Subject: Neighbors and free honey

From: [email-masked] (Andy Nachbaur)
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 1995 05:46:00 GMT

[email-masked] (-Verville D.F.)refer#: None
 wrote:
>Subject: Neighbors and free honey
>Date: Wed, 1 Mar 1995 15:24:21 GMT
>
>>>> and an occasional jar of honey to next door neighbors.
>
> I wish I had a dime for every time I read this!
> I be a very rich man.
> Instead it just brings back bad memories!

Yep, and I wish I had a dollar for every pound of Honey I have given
away.<G>

> > I used to offer my neighbors a free jar of honey at the end
of the season.  I too thought it was the thing to do. However, I gave
some honey to a neighbor, who said she didn't even know I had bees in
the backyard.  The following year she complained to the town board of
health saying that the bees were a problem for the entire
neighborhood.  She even started a petition to ban beekeeping. Nothing
ever amounted, other than having one extra free jar of honey to give
away!
 |----end quotes---------------------------------|

Here in California it is not much different, with one big exception,
we (commercial) beekeepers also have to pay for locations to put bees in
many areas in addition to the honey. For example I pay $1000. per year,
for pasture on one of the ranches I use for my bees. In the old days we
gave the rancher a 5 gallon can of honey.

People are funny!

   Years ago a neighbor who also happened to be a state senator gave
me permission to place bee's on one of his ranches. It was 5 miles from
the nearest home, but the bee's could be seen from the road which was
the main highway between Monterey and Salinas. Bee's had been on this
ranch for 35 years before I came along and it once was the home of a
old time beekeepers who even had small honey house and a roadside stand
to sell his honey. In the day's of the model T this was real rural
pasture lands, and people would make a day of it to travel out to the
bee man's to pick up a can of honey.

   The fun begin the first year when a woman who lived 16 miles away
complained to the land owner that she knew someone who knew someone who
was allergic to bee's and lived in a new subdivision about five miles
away. And she though he, the state senator, should get a law passed to
outlaw the keeping of bee's. She did not know that the bee's were on his
property. The next year I put the bee's out of sight from the roadway
and kept them there for years as the new home's moved withing a hundred
yards and never had a complaint or problem.

   A few years later one of the SF Bay area counties had a bill in the
state senate to outlaw the keeping of bee's in their county and regulate
all the rest of the bee's to non populated areas of the state. I was
still a green horn and naive about politics, but wanted to do my part,
so I agreed to testify for young people who keep bee's as a 4-H project
as I once had done that myself only a few years before.

   I made the trip to the state capitol in Sacramento and because I was
the youngest, the older beekeepers said I could testify first. Little
did I know that I was to be a wiping boy and sacrificial lamb. I was
pounded by the senators on the agriculture committee. I was made to feel
like a member of a outlaw industry and was treated like a low down
criminal who if was not robbing bees would be engaged in so other
criminal activity. I could say nothing that was not attacked in a
chilling personal way by the senator who was pushing the bill and his
allies. I was degraded for wanting to be a professional beekeeper. I
held my ground, and held back the tears, I did not fight with words and
only presented the facts as I knew them. I finally was finished and with
much relief moved to the back of the room as others gave their
testimonies. It was the longest hour of my life and I was mortally
wounded, ashamed to be a beekeeper and only wanted the hearing to end
and as I sat in silence knowing what a mistake I had made by just being
there. Nothing could prepare a person for what I saw and experienced
that day my first experience of many to come with our political system.

   The attack continued into the afternoon, it got so bad at one
point, that one of the outstanding beekeepers of the time had to be
physically restrained as tempers flared. I heard the mealy mouth
testimony of the bureaucrats in charge of regulating bee's, and the
university types who would sell their mothers to enhance their own
standing. It was five o'clock and the hearing had lasted four hours more
then it was scheduled, I wanted to get away from there as quick as
possible, and surely would never tell anyone I had ever been there.

   My friend the state senators time had come to close the hearing,
he was chairman of the Agriculture Committee at the time and in real
dairyman. He spent the next thirty minutes attacking the bill and the
position of his fellow senators, the regulators, and the university.
When he was done and before he adjourned the meeting he apologized on
the record to me personally for the treatment I had received from his
fellow senators, and told them all, that anytime I wanted a place to
pasture bee's on his land I was welcome. He did not let on that I
already had bee's there and had so for several years.

   To end this story, the Bill failed, but that did not stop the
different counties in California from passing their own regulations
pertaining to the keeping of bee's, and many have done that. After the
hearing broke up a legislator who I did not know walked over to me and
introduced himself. He told me that he appreciated my efforts and what
I had to say interested him. He too apologized for the treatment given
me by his fellow legislators and said even though he was not on the
agriculture committee, "not to worry, if I ever needed any help with bee
laws that he would be happy to help and there were other way's to get
things done". (meaning politics of a higher order then what went on in
that committee). I also was approached by a political reporter who like
the way I had handled myself under fire and wrote a story for his
newspaper about the beekeepers. This reporter later became a lobbyist,
and was my friend, and a friend of the beekeepers for many years after
and was able to teach me some things that I have used with the help of
other beekeepers to make things happen for California beekeepers in no
small way, and for all US beekeepers, indemnification for pesticide
loss, and de-regulation of beekeepers stand out in my memory.

   And yes, I strayed off the original subject again but will end
with, that a few years later for the price of 4 one pound jars of
California Honey per legislator I was able to get a bill passed that
honored California Beekeepers and to speak with the Governor after he
signed the bill and I had used up my fifteen minutes of, fame pictures
and all. And later one on one for the most of an hour, alone in his
office, eating all his licorice jelly beans from the big jar always on
his desk, because he did not favor licorice jelly beans and like to
talk bee's, pollen and horses, some comments a little rank to repeat
even here.

I had no idea that he would go on to be the president of the United
States, and that he would see that I was appointed as a commodity
advisor to the University of California, the first and last one ever
representing the beekeeping industry. A story for another time. But
today when you shake my hand, you do shake the hand that shook the hand
of the man who many believe was one of our better modern day presidents.
Err, well at lest the Republicans do.
                                         ttul Andy-

PS/ Don't feel bad about anything you have read here about mistreatment
    of a young beekeeper, this old beekeepers has paid back many, many
    times for the mistreatment felt at the time, which only was the
    normal treatment researved for anyone who dared to enter the
    underworld of politics from the grass roots, man or boy....

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