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Dick Barnes lives on a peaceful residential street in Bixby Knolls. He\u2019s a kind, soft spoken retired journalist in his late sixties and he\u2018s an outlaw. So are his desperado friends Barbara Sinclair and Henry Kurland, both in their sixties as well. Every first Sunday of the month, they meet at the EDCO Recycling Center with roughly 50 other renegades from the Long Beach area and plot their next acts of delinquency.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re white-collar crooks, but they\u2019re not stealing identities or devising Ponzi schemes. They\u2019re in the pest-removal racket. The white collars help protect from stings. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re bee criminals,\u201d Barnes jokingly confesses. <\/p>\n
Barnes, Sinclair and Kurland are members of Long Beach Beekeepers Club and their crime is harboring bees they save from extermination in their own backyards. The city doesn\u2019t handle calls for swarms or nests, instead, they defer to the Department of Health and Human Services or private pest control businesses, which exterminate bees for a charge. The LBBC provides a humane alternative, safely removing the insects from homes free of charge or for the cost of gas, depending on the distance. But, as they receive more and more calls for bee removals, their code-violating backyard hives are reaching capacity.<\/p>\n
A city ordinance stipulates that while beekeeping is legal, they must be kept 100 feet from structures and thoroughfares, be a minimum of 10 feet off the ground and be registered with the county. According to the group, these dated guidelines have made it essentially impossible to legally pursue their hobby and passion: saving nature\u2019s most important pollinators one swarm at a time. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve stood in front of City Council and said \u2018I have bee hives in my backyard and I\u2019ve had them for over five years and my neighbors don\u2019t even know\u2019,\u201d Kurland explained. \u201cThat\u2019s how unobtrusive they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
He has worked tirelessly with the City in an effort to curtail the ordinance to more manageable guidelines. He is optimistic that by next year, his proposal of a five-foot buffer zone from structures and roads and no minimum elevation for bee hives will be the letter of the law. The club is also hopeful that the city can provide a space to store the overflow of homeless pollinators.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt seems only fair that if we\u2019re going to work hard to save bees, an endangered\u2014or if not endangered, a threatened\u2014species that they could provide or think about providing a space to hold them,\u201c Barnes said. \u201cIt\u2019s a win-win. The city doesn\u2019t have to exterminate them, they can foster them. And, they\u2019re bees that are being managed by beekeepers that have an interest in winnowing out the really, really aggressive bees.\u201d<\/p>\n
And what about the dangers of keeping thousands of bees in close proximity to people? Kurland, the club president, says it\u2019s simple. Bees, like humans are temperamental and they shouldn\u2019t be generalized because of negative coverage in the news. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll bees are aggressive some of the time,\u201d Kurland said. \u201cIf a hive is short on food, they get ill tempered. If they\u2019re missing a queen, they get ill tempered. If they\u2019ve been vandalized by people or animals, they get aggressive. It\u2019s situational.\u201d<\/p>\n
The benefits of the proposed bee sanctuary wouldn\u2019t stop at the city level. The space would allow the club to store excess bees during colder months, which in theory, would allow for them to deliver ready-to-go hives to any backyard gardener who\u2019d like more bees around to nourish their fruits and vegetables. The hives that the club would place and maintain for free also dangle the possibility of a sweeter reward: honey. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you get to feel good that you\u2019re protecting an endangered creature that all of humanity depends on,\u201d Sinclair says. <\/p>\n
The club used to have a bee yard at Farm Lot 59, a bio-intensive mini farm located north of Sunnyside Cemetery. But after differences arose between the farm and the club, the bees were sent packing. One potential new home for the bees that the club is eyeing is the Tree Yard near the nature center inside El Dorado Regional Park. It would provide the keepers both the access and amenities needed for the bees to flourish while also keeping the insects out of the public eye. The LBBC is open to any solution though, stating that given the versatility of bees, a truck lot or even a private owner with land to spare would do just fine. <\/p>\n
{loadposition latestnews}Backyard beekeeping isn\u2019t a phenomenon unique to Long Beach. The Backward Beekeepers of Los Angeles, whom the LBBC is loosely associated with, is a club of over 1,000 bee enthusiasts that service swarm calls for much of Southern California. Several cities in Orange County have legalized beekeeping and nationally, Salt Lake City and even Manhattan have joined the cause. <\/p>\n
Barnes and his friends hope that through the growth of their own club and securing space for a sanctuary they\u2019ll be able to tear down some of the myths associated with these crucially important insects by offering school field trips and making outings to farmers\u2019 markets. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s part of the educational process where we could convince people that there\u2019s nothing to fear and you don\u2019t have to run for the Raid every time you see a bee,\u201d Barnes said. <\/p>\n
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