The Next Eco Revolution: Backyard Bee Keeping

Weston, CT, –(PR.com)– This Spring, underground beekeeping movement emerges as Americans try to stem mystery bee deaths.

A new underground environmental movement is afoot in communities across America this Spring: beekeeping. Beekeeping season begins late March and an increasing number of Americans have turned to beekeeping in order to help honeybees, which have been decimated by a mysterious malady known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Nearly one-third of the United State’s crops rely on bees for pollination, yet close to one-quarter of the nation’s commercial honeybees have vanished in recent years.

“We have been seeing a huge uptick in our beginning classes since 2008” says Leslie Huston, a beekeeper and representative from Bee-Commerce, a national beekeeping supply store located in Weston, CT. “People are beekeeping as a way to help the bees and to pollinate their gardens. Business has been good, which in this economy is great.”

Says Guillermo Fernandez of The Honeybee Conservancy, a New York City-based charitable environmental organization working to protect bees, “Local beekeeping is the vibrant point where environmentalism, gardening and the local food movement intersect. Americans in cities from New York to Los Angeles, have flocked to the idea of small-scale beekeeping as a way to help save our bees and to generate some free local honey in the process!”

Membership in amateur beekeeping groups on social networking sites like Meetup.com and Yahoo Groups have been surging in cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Amateur beekeepers across the U.S. have recently lobbied to overturn city ordinances outlawing beekeeping. As a result of lobbying, beekeeping was decriminalized in Denver during November 2008. In New York City, bees appear in the City Health Code’s Section 161.01 as part of a list of 150 animals including bears and alligators that are deemed “naturally inclined to do harm”. The New York City Council is currently weighing a law legalizing beekeeping on Manhattan skyscrapers and in Brooklyn brownstone gardens.

“Backyard beekeeping is gaining momentum across the U.S. and it may be what saves us and our food supply from the effects of Colony Collapse Disorder”, says Guillermo Fernandez of The Honeybee Conservancy

About The Honeybee Conservancy: The Honeybee Conservancy is a non-profit environmental whose mission is to promote appreciation and protection of wildlife habitats and their local species with an emphasis on bees.

The Honeybee Conservancy
Guillermo Fernandez
646 2866279
info@thehoneybeeconservancy.org
www.thehoneybeeconservancy.org