The following is the first of many regular articles that I hope to write over the coming months related to my "Urban Apiculture Development Program". These articles will not be formally organized nor contain a full set of program management type information. Rather, my intention is to provide as much useful information for new beekeepers as possible and to encourage related questions, and other feedback, from all SEMBA members. Since I would like to have these reports be a feature of the newsletter that you can expect to see in every newsletter, and I would like to make it as easy as possible for the editor to fit them into the newsletter, it will be a while before I am able to discuss all aspects of this program. However, I will put the same short summary of the program and my personal contact information at the end of every article. (See below.)

As I indicated in last month's newsletter (Nov 2005), I presented an overview of the program to the 2005 SEMBA Annual meeting and, not surprisingly, one of the first points of discussion was what I meant by "urban". My hope is to deal with the impact of practicing beekeeping in all types of local geographical environments, but with the focus on the impact of the trend toward increasing urbanization. However, for practical reasons, I will be focusing initially on "suburban" environments, because I live in this kind of environment and, I believe, it is the kind of environment where most other new SEMBA beekeepers live who would be interested in this program.

For instance, one of the first things that I researched was whether there were any ordinances in Rochester against beekeeping. I found that there weren't. However, I am aware that it might only take a few complaints from my neighbors for city council to pass an ordinance against beekeeping in order to "solve the problem" quickly. I also discussed my intention with my two closest neighbors, and my wife, of course, and found that they would all be concerned, for the usual reasons.

I believe that some of the ways that beekeepers could deal with this possibility ahead of time is for them to form an informally organized (similar to Schoolcraft, Oakland and Seven Ponds) city-wide beekeepers' group as soon as possible. This group would make itself known to the city government and other residents of the city and indicate its desire to respond to any concerns that may arise involving the beekeeping practices of any individual member.

Of course, the first problem that I ran into is how to find out who in Rochester is practicing beekeeping within the city and also who might be interested in doing so in the future. I expect to be able to recommend other ways of doing this in a future report, but I already have what I think is an ideal way to do so available to me. I was recently asked by my local (Rochester Eccentric) newspaper to write regular articles of a kind that will allow me to include an invitation to city residents to contact me about starting a local beekeepers' group.

Another opportunity that forming a city-wide beekeepers' group here in Rochester would provide is that it is the logical opportunity to propose the formation of a local beekeepers' cooperative.

It is not surprising to me that SEMBA, and other beekeepers' associations, believe that some sort of "cooperative" would be a very useful tool for local beekeepers for a variety of reasons and that there has been at least one unsuccessful attempt to form one in Southeast Michigan in the past. It is my intention to include the successful formation of a model cooperative as a primary deliverable of the Urban Apiculture Development Program.

It has been my experience that the best way to bring about real change in any large organization is to form a small model new organization first, experiment with it and perfect it, and then replicate it. This approach is also consistent with the type of organizational structure that I have found to be ideal for many non-profit, volunteer associations.

If I am successful in creating a close-knit, very collaborative Rochester beekeepers' group, I will be recommending that other SEMBA members who live in other suburban / urban environments take the lead in forming similar groups. Therefore, one of the "sub" deliverables of this program will be documentation intended to assist those who volunteer to do so, which includes lessons learned, recommended steps to take in forming and running a group. For instance, I expect to include a recommendation concerning forming multiple groups in larger urban areas, even when group membership would be limited to just three or four people.

One important advantage of beekeepers belonging to a truly local beekeepers' group, I believe, is that would at least provide a forum for discussion concerning what their relationship to other local beekeepers' could be. Historically, I am told, beekeepers have been rather "independent" types and, it seems to me, somewhat distrusting of each other, if only because they might be potential competitors. However, I would suggest that there are many ways in which those who might be interested in eventually becoming commercial beekeepers could collaborate in ways that would make each of them more successful than continuing to function "at arms length from one another", even if they have done some intermittent, low level business with each other in the past.

One additional decision that I have made in regards to forming a citywide beekeepers' group here in Rochester is not to form just a group for beekeepers, at least at first. Rather, I will form a group with a name like the "Rochester Honeybee Appreciation Society". I would invite anyone who was interested in honeybees, their products, their biology and social behavior, beekeeping, etc., to join. I would then form a beekeepers sub-group within the society for those who are, or would like to be, or even have been, beekeepers.

One asset that Rochester has is a (15 – 20 [?] acre) nature preserve right in the center of the city with a nature center building containing an observation honeybee hive, which a number of SEMBA's members have taken care of for several years. Obviously, I will use this as an initial focus for the society in every appropriate way, include recruiting very young members. Fortunately, it is run by the wife of a neighbor of mine who is a member of the Rochester city council and a good friend.

I believe I also have the initial answer to the problem of having a city that allows beekeeping, but where neighbors, and / or a spouse may not yet be comfortable having beehives so close to them. There are a number of places in Rochester, like the Dinosaur Hills Nature Preserve, where beehives may be placed and that are at some distance from city residents and yet have people close enough nearby to keep an eye on the hives. In addition, assuming that I am successful in getting multiple city beekeepers doing this, particularly senior ones who would be interested in visiting their hives, even daily, each beekeeper would be able to keep an eye on all of the hives in that spot.

For the rest of this article, I will change from discussing the context within which the beehives would be placed, to the "content" of the beehive "colonies" themselves. I say, beehive colonies, rather than just beehives, because I believe that one aspect of keeping bees needs to be understanding, and taking best advantage of, the relationship between the multiple hives of honeybees that are being kept in a particular geographic area, including both the ones grouped in one spot, as well as those who are within the nectar gathering range of other hives of honeybees.

The relationship between hives grouped in one spot will be particularly important to understand because one dimension of this program will be to test, and even design, alternative kinds of beehives. As I have researched the literature on beekeeping, it has become obvious to me that there is one major drawback from the long time great success of the Langstroth hive used primarily in a rural environment for so many years. That drawback is that I find that most of the beekeeping instruction in the literature becomes virtually unusable to me if I consider using any other type of beehive other than a Langstroth.

One category of hive that I am investigating is the top-bar hive. I say category, because there are many variations, or types, within that category. (One type that I found was even a hybrid of the more typical form of top-bar hive and a Langstroth hive.) I know that a couple of our members have already started experimenting with top-bar hives with varying degrees of success. If you have done so, and I have not spoken with you about it yet, please call me.

If you are not familiar with top-bar hives, the website that I found most useful for starting to learn about them is: www.backyardhive.com. Of course, they are selling top-bar hives and so their claims of the advantages of their hives need to be confirmed. However, as a gardener and a homeowner, I am tempted to purchase their more expensive hive for its attractiveness in the garden, and other non-utilitarian reasons, if only because it might even make it seem less threatening to my neighbors.

This report begins to discuss my analysis of the potential advantages and disadvantages of keeping honeybees in an urban environment versus a rural environment. In addition, though not stated explicitly in the name of the program, I will be discussing my analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of beekeeping in the northern U.S. versus the southern U.S. Therefore, the name of the program could have been "Urban Apiculture Development in the Northern U.S. Program", but for obvious reasons, I will keep the shorter name.

If the primary goal of a northern beekeeper is simply honey volume at the lowest cost, there are few significant advantages to keeping bees in a cold rural climate versus a warmer rural climate. There may be some that long time northern rural beekeepers are aware of, but I am assuming at this point that none would apply to beekeeping in a northern urban environment, especially since I won't even be bothering to cover the production of large volumes of honey in an urban environment. Possibly, it could be done, but one of my goals in this program is to identify all of the ways urban and rural beekeepers can collaborate, rather than "compete" (even psychologically) and even be part of a common honeybee cooperative. (Note also that I said honeybee cooperative, not just honey cooperative, or even beekeeper cooperative. I will discuss this subject more in future articles.) Rather, I am framing this program toward the ultimate goal of producing pure, high quality, varietal honeys in an urban environment.

There is no question in my mind that there is no better hive design for producing honey in large volume than the Langstroth. However, in order to take best advantage of the Langstroth for that purpose, it is necessary to use / own a lot of honey processing equipment that makes honey production uneconomic for the small honey producer, even if he belongs to some honey processing cooperative. So much so, that it even beekeeping hobbyists have to love honeybees and beekeeping a whole lot to make it worth their while to them. At this point in the program, therefore, the use of some type of top-bar hive seems to be the best alternative for the urban beekeeper, whether he / she decides to "go commercial" or not, for at least the reasons that were covered in the www.backyardhive.com website mentioned in my last report.

There is one other category of beehive that is commonly used by beekeepers that is very unsuited not only for producing large volumes of honey, but also for producing any significant amounts of honey at all. Of course, I am speaking about observation hives. However, one characteristic of observation hives is that they are usually placed indoors, especially in a northern climate. Well, one of the design variations in the top-bar hive offered at www.backyardhive.com is that it has an observation window, an addition that might not only make the hives of an urban beekeeper more interesting to observe, but could be a real advantage for monitoring the honeybees in their work of producing varietal honeys. Further, it also makes it clear that keeping urban beehives indoors may remove some of those disadvantages of keeping honeybees in a northern urban environment.

Of course, even with an observation hive, the bees are allowed free access to the outside environment and whatever it happens to contain. However, though there may be sufficient amounts of nectar available even in an urban environment, and even for most of the year when the weather is warm enough, it will likely be difficult to collaborate with enough neighbors to ensure the availability of enough of any kind of bee fodder to produce a pure enough kind of varietal honey at any time during a particular year, much less the ideal kinds of bee fodder.

Therefore, one of the main kinds of experimentation that I hope to conduct as part of this program is the growing of particular kinds of bee fodder plants in a greenhouse environment. The objective would be to determine how much of what kinds of desirable bee fodder would be optimum for me to be able to "feed" one hive of bees during the blossoming period of each kind of fodder. Of course, during the blossoming period, or at least during the height of it, I would only allow the bees to forage within the greenhouse through the use of a piece of flexible pipe attached to the opening of the "indoor" hive and an equivalent opening in the green house.

Much more to come!

The purpose of the Urban Apiculture Development Program is to advance the practice of beekeeping by examining the impact of changes in the context within which beekeeping is practiced, which have occurred over the last several decades, particularly that of urbanization, and develop and recommend appropriate changes that beekeepers might make to improve their own beekeeping activities. If you would like to contribute to this program or have questions, or other feedback, in response to these articles, please call me at (248) 652-4031 or send me an email at kstiles@exphysica.com.