St. Joseph now has honey-bee ordinance

St. Joseph is a-buzz with a new honey-bee ordinance recently approved by the city council.

Earlier, the St. Joseph Planning Commission had unanimously approved recommendation of a bee ordinance, and the council made some amendments to the ordinance before its final unanimous approval.

As passed by the council at its Sept. 16 meeting, the ordinance allows honeybees to be kept within the city limits in apiaries under precisely defined restrictions. An “apiary,” sometimes called a “bee yard,” is a location where honey bees are kept and tended to. It can be an enclosed structure or a partly open one.

Bee hives will now be allowed in St. Joseph in the following zones: Agricultural, Rural Residential, Single-Family Residential, Two-Family Residential, Townhouse-Patio Residential, but each apiary, no matter which zone it is in, must meet the following requirements:

There must be clearly visible signage so people can be aware of just where any apiaries are located.

The apiary must have a setback of at least 10 feet from any property lines and must be located only in backyards. In some cases, the beekeeper must install a “flyway,” which is a barrier such as a wall or some kind of vegetation that can grow six feet high within two years of planting. A flyway barrier forces bees to fly upwards when they leave the hives to minimize interactions between bees and people.

The flyway barrier is not needed if apiaries are placed in land zoned Agricultural or Rural Residential.

The honey-bee ordinance also limits the number of bee colonies according to the size of the land lot. For example, one half-acre or smaller, two bee colonies will be allowed. That amount increases in increments all the way up to one acre of land (but smaller than five acres) in which up to eight bee colonies are permitted. And on land larger than five acres, beekeepers may house as many bee colonies as they like.

A “bee colony” is a living space for honey bees that includes mainly worker bees, one queen bee, drone bees and honeycombs wherein bees deposit their honey.

A hive is defined in the honey-bee ordinance as a receptacle constructed or purchased from a manufacturer for the purpose of housing the bees.

Bee-keeping ordinances vary widely in cities throughout Minnesota. Some cities have no ordinances but allow people to keep bees anyway. In the greater St. Cloud area, Sauk Rapids permits bee-keeping up to six hives, and St. Cloud also allows bee-hive hobbyists to keep hives on private property. A honey-bee ordinance was proposed some years ago in Sartell but some residents voiced opposition, and the council voted against the proposal.

The topic of honey bees has gained local, national and international attention as a wide variety of bee species populations face decline. Bees are vital for pollination of many crops, plants and flowers. Worker bees approach plants and/or flowers to ingest nectar from which they make their hive food (honey). While doing so, some of the pollen (grains from the male anther of a plant) of the flowering plants adheres to their back legs, which is then transferred to the female stigma of other plants the bees land on, thus pollinating those plants so they can develop seeds for more plants.