Urban Beekeepers
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Mayor Eric Garcetti just signed the ordinance to LEGALIZE URBAN BEEKEEPING in Los Angeles!!
Big thank you to all the LA council members, planning department, city staff, community councils and dedicated HoneyLovers who helped us to get here—YAY BEES and YAY BEEKEEPERS <3!!!
Related posts:
– Backyard Beekeeping Ordinance Update
– LA City Council legalizes urban beekeeping today!
– LA CITY COUNCIL ***FINAL*** BEE VOTE
Organization: HoneyLove
Email: info [at] honeylove.org
Web: http://honeylove.org
Contact: (424) 625-8233
PRESS RELEASE—For Immediate Release
Los Angeles urban beekeepers finally realize legalization at City Hall
LA City Council unanimously approves backyard beekeeping ordinance today.
After four years of public outreach, education and grassroots efforts[1] across every part of the city spearheaded by local non-profit HoneyLove.org, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved urban beekeeping today by a vote of 15 to 0. Los Angeles hobbyist beekeepers can finally join most every other major metropolitan city on the globe with fully legal hives in their backyards.
Most cities have already legalized urban beekeeping including Santa Monica, Redondo Beach, Culver City, San Diego, San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver, Paris, London; the list goes on. The legalization effort in Los Angeles, led by HoneyLove, began in November 2011. The group rallied its volunteer beekeeper-members to educate the public and collect thousands of petition signatures both in person and online. They visited over 20 neighborhood councils to garner motions in support of beekeeping and raised awareness through outreach at public events, with local groups and schools and by way of countless articles, radio and TV interviews, Youtube videos, hands-on workshops and monthly newsletters.
Report from City Attorney
“The proposed ordinance amends the LAMC to allow beekeeping in the RA, RE, RS and R1 zones. It adds definitions and standards to the sections of the LAMC that regulate the uses (including accessory uses, of which backyard beekeeping would be considered) in those zones. The standards are intended to prevent backyard beekeeping activity from becoming disruptive to occupants of neighboring properties while allowing backyard apiaries to thrive and improve the surrounding environment. For example, the proposed ordinance requires the placement of a solid barrier at least six feet in height between hives and an adjacent lot in order to direct the flight of bees to a higher level when departing their hives. Additionally, a water source must be maintained on the property where the hives are located in order to discourage bees from seeking water sources on neighboring properties.
The proposed ordinance also limits the number of hives allowed per 2,500 feet of lot area and prohibits the placement of hives in front yards. It restricts the placement of hives to at least five feet from front, side and rear lot lines and at least twenty feet from public rights-of-way or private streets and requires that hive entrances face away from or be parallel to the nearest lot line adjacent to another lot. Finally, any person interested in backyard beekeeping must be registered as a beekeeper with the County of Los Angeles Agricultural Commission before engaging in beekeeping activities on his or her property.”[2]
“When HoneyLove came to me two years ago, I was proud to lead the effort to legalize beekeeping,” said Councilmember Huizar. “We are working to become a more sustainable City to confront the environmental crises of today, and bees, and beekeepers, are a part of the solution. It’s time to support beekeeping in the City of Los Angeles’ residential neighborhoods, which will help our bee population and make the City safer and greener.”
“This arose from the neighborhood council system,” said Councilmember Koretz, who took up support of the motion when Bill Rosendahl termed out. “It started in Mar Vista, was vetted through the NCs—over twenty neighborhood councils from throughout the city have sent in their support. Bees are dying worldwide—in LA we’re putting out the welcome mat. They are vital to our survival.”
“Very excited for Mar Vista residents to learn that what started as a sustainable initiative for their small residential community has grown into a citywide effort to help save the honey bees across this great city…one healthy hive at a time!” adds Maritza Przekop, City Planning Associate at City of Los Angeles and early proponent of the ordinance in Mar Vista. maritza_porti01@hotmail.com
“There are so many environmental reasons to support urban beekeeping but there is also a really critical safety element. When beekeeping is legal, then feral hives can be properly managed which makes our city safer” says Meghan Sahli-Wells, Current Councilmember and former Mayor of Culver City. meghan@logicalnot.com
Their advocacy for the honeybee is echoed by HoneyLove co-founder and author of the new book “Save the Bees,”[3] Rob McFarland. “Bees are an essential part of our food system. According to the USDA, bees are responsible for the production of about a third of our diet. In addition, bees are a boon to local gardeners and urban farmers. As you may be aware, honeybees worldwide are in crisis, falling prey to the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder at an alarming rate, making beekeeping a serious food security issue.” rob@honeylove.org
HoneyLove member, beekeeper and film producer Max Wong, who helped shepherd legalization in Santa Monica, states that “Honeybees are such effective pollinators that they are able to increase agricultural yield by 30 to 60 percent. This increase in productivity in an urban garden can mean the difference between a family needing food assistance and a family that can pull itself out of poverty, and even participate in a local, green economy. Urban beekeeping is a powerful tool that we can use to help provide food security for our most vulnerable neighbors. Honeybees enable people of all economic levels to eat better and have the empowering and deeply satisfying experience of successfully growing their own food.” maxwong@gmail.com
“It’s great to see Los Angeles catching up with all the other great cities of the world in making beekeeping legal. The City Planning department did a great job in crafting a common sense set of regulations. Now that the City Council approved the changes to the code, we can get on with the work of saving bees and creating a city friendly to pollinators,” says Erik Knutzen, co-author of The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (2008) and Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World (2011), also a Los Angeles Resident and urban beekeeper. homegrownevolution@gmail.com
The most common concern about honey bees is bee stings. Honey bees are not aggressive by nature and are unlikely to sting. Only 0.4% of Americans report an allergy to insect stings in the U.S. and almost none of these are caused by honey bees [but by other stinging insects]. In addition, less than 1% of the US population is at risk of systemic reaction to stings by honey bees. Severe reactions from the sting of any one insect in a year are 1 in 5,555,556. The chance that someone will be hit by a car is 59.3% higher.[4]
“I am one of the minuscule percentage of people who is actually systemically allergic to honey bees and I am full support of legalizing urban beekeeping in Los Angeles. Beekeepers are our first line of defense in helping to make the city safer by managing the feral populations of bees that already live naturally in our environment” says Chelsea McFarland, HoneyLove co-founder. chelsea@honeylove.org
“I am a registered urban beekeeper with two boys—four and eight years old—who have never been stung by any honey bees from our managed hives in our backyard. Unlike the unmanaged feral hives already existing in Los Angeles[5], my hives are inspected, managed and carefully looked after. Having more educated beekeepers will, in fact, provide a safer environment for everyone,” states Paul Hekimian, Santa Monica Resident, beekeeper and HoneyLove Board Member. paul@honeylove.org
About HoneyLove
HoneyLove is a Los Angeles based 501(c)3 non-profit conservation organization with a mission to protect the honeybees by educating our communities and inspiring new urban beekeepers. Founded in 2011, HoneyLove believes that the city is the last refuge of the honeybee. Our home gardens are generally free of pesticides, and in cities like Los Angeles, there is year-round availability of pollen and nectar for the honeybees! Learn more about HoneyLove’s events and services at http://honeylove.org
[1] http://honeylove.org/press/
[2] http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2012/12-0785_rpt_ATTY_09-18-2015.pdf
[3] http://smile.amazon.com/Save-Bees-Natural-Backyard-Hives/dp/1624141412/
[4] http://justfood.org/sites/default/files/Just%20Food%20Beekeeping%20Campaign%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf
[5] 9-11 colonies of bees per square mile was a stat given by LA County Agricultural Commissioner during the Mar Vista Beekeeping Feasibility Study in 2011 – https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3mjhYhHhzMrNGRiYjkzNjItMGExNi00Y2I1LWIyMWUtY2VhYTIwNzJkMTQ5/edit
Full PRESS RELEASE linked below:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/
Ford Go Further | Everyday Heroes
Honey bees are responsible for $15 billion in U.S. agriculture crops each year, and pollinate 80% of the world’s plants.
What’s alarming is beekeepers are losing up to 50% of their hives every year, often vanishing without a trace or explanation. For Ford owners Rob and Chelsea McFarland, keeping these bees buzzing has become a passion, and they’re turning the city of Los Angeles into an unlikely urban beekeeping haven through community outreach, education and, of course, a few beehives of their own.
To learn more about urban beekeeping and how you can help keep these important bees buzzing visit, honeylove.org.
We put 10,000 bees all over Link’s face!
To learn more about Urban Beekeeping and find out how you can save the bees, visit http://www.HoneyLove.org
For colonies, honey and other bee products, visit http://www.BillsBees.com
Check out Good Mythical Morning’s YouTube Channel for daily episodes: http://bit.ly/subrl2
SUBSCRIBE to HoneyLove on YouTube: http://full.sc/MRAY21
By KERRY CAVANAUGH via LA Times
Los Angeles is getting closer to legalizing backyard beekeeping and the proposed ordinance couldn’t come at a better time.
Professional beekeepers reported this week that 42% of their honeybees died in the last year, and, for the first time, they lost more bees during the summer than the winter. That’s surprising and worrisome because bees typically suffer in the cold weather, but fare better during the warm pollination season. And it underscores fears that parasites, pesticides and farming practices might be weakening the bee population, which is essential for pollinating the nation’s food crops.
Backyard beekeeping can’t replace commercial beekeeping operations, but the urban honeybees may help replenish the diminishing supply, or provide disease-resistant genes that can be introduced in the commercial bee lines. The more healthy bees in the environment, the better for everyone.
Current city law prohibits beekeeping, except on land zoned for agricultural uses. The proposed ordinance, approved Thursday by the city Planning Commission, would allow beekeeping by right in single-family neighborhoods. The resident would need to register as a beekeeper with the Los Angeles County agriculture commissioner, have no more than one hive per 2,500 square feet of lot, keep the hives at least five feet from the neighbors’ yards and 20 feet from the street or sidewalk and keep a source of water for the bees so they don’t seek water from the neighbors’ swimming pool or bird bath. There’s no pre-approval needed, but the city will respond to complaints and if residents break the rules or can’t manage their bees, the city can revoke the right to keep hives.
The City Council still needs to OK the new backyard beekeeping policy before it can take effect, but city leaders have been supportive of urban agriculture. And why not? L.A. has the ideal climate and long growing seasons. The city has hillsides, vacant lots and yards that can support small farms and hobby farmers. A vegetable garden or orchard is a more productive use of our precious water supply than a green lawn. And more fruits and vegetables grown locally mean less produce has to be trucked and shipped over great distance, meaning fresher food and less fossil fuels burned in transport.
Reality vs. fantasy (Culture Watch)
by Sarah Spitz
SAVING BEES
…Speaking of sustainability: there would be no food without bees.
Join local non-profit organization, HoneyLove (www.honeylove.org) for its 2015 Yellow Tie fundraiser. Wear yellow, pose for Yellow Carpet photos, and enjoy great food, fun drinks, local honey tasting and music by the Leftover Cuties, in support of HoneyLove’s mission to protect honeybees and inspire and educate new urban beekeepers! Go online to find your ticket.
It takes place on May 17 from 6 to 9 p.m. at The Cook’s Garden by HGEL at 1033 Abbot Kinney Blvd. in Venice. Children dressed as bees get in for free. Your ticket is here: YTE2015.eventbrite.com.
[Read full article on SM Daily Press]
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Saving the Bees: HoneyLove.org Hosts “Bee Symposium” with Donations Received through GUMUCHIAN‘s “B” Collection!
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Local nonprofit, Honeylove.org, hosted an urban beekeeper symposium and workshop sponsored by GUMUCHIAN on Sunday, March 29th at the Grow Native nursery in Los Angeles, California. CEO of HoneyLove, Chelsea McFarland stated that the workshop taught attendees how to set up a “swarm box” on their property in order to help save the feral bee population. Says McFarland, “We taught people step-by-step how to set up a treatment-free, foundationless langstroth hive from scratch and how to make starter strips with beeswax. The workshop was open to the public (of all ages), had great attendance, and inspired a new group of beekeepers!”
The “B” collection will be available at salon 303 at the
COUTURE show in Las Vegas.
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| To make an appointment, contact Myriam@gumuchian.com or |
Check out all the buzz about Gumuchian “B” Collection!!
A portion of the proceeds of all sales will go to HoneyLove.org!
Photography courtesy of Erika Winters from Pricescope
PRESS:
http://obsessedbyjewelry.com/celebrate-national-honey-bee-day-gumuchian-jewelry-cause/
http://www.cijintl.com/In_The_Press-6076.html
http://jewelrynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2014/05/gumuchians-jewelry-is-for-bees.html
http://instoremag.com/homepage/shine-news/13854-new-gumuchian-collection-highlights-bees
http://jogsshow.com/gem-jewelry-news/honor-black-yellow-friends/
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_988dcd240101irgg.html
http://adornmentality.com/2014/05/28/jewelry-week-in-sin-city-who-you-should-see-part-3-jck/
http://www.pricescope.com/blog/whats-buzz-gumuchians-new-b-collection-stunned-jck-2014
http://blog.nationaljeweler.com/2014/05/the-baubles-and-the-bees.html
http://www.jckonline.com/2014/07/15/gold-bee-inspired-jewels-and-silicone-supported-bangles
http://www.epageflip.net/i/359465 Page 28
http://www.jewelsdujour.com/2014/05/the-bees-knees-gumuchian-b-collection/
http://obsessedbyjewelry.com/celebrate-national-honey-bee-day-gumuchian-jewelry-cause/
Paul Hekimian inspects a honeycomb forming in one of the hives behind his home (via argonautnews.com)
Story by Rebecca Kuzins via argonautnews.com
Most people who discover a beehive in their backyard would be glad to see it gone.
Paul Hekimian is not like most people.
After discovering a hive in an avocado tree behind his Santa Monica home in 2012, Hekimian — with help from Del Rey beekeeper Rob McFarland — moved the bees into brooding boxes, which provide ideal conditions for a hive. Since then, he has been raising honeybees, extracting and bottling honey, and even adopting more bees by rescuing swarms that have gathered at places such as Tongva Park and the Santa Monica Pier.
Hekimian is part of a new breed of urban beekeepers who’ve developed organic, pesticide- and chemical-free techniques to raise smaller hives with more disease-resistant honeybees. But the way Hekimian tells it, he just sets up his brooding boxes and then leaves the bees alone so they can produce honeycombs — and more bees.
“At the end of the day, the bees do all the work,” said Hekimian, a father of two young boys who also has his hands full running both a wholesale bakery and a technology consulting business. “You’ve heard the phrase ‘busy as a bee.’ These bees are very busy.”
Hekimian’s work and that of other backyard beekeepers is more than just a hobby. It’s also an environmentally minded response to the colony collapse disorder that has plagued honeybees for almost a decade and threatens the very future of agricultural and natural ecosystems.
Save the bees, save ourselves
In 2006, beekeepers began noticing that many worker bees had abandoned their hives, resulting in a loss of one-third of the nation’s honeybees. Since then, bees have continued to disappear, with scientists and researchers citing several possible reasons for the loss. Some argue that a fungus or virus is responsible, or that the bees have died from poor nutrition or parasites. More recently, numerous articles in scientific journals maintain a specific group of pesticides is the cause of the problem.
The sudden and rapid decline of the bee population has gotten the attention of President Barack Obama, who had two hives installed at the White House garden this summer — making him the nation’s most high-profile urban beekeeper.
In June, Obama created a Pollinator Task Force to establish a federal strategy aimed at promoting the health of honeybees and other pollinators.
“Honeybee pollination alone adds more than $15 billion in value to agricultural crops each year in the United States,” reads a statement announcing the task force. “Severe yearly declines create concern that bee colony losses could reach a point from which the commercial pollination industry would not be able to adequately recover.”
Or, as Hekimian says it: “If the bees go, they’re taking us with them. One in three pieces of food is touched by bees.”
Already struggling with drought, California’s almond industry also relies on bees for pollination. Bees also play a significant role in pollinating strawberries, watermelon, broccoli, squash and myriad other agricultural and other plants.
Some cities have responded to colony collapse disorder by legalizing beekeeping on private property, and the Santa Monica City Council adopted such an ordinance in 2011.
“The city council recognized bees are a very important link in the food chain,” said Dean Kubani, director of the city’s Office of Sustainability and the Environment. “Bees play so many important roles in the production of fruit and vegetables and most of what we eat. … I think in the past, there was a fear that bees in urban and suburban areas would harm people. That has shown not to be the case.”
The fight to legalize bees in L.A.
The Los Angeles City Council has been studying how the city could adopt its own backyard beekeeping ordinance since February. Some Los Angeles residents, like Rob and Chelsea McFarland, are already keeping bees. Founders of the nonprofit organization Honey Love, the couple has conducted an extensive neighborhood outreach and lobbying campaign in favor of a bee-positive city ordinance.
Chelsea McFarland said she and her husband made the decision to become beekeepers after a swarm showed up in the backyard of their Del Rey home.
“We have an organic garden and we knew about [colony collapse disorder]. We knew the bees were in trouble,” she said.
When the McFarlands contacted the city for advice about handling the swarm, they were told “the only thing to do was exterminate [them],” she recalled. “That’s still the case. Part of the [city’s] policy should be not only to legalize [beekeeping] … but to try and rescue rather than exterminate.”
Sylvia Henry is also a Los Angeles beekeeper and Honey Love member. She started keeping honeybees in March after Hekimian brought a swarm to her Mar Vista home, where her hive shares space in the backyard with eight chickens. “I’m an old farm girl,” Henry said. “I grew up on a farm in Chino.”
Henry said she is “thrilled” with her hive, which has already produced 30 pounds of honey. She’s “read all of the books in the library on bees” and is fascinated by the “whole entire cycle” of beekeeping and the “social set-up” of honeybees.
Not far from Henry’s backyard, another group of bees live on the roof of Louie’s of Mar Vista, a popular neighborhood restaurant and bar on Grand Avenue south of Venice Boulevard.
John Atkinson and his wife Laura opened the restaurant last year at the site where his grandfather, Bill Atkinson, and Bill’s buddy Louie operated a butcher shop from 1954 to 1969.
While renovating the property, John Atkinson noticed a swarm of bees had gathered inside a large sign above the building.
“Rather than poison them, we got them out of the sign and cut off access for them to get back into the sign,” he recalled.
The bees were placed in hive boxes on the restaurant’s roof, and Atkinson hired a beekeeper to take care of them. Over the past year, the population of what the restaurant’s website calls “Mar Vista’s bees” has increased threefold.
Louie’s of Mar Vista uses honey from these hives in some of its dishes and to create its signature Bee Sting cocktail — a combination of applejack brandy, ginger beer, lemon and honey, served with a slice of lime and a mix of sugar and ginger around the rim of the glass.
“It’s not like having a goldfish”
As part of its education and support mission, HoneyLove conducts monthly seminars, including some at its bee sanctuary in Moorpark, to train backyard beekeepers.
“It’s not like having a goldfish,” Chelsea McFarland said. “You definitely want to know what you’re doing.”
Hekimian, on the HoneyLove board of directors, agrees that wanna-be beekeepers need training before they can graduate to get a beehive.
Beekeeping, Hekimian adds, is the art of observation: “You watch the behavior of the bees as they go in and out the front door. Are they going out? Are they bringing in pollen?”
Beekeeping comes fairly naturally to Hekimian. His father, Kevork G. Hekimian, kept bees when Paul was growing up in Houston.
“My dad started out with a couple of hives and then had 60 hives,” he said. “I got him back into beekeeping,” Hekimian said of his father. “It’s come full circle.”
[read the full article via argonautnews.com]
Check out Gumuchian “B” Collection!!
A portion of the proceeds of all sales will go to HoneyLove.org!
Press Release: http://www.gumuchian.com/files/b-collection-pressrelease.pdf
Photography courtesy of Erika Winters from Pricescope
[via pricescope]
Did you know that the declining honeybee population is affecting the world’s food supply? We didn’t. And we also didn’t know that one in every three bites of food consumed in the U.S. is a direct or indirect result of bee pollination. According to HoneyLove.org, bees pollinate a whopping 80% of the world’s plants.
So Patricia Gumuchian–who designed the “B” collection of rings, bracelets, earrings, and necklaces–answered the call to action to support urban beekeeping.
“I have never been afraid of bees. I think they’re wonderful,” said Patricia Gumuchian. “I look around our office of women and think about the worker bees – who are the female bees – and how valuable they are to our livelihood. Our family gatherings and holidays largely center on all types of foods. What would happen if these things just went away? The effects could be detrimental. We need to change what’s going on.”
View more press on the collection below!
http://jewelrynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/
http://americangemsocietyblog.org/
http://blog.nationaljeweler.com/
http://news.centurionjewelry.com/
http://www.epageflip.net/ Page 28
We at HoneyLove believe that the city is the last refuge of the honeybee. Our home gardens are generally free of pesticides, and in cities like Los Angeles, there is year-round availability of pollen and nectar for the honeybees! 
Become a member of HoneyLove and learn to be an urban beekeeper!
Plant an organic garden without the pesticides that harm honeybees!
Provide a water source on your property – bees love clean water to drink! 
