JMEL.
Urban Beekeeping, NYBeeWellness.org (2016), https://perma.cc/Q94P-UTKA.
ICLEI, A guide for pollinator-friendly cities: How can spatial planner and land-use mangers create favourable urban environments for pollinators? (2020), https://perma.cc/8WVZ-DVAR.
CITATIONS
[1] U.S. Dep’t of Agriculture, USDA Provides $8 Million to Help Boost Declining Honey Bee Population, (Jun. 20, 2014), https://perma.cc/3HMJ-3MYF.
[2] Id.
[3] William Butler, Welcoming Animals Back to the City: Navigating the Tensions of Urban Livestock through Municipal Ordinances, 2 J. Agric. Food Sys. & Community Dev. 1, 9 (2012), https://perma.cc/LWA7-NGN4.
[4] Bee's Needs: The Scourge of Honey Fraud, The Economist (Aug. 30, 2018), https://perma.cc/SHX2-4PMC.
[5] CassClay Food Sys. Initiative Urban Agric. and Backyard Beekeeping 2 (2015) https://perma.cc/W5ZM-XT54.
[6] See Milwaukee, WI, Code of Ordinances§ 78-6(2) (2016); Minneapolis, MN, Code of Ordinances § 63.100 (2018).
[7] Id.; Boston, MA, Redevelopment Authority § 89-10 (2018).
[8] See Boston, MA, Redevelopment Authority § 89-10 (2018).
[9] Id. at § 8-7 Item No. 76.
[10] See Eric C. Mussen, Africanized Honey Bees in California, University of California, Davis (2014), https://perma.cc/U2MR-4KYZ.
[11] Id. at 56.
[12] CassClay, supra note 5, at 2.
[13] Id.
[14] See Brent A. Bauer, M.D., Can Honey Lessen Seasonal Allergy Symptoms?, Mayo Clinic (Dec. 17, 2019), https://perma.cc/2AKR-QXML; Paige Fowler, Does Honey Prevent Allergies?, WebMD (Jan. 29, 2016), https://perma.cc/PV6H-7DDE.
[15] Patricia E. Salkin, Honey, It’s All the Buzz: regulating Neighborhood Beehives, 39 Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 55, 56-7 (2011).
[16] USDA, supra note 1.
[17] CassClay, supra note 5, at 2.
[18] People v. McOmber, 206 Misc. 465 (N.Y. Sup. Ct., 1954) (finding a beekeeper who failed to maintain their hive to have created a public nuisance).
[19] See, e.g., Milwaukee, WI, Code of Ordinances § 78-6 (2016) (requiring that whenever an individual applies for a permit to keep bees on their lot, every property owner within 200 feet must be notified and given fourteen days to write an objection and request a hearing).
[20] Salkin, supra note 14, at 69.
[21] Milwaukee, WI, Code of Ordinances § 78-6(2).
[22] Id.
[23] Id.
[24] Id. at § 78-6(3)(a).
[25] Id. at § 78-6(3)(d).
[26] Id.
[27] Id. at § 78-6(3)(f).
[28] Id. at § 78-6(3)(g).
[29] Id. at § 78-6(3)(j).
[30] Boston, MA, Redevelopment Authority § 8-7 Item No. 76.
[31] Id.
[32] Id.
[33] Id. § 89-10(1)(c).
[34] Id. at § 89-10(2)(a), 89-10(3)(a).
[35] Id. at § 89-10(4)(a)(i).
[36] Id. at § 89-10(4)(a)(ii, iii).
[37] Id. at § 89-10(4)(b).
[38] Id.
[39] Id. at § 89-10(5)(a-b).