Fwd: Pittsburgh Banning Beekeeping?!

[infryq]

Just got the email below from the Burgh Bees list, where I lurk and learn cool things about urban beekeeping in Pittsburgh. If you're local and a fan of beekeeping in Pittsburgh, please write to Jason Kambitsis or come to the hearing as described below. If for some reason you are not a fan of urban beekeeping but could be swayed by a small handful of facts, consider the following:

• There is a major honeybee crisis worldwide. A plethora of confusing diseases have wiped out a devastating fraction of all wild honeybees. Beekeepers are the honeybee's best hope for survival.
• If you have or want a vegetable garden in Pittsburgh, you want urban beekeepers. Bees only travel a limited distance from their hive: no local pollinators means no fruit (botanically speaking! so that means cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and the like, too)
• People have been keeping bees in Pittsburgh for years, mostly under the City's nose and with the cooperation of their neighbors -- even in dense areas like the North Side. This is why there are bees in Pittsburgh. There are well-known and -communicated techniques for handling urban hives in a way that's safe for both bees and humans.
• Local bees mean local honey. Local honey has a therapeutic effect on local pollen allergies. I should know; my allergies developed when I was a kid in Mt Lebanon, and there is nowhere I've lived where my allergies are worse than they are in Pittsburgh. Honey helps. Strangest thing.
  

The email:

Burgh Beesers, the City of Pittsburgh needs to hear from YOU!

This is a Call to Action to all beekeepers and bee-lovers. The City of Pittsburgh has drafted an Urban Agriculture Ordinance that greatly restricts beekeeping in the Burgh. The proposed restrictions would in effect ban beekeeping in many of our city's dense neighborhoods, where our members have been safely keeping bees for years.

We have requested that the city amend their proposed ordinance to better accommodate our urban beekeepers and to encourage safe and responsible beekeeping. Attached are our proposed revisions.

The ordinance will be brought to the Planning Commission on February 16th and we need all of you there to show the Commission, which doesn't believe that beekeeping is "a big thing" in and around the Burgh, how many beekeepers and beekeeper supporters there are in our parts. Please either come to the Planning Commission meeting on the 16th (details below) or send an email of support to Jason Kambitsis at jason.kambitsis@city.pittsburgh.pa.us urging the City to adopt Burgh Bees' recommendations. Please cc Burghbees@gmail.com on your email to the city, so that we can keep a count!

Planning Commission Hearing:
Tuesday, February 16, 2009 at 2:00 p.m. at 200 Ross Street, 1st Floor.
Please add your name to this form if you plan to come, so we'll have an idea of how many people will be there. https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFJBMzhkVnA5UVJMY19wWXJzcEJqcVE6MA

Comments

[letters-in-sand.livejournal.com]

an ubervegan once pointed out to me that honey is STOLEN FROM BEES.
and that has kind of bothered me ever since.
I mean, of course I knew they made it, but didn't think of it THAT way before.
I was given to understand that the end result is that either I or the bees then have to eat HFCS instead.
But I don't know if this is true!

Do you?

maybe they make enough that they're not too bothered with us stealing some?

[infryq]

Modern hives have (at least) two chambers -- 1 where the bees live and reproduce and store the honey they need to last the winter, and 1 where surplus honey is stored. A responsible beekeeper knows that honey is the best food for bees, and that there won't be any honey next year if she takes too much in the fall and they freeze or starve. So there's definitely some skill involved to not nuke your bees, but likewise there's skill to maintaining an apple tree or a flock of chickens. I don't feel like a thief when I eat an apple, even though I'm technically depriving the tree of potential progeny...but then again, I'm not a vegan or a vegetarian, either. I eat eggs. I drink milk. In return, we shelter and take care of our plants and animals, ensuring their survival. It's a give and take thing.

Some beekeepers do take too much honey and try to feed their bees hfcs or sugar to replace it. I think this is a horrible idea. It's completely unnecessary and shouldn't influence people's opinions of more responsible beekeeping.

One technique that seems to be gaining popularity(?) is harvesting honey in the spring, instead of in the fall. That way the bees are surviving on nectar again, and you're guaranteed that any leftover honey from the winter is indeed surplus and unneeded.

[letters-in-sand.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I figured a. that there must be ethical way(s) to do it and b. that you would be informed. :)

You are eu-appointing! it is the opposite of disappointing, where I was like, "I bet Katie knows!" and you were like, "I totally do!"

I don't feel guilty eating apples either, although I frequently think of planting the seeds, and don't. but I don't feel GUILTY about that. tree-embryo-misplacing is a different category of moral questionability from honey-thievery (if it's honey the bees need).

I'm not expressing disapproval or something.

Interesting idea about sheltering/feeding the flock/herd.

[pluralofplural.livejournal.com]

The unfortunate trick to planting apple seeds is that the tree you get back is highly likely to be wildly genetically divergent from the parent plant. The fruit, in particular, will be very different: it -might- taste good, but instead it's almost guaranteed to be pretty poor for an eating apple.

(It'll be a fine apple for hard cider, tho'.)

[opalnipotent.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this! We are vegan, for sustainability, social justice, and environmental reasons. We have no problem whatsoever buying and eating honey from local bee keepers who use sustainable and ethical practices. Ie, not feeding the bees anything other than their own honey, and not over harvesting. I'm really glad to see other people see the difference as well. :)

Also, we will eat eggs from local grass fed hens. If the hens run around feeding themselves in a field somewhere near by, awesome! Yummy eggs! If not... well no thanks. Not for us.

[letters-in-sand.livejournal.com]

ah! that's interesting. I find myself often pondering that the tree might not want to grow since the apple often has a sticker saying it came from Chile, so the tree probably wouldn't enjoy Pennsylvania.

mmm, cider...

[(Anonymous)]

Hi there! I know this is somewhat off topic but I was wondering which blog platform are you using
for this website? I'm getting tired of Wordpress because I've had problems with
hackers and I'm looking at options for another platform.
I would be fantastic if you could point me in the direction of a good platform.

[infryq]

It's polite to sign anonymous posts. :)

It's a bit weird that you're posting this question in a four-year-old article instead of on something more recent. After all, it's not like it would be any more off topic. Combined with the anonymity, it's the sort of thing a creepy person would do. I recommend keeping an eye on that when posting to strangers' blogs in the future.

On my browser there's a big link in the upper right that says "LiveJournal" (or alternately a smaller link in the right sidebar below the tags that says "Powered by LiveJournal.com"). If you click that, it will take you to the frontpage for the livejournal blog platform, which has been operating since 1999. Wordpress, on the other hand, wasn't started until 2003. These and many more blogging options are listed on wikipedia in the category, Blog Hosting Services. I wouldn't call LJ "good," since after the creators sold it it's become somewhat crufty and occasionally unreliable. However, it does have a critical mass of people I know, and that matters to me. I've had the same blog for twelve years, and I'm not really the early-adopter type that critically evaluates every new blogging platform that comes on the market to see if I should switch or not. I'm happy with the tools I use so long as they're not in the way.

I don't know what you mean by hackers. Do you mean that (A) people are literally exploiting a security hole in your blogging software or server to obtain access to otherwise restricted content or services on your blog? [NB: If their ultimate goal is theft or vandalism, the proper term for this is "cracker". Hackers are largely just curious.] (B) people keep guessing your password / your current host keeps "accidentally" publishing its users' password hashes or plaintext? or (C) people keep posting spam comments to your blog entries advertising e.g. prescription drugs?

If your problem is (A), it sounds like it's personal. Can't help you there. If it's really bad you can try browsing under an alias and use TOR to hide your identity, but that's got nothing to do with your blog platform. If your problem is (B), you can start using a more secure password or passphrase, and read web security blogs to see providers are paying due attention to storing that information safely. Alternately buy a static IP and run your own blog on a cheap machine in your basement. Then if someone gets your password hash, the only one to blame is you! If your problem is (C), most blogging services permit restricting comments by requiring commenters to have an account in a whitelist or complete a captcha before posting. LiveJournal supports the former, but I normally have that feature turned off (obviously). By googling "wordpress restrict comments" and "wordpress captcha comments" I can see that WordPress supports both (and likely other methods as well), so maybe you just need to do more reading about the features of your preferred blogware.

HTH!