READING, Pa.- Some buzz has been heard around Berks County involving proposed regulations for people who want to raise bees in the City of Reading.<\/p>\n
A hearing was held by the environmental council on Monday night to discuss the issue.<\/p>\n
“It’s hard to have a bad day beekeeping for me unless I get stung too much for something that I did by accident,” says Bruce Rodriguez of Swarmstead Bees.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez raises bees in Bern Township. He calls it a full-time hobby.<\/p>\n
“Beekeeping can be done at all different levels, and you can make it as hard as you want it to be,” says Rodriguez.<\/p>\n
All of Rodriguez’s bees are from removals he’s done at businesses and homes, many in the city of Reading.<\/p>\n
When he started keeping hives, he lived in the city and had about ten of them that he kept off-site on a larger property.<\/p>\n
“When I lived in the city in Reading, we had a very small backyard with our neighbors right there on both sides,” says Rodriguez. “So, I knew I couldn’t keep bees there because if they’re trying to have a little cookout or something and bees… it’s just not a good situation,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Reading City Council President Donna Reed says when it comes to keeping bees in the city, there needs to be some regulation.<\/p>\n
“It’s actually a good thing that people want to have apiaries around here, but let’s know where they are,” says Reed.<\/p>\n
The idea is to protect the beekeepers and the public.<\/p>\n
“There should be some kind of codification from us, the city council, and also regulations because again, we are a densely built city,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
“What they should be concerned with is the distance from people’s hives to the general population walking around,” says Rodriguez.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez says sometimes necessity derives creativity.<\/p>\n
“A lot of people keep bees on the roof,” says Rodriguez. “So, if you’re in a building where you have a nice, flat, sturdy roof, you can keep your bees 30 feet up in the air and not really worry about them going after people.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa.- Some buzz has been heard around Berks County involving proposed regulations for people who want to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[39873,39872,990,17279,5184,28,30147,736,128,130,129,14251,112668],"class_list":["post-267149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-apiary","tag-beekeeping","tag-city-council","tag-environmental-policy","tag-local-government","tag-pennsylvania","tag-public-hearing","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-regulation","tag-urban-beekeeping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}