Last Chance to Support Urban Beekeeping in a L.A. Community

UPDATE 9/12/11: The Mar Vista Community Council pushed the vote to legalize beekeeping until October 11, 2011. That gives us even more time to ramp up support for this campaign! Please sign Chelsea and Rob McFarland's petition asking the community council to legalize urban beekeeping in the Mar Vista community.

Chelsea and Rob McFarland and their team at Honeylove, a non-profit, have been working tirelessly to make urban beekeeping legal in Mar Vista, a district on the West Side of Los Angeles. They will find out if their efforts come to fruition tomorrow, September 13th, when the community council votes on whether or not to sanction an urban beekeeping pilot program.

In the meantime, they're certainly garnering attention for their cause. Back in July, Honeylove led a flash mob at their local farmers' market, raising awareness about the issue of urban beekeeping among hundreds of shoppers. A few weeks later, they celebrated National Honeybee Awareness Day by dressing up in honeybee costumes and offering photo ops, information about beekeeping, and bee-related crafts for kids.

Now we're approaching the moment of truth: Following the successful completion of the district's feasibility study on urban beekeeping, the community council will finally vote on September 13th on whether or not to legalize a pilot beekeeping program. If approved, the program will pave the way for Mar Vista residents  to have the same basic beekeeping rights as their close neighbors in Santa Monica, as well as residents in New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, Denver, Spokane, Atlanta, Chicago, Toronto, and Vancouver.

These days, urban beekeeping is seeming more and more like a necessity as global bee populations continue to die off from Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). While there is no one smoking gun causing CCD, scientists now widely agree that it's likely the result of a combination of factors, made manifest by industrial beekeeping. This practice involves artificial insemination of queen bees, trucking thousands of hives great distances to pollinate crops, exposing bees to countless pesticides, and interfering with the species' natural defenses by treating them with miticides and antibiotics, and feeding them high fructose corn syrup. This deadly cocktail has made bees incredibly vulnerable. Feral bees, on the other hand, are not subject to the rough treatment and chemicals of commercial beekeeping, and are therefore far more robust than their commercial cousins. Cities are proving to be a safer habitat than the farms and rural areas traditionally associated with beekeeping.

Not only does urban beekeeping help boost struggling honeybee populations, it helps ensure local food security: Through pollination, bees are responsible for producing about one-third of America's food supply. Keeping ourselves healthy requires us keeping honeybees healthy.

So let's make one final push to ensure that the Mar Vista Community Council does the right thing. Please sign Chelsea and Rob McFarland's petition, and urge council members to legalize beekeeping in the Mar Vista community.

Photo Credit: Jordan via Flickr