Countryfile Magazine

[Cavan Scott]

As if honeybees didn’t have enough problems, with billions being wiped out around the world by bad weather and the horrific, blood-sucking varroa mite, they’ve now been ordered off an allotment in West Yorkshire! According to the local council, bees fit into the category of livestock under the Allotment Act of 1950 and as such are banned; so a proud beekeeper has been told to remove his five hives. If councils care about the environment, they should be doing all they can to help Britain’s battered bees, not finding obscure ways to persecute them. Let’s remember that without bees there’d be no pollination – and without that not much would grow, on allotments or anywhere else.

So says John Craven in our latest issue.

What do you think about this case? Was the council right to tell the bees to, ahem, bee-gone or is it just a jobs-worth response?

Let us know

Cav

[joey lump]

Isn't the problem that allotments have to be for fruit and veg and livestock isn't allowed? Would bees even be classed as livestock?

[Mayo]

Since when are bees classed as livestock, that is ridiculous. Clearly an allotment is the best place for hives.

[Little Acorn]

Isn't the problem that allotments have to be for fruit and veg and livestock isn't allowed? Would bees even be classed as livestock?

It all depends on the Council or authority responsible for the site, some allow chickens, goats, ducks, some wont have anything...... including sheds.

I read a story once, where an allotment owner had a hive inside his shed, the entrance was though a pipe from the hive out the side of the shed. Nobody ever sussed, and he never had any problems because nobody ever knew.

I have seen Hives on sites, all done with permission and with warning signs up to warn other plot holders and more importantly their children to take care near the hives.

I think the Bees are more at risk from people, than people at risk from the Bees.