City mulls overturning 2007 ban on residential apiaries

Though City Manager Brad Kilger said city employees are dealing with 80 different projects, the City Council agreed Tuesday to add another to the list — revise the animal ordinance to let more people keep bees, and return with options to consider.

Beekeeping in Benicia has been banned except in open space zones since December 2007, when the Council last revised the ordinance by copying that of Riverside.

Prior to that year, beekeeping in Benicia’s residential areas was allowed by right.

The panel that crafted the amendment took the law, “scratched out ‘Riverside’ and put in ‘Benicia,’” said Tony Shannon, who was one of the panelists.

With the adoption came the ban, because Riverside was dealing with Africanized bees, sometimes called “killer bees” because of their aggressive behavior. They are a hybrid of African and European honey bees that developed after the African species were introduced in Brazil in the 1950s.

Swarms spread north and reached the San Joaquin Valley in 1985. While they had been brought to Brazil to improve honey production, the insects proved to be harder to handle. Not only do they defend their hives more vigorously than the European species, they are likely to abandon hives.

But the hybrid Africanized bees need climates warmer than Benicia’s and have not reached this area, said Gretchen Burgess, who also was a panelist in 2007.

However, with climate change this area may become more hospitable to Africanized bees, whose territory keeps moving northward, Burgess said.

A front-line defense against them would be beekeepers who are able to spot the difference in a European queen bee, which needs to be preserved in the wake of colony collapses, and that of an Africanized variety, which could be eliminated, she said.

If Benicia continues to ban educated bee handling, she said, the city will “open up to African bees. They’ll set up shop where they want.” That includes under porches and other places around homes, she said.

Educated beekeepers throughout the city would help avert that, she said. “Yes, indeed, we want beekeeping,” she said.

Logan Bledsoe, 13, told the Council that he has been keeping bees since he was 5.

During that time, he has learned about the crisis of colony collapse disorder, which according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture is threatening not only the economic stability of commercial beekeeping but also pollination operations nationwide.

Bees as pollinators are responsible for more than $15 billion in increased crop value annually, and for at least one third of the food people consume, including almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits and vegetables.

Bledsoe said not only are 30 percent of the world’s crops pollinated by bees, 90 percent of wild plants are, too.

Pointing out that San Francisco allows keepers’ hives, he said, “It is critical to the image of Benicia” that the ban be lifted.

Claudia Claverie, who watched her father handle his bees, said she is among those in Benicia with fruit trees, but her cherry tree can’t bear fruit because there aren’t any bees to pollinate it.

She said she has no plans to keep bees herself but would welcome the Bay Area Bee Company, in Vallejo, to set up a hive. If it could be installed by March or April, she could have a cherry crop this year, she said.

She told the Council that bees and local honey are beneficial to those who have allergies to certain plants in the community, and said many would prefer consuming honey to taking chemical medications.

However, even at top speed, Mayor Elizabeth Patterson said, “we couldn’t do it by March.”

Kilger agreed, saying the matter didn’t qualify to be handled as an emergency.

Elena Karoulina, executive director of Benicia Community Gardens, an organization that also has urged the city to revise the ban, offered to help the city expedite the ordinance, including assisting in any public outreach workshops the Council might request.

While the Council was amenable to the change, members struggled with the details in giving city staff direction about the next steps to take.

Vice Mayor Mark Hughes said, “We need to address the issue,” particularly since some residents keep bees despite the ban, though the city has received few complaints about them. “One way to address that — why not go back to the pre-2007 ordinance and strike out ‘only in open space’?”

Then city staff would have time to craft a more comprehensive ordinance, complete with public workshops, he said.

But it’s not that easy, City Attorney Heather McLaughlin said, because the current law is weightier than the handful of pages that made up the earlier ordinance.

Patterson supported the quick preparation of a revised ordinance, with city employees working with members of the Community Gardens group in providing information to the public.

But the law falls under the purview of Benicia Police Department, and its management analyst is busy preparing documents for the 2015-17 budget, which must be adopted by July 1, Kilger said.

“Urban beekeeping is shown to work if keepers are trained,” he said. But he worried whether some members of the community might find the practice objectionable, and wondered how much time city employees would spend on permits and enforcement.

Councilmember Christina Strawbridge said there are beekeeping groups in Napa County and in the Mount Diablo area. Since the Council had a copy of Napa’s bee ordinance, she asked, “Why not adopt it as an ordinance?”

Management Analyst Gina Eleccion said the city hs ordinance examples from several jurisdictions, and recommended the city make sure the law change wouldn’t cause conflicts with other elements of the city codes.

Councilmember Tom Campbell suggested requiring permits, a point endorsed by Councilmember Alan Schwartzman.

But Campbell said he was ready to relinquish that requirement if apiaries and their keepers are registered with Solano County Department of Agriculture, which conducts inspections and provides information to beekeepers.