A Cautionary Tale of Woe and Intrigue
By: James Fischer
Imagine buying a new home, zoned for mixed residential/agricultural use, and then having the town property board refuse approval for beehives on your land. Beekeeper association officers should heed this story because your local government might try the same dirty trick.
This was Alex Urban’s dilemma when he moved to South Charleston, West Virgina in 2022. What resulted was a Norse saga that is still unfinished, but illustrates what we can do to prevent this from happening elsewhere.
It happened in West Virgina, of all places. My pollination operation was based in Virginia, and we Virginia beekeepers were always jealous of our WV neighbors, as they enjoyed every luxury, and every possible type of support from the state – free complete sets of equipment and supplies for novices, free varroa treatments, free replacement queens, and an enthusiastic extension program to educate beekeepers. I especially coveted their trailer-mounted autoclave, where woodenware was soaked in a liquid paraffin bath, both sterilizing the woodenware, killing (or at least encapsulating) foulbrood spores, and soaking the wood with paraffin, far superior to paint as a preservative.
West Virginia doesn’t just have a very supportive Apiary Act with “best practices”, and beekeeper civil immunity from personal injury and property damage liability claims1, they also have very broad “Right to Farm” legislation which explicitly names “apiary husbandry” as a protected agricultural activity. There’s also a “Cottage Law” which creates an unconditional right to “produce non-hazardous foods”, like honey and baked goods with zero regulation from state or local authorities.
So, how can one small city of a mere 13,000 people ignore all of those statutes, and tell a beekeeper “No”? Well, they can’t, but they did, anyway. The city assumed that the effort and cost of “fighting city hall” would deter even the most contrarian citizen. Big mistake. They seemed to have never before encountered a beekeeper. But after meeting one, they realized that their zoning ordinance was limited, and started drafting a new ordinance to prohibit all beekeeping within the city limits.
You see, Alex Urban is an attorney, so he knew how the state statutes were strongly supportive of beekeeping. He recruited another attorney to represent him and sued, stating that multiple sections of the West Virginia Code preempted the city’s ability to prohibit his bees. The city then passed their new ordinance that criminalized beekeeping, along with hosting “any other wild or domestic animal”, making it an offence that carried a $500 fine per day, and/or 30 days in jail. So, cats and dogs only in South Charleston for now. Even a harmless hermit crab in a fish tank is illegal under their new ordinance if the city wants to make an issue of it.
The West Virginia Department of Agriculture intervened in the case to protect the public interest, enforce the state statutes, and to defend the relevant state regulations, both the Apiary Act and the Right to Farm legislation.
The circuit court ruled in Alex’s favor in 2025. The state beekeepers’ association has a legislative committee, and in parallel, they proposed an amendment to the Apiary Act specifically clarifying that apiaries are “agricultural operations”, and protected under the WV Right to Farm legislation, to prevent other municipalities from pursuing the same overreach South Charleston made.
And that was when things started to go off the rails.
The Apiary Act amendment got stuck in committee, so the 2025 legislative session ended without the bill being enacted.
The city appealed the ruling to the West Virginia Intermediate Court of Appeals in early 2025. The appeals court took a full year to consider, and when it finally issued its opinion reversing the lower court ruling in early 2026, it found that the city was within its rights to tell Alex, “No beekeeping”.
The appeals court disregarded the extensive legislation protecting the rights of farmers and beekeepers, stating “there is no express language under either the Apiary Act or Right to Farm Act that plainly and clearly shows a legislative intent for the acts to supersede or repeal the City’s authority to regulate beekeeping”.
In what can only be called misdirection and slight of hand, the appeals court said a great deal about a “bee” being an “animal”, but did not mention the Cottage Law at all, even though that Act plainly showed specific legislative intent in regard to “honey production”, aka… beekeeping. This was disingenuous of the appeals court, which tends to indicate that politics impacted the rulings. Judges are elected in WV, and need only be attorneys. The opportunities for injustice are endless when judges are elected.
All this over…Two. Hives. Of. Bees.
The pile of court motions, cross-motions, and sur-replies reached 1123 pages (yes, I counted, and read most of them). At 300 or so words per page, that’s roughly 336,900 words about the “legality” of a mere 100,000 to 120,000 total bees in a random backyard. Four years of dispute.
The state beekeeping association proposed an even more detailed amendment to the Apiary Act for the 2026 legislative session, but what of Alex? The 2025 bill was not enacted, so Alex appealed to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals to obtain from the courts what the legislature had not yet provided, represented by a law professor from Fairmont State University, Robert Lee Bolton III.
His petition was supported by the West Virginia Beekeepers Association, the Farm Bureau, and the charity Alex worked with, Hives For Heroes, teaching veterans and first responders to keep bees to help deal with trauma. Each filed an amicus curiae brief, explaining how a city is plainly prevented by law from presuming to contradict the state’s policies. State laws preempted the ability of a local government to prohibit beekeeping, and sharply limited their ability even to regulate it.
Very Civil Disobedience
Now Alex was not the only beekeeper in South Charleston, he was just the first to ask permission, being an attorney, an officer of the court, aware of the city’s animal ordinance, and honor-bound to follow all the laws.
Other city beekeepers bravely came out of the woodwork, listed in the WV Beekeepers Association amicus brief. These beekeepers were already registered with the WV Department of Agriculture and had assumed the city had no right to regulate beekeeping, so they never asked the city for permission. But now they were painting targets on their backs, publishing their addresses, and daring the city to try to enforce its new law, while making the point to the court that the city’s fears were provably groundless, as bees had been quietly kept in the city for years. They became…. “Kamikazebees”. No complaints had ever been made to the city about bees… ever, verified by a FOIA demand from a local TV station, so they had a very good point.
Ms. Ashley Dolin showed serious heroism, swearing out an affidavit, written testimony attached to the WV Beekeepers’ brief. She explained to me that she had been keeping bees in South Charleston for a decade, in between raising kids, taking them to cross-country team practice, and running Ultra-marathons herself (these are often 100 or more miles). For years, she had no idea that the city had any interest in regulating beekeeping. She openly gifted honey to friends, and had a beekeeper bumper-sticker on her car, so she was surprised at the sudden criminalization. She went to the Capitol, part of a group that buttonholed elected representatives to request their support for the 2025 apiary act amendment. She offered to meet with the attorney and make an affidavit, reasoning that the odds of her getting anything more than a ticket were very low for a “first offense”.
She did mention this to the West Virgina State Apiarist, who offered to bail her out if she did in fact get arrested. So far, the city has ignored the red cape being waved in front of them, but it is uncertain if they are demonstrating restraint, or are simply afraid of what a cross-country mom keeps in her back yard. But if they come for her, she can easily outrun them.
While I’ve always said “The price of honey is eternal vigilance”, I never imagined that the price of honey might be as high as 30 days in jail and a $500 per day fine.
The city has filed their brief in reply, oral arguments will be requested by Mr. Urban’s attorney Professor Bolton, and the case is not likely to be decided until 2027 at the speed at which the process works. Justice may be blind, but she moves so slowly to make one wonder if she is also lame.
But The State Walked Away
What’s missing from the Supreme Court docket is a brief from the state. WV Commissioner of Agriculture Kent Leonhardt intervened in both the circuit court case, and in the appeal, arguing that West Virginia’s carefully-crafted state policies preempted municipal meddling. But the state did not participate in the Supreme Court challenge, seemingly leaving beekeepers in the lurch. Their “official response” used the excuse that the case was pending before the WV Supreme Court, with a standard-issue “the Department will not comment on the case at this time.” The Commissioner of Agriculture was unavailable for a quote or interview, as he was off on a taxpayer-funded junket – a U.S. trade mission to Australia, who buys far less than $1 million in agricultural goods per year from WV, due to Australia’s strict bio-security policies. We may never know why the state abandoned the beekeepers after briefly looking like a hero to beekeepers.2
The Upside
The good news is that no matter how the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals rules, the amendments to the Apiary Act have a much better prospect of being enacted this year, as even the one legislator who misread the bill, thinking that the changes would bar commercial development near any bee colony, feral or hived can be better-informed. This legislative fix already “in the works” will invalidate the city’s criminalization of beekeeping.
Let This Be A Lesson
It seems that a happy outcome will result in WV, one way or the other. But what about everyone else? Could this happen in your state? Better to work with your legislators before someone afraid of bees gets elected to local office. Work with local officials to assure that they are well-educated about bees. In general, experience teaches us to be especially on our toes to protect individual rights and freedoms whenever when the government “means well”. South Charleston honestly thinks that they are protecting someone from something, or they would not be spending taxpayer dollars on lawyers. Best to avoid such confrontations.
But there are multiple moving parts and sharp edges:
-A Legislation Committee – Does any beekeeping association other than West Virginia have one of these? If so, great, but the rest of us have a lot of catching up to do here. They have invested years in working with state legislators. We haven’t. That’s on us.
-Preemption – Different states have different preemption laws. Can your state’s laws preempt local laws?
-Right to Farm Legislation – Does your state have this? If not, the state Farm Bureau has almost certainly been trying to get something enacted. Either way, you want to make sure that apiaries are specifically included in the definition of “a farm”.
-State Apiary Regulations and Farm Regulations – Again, apiaries need to be specifically included in the definition of “a farm”, and exempt from any minimum acreage metric, as some apiaries have all hives in out-yards. It is not just the beeyards that need protection, honey houses need it too. It would also be a good idea to designate the state apiarist or secretary of agriculture as the sole regulatory authority over beekeeping, to make it clear that local governments have no such ability.
-“Cottage Law” – This was a new one for me, but it was the one law that plainly did protect Mr. Urban’s urban beekeeping in clear simple terms. If you can pull this off in your own state, bakers and jelly makers will expand the constituency, and help to make the concessions look far more reasonable than if they were for the sole benefit of people with an unusual fondness for stinging insects.
-“Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money” – Warren Zevon’s song by this title was a parody, but does anyone have the volunteers, money, time, and the legal talent within easy reach that assembled to protect beekeeping in South Charleston? I doubt it. This means building relationships ahead of time, not just being lucky enough to have beekeepers who are also experienced attorneys, like the WVBA has.
The very detailed court documents associated with this case will be available for download at http://beeculture.com/urban_suit/ for a period of 6 months from this article being published. After that, one can email the author for copies. They only apply to the special case of West Virgina, but courts in other states often recognize and rely on similar cases in other states, so this is worth keeping on file.
James Fischer sold his apple pollination operation in Virginia years ago. Now he runs a more sensible number of hives, and has the free time to hang out at the intersection of science, politics, and beekeeping, as that’s where all the truly spectacular train wrecks happen.
(This article written by a human. No AI was used, no bees or animals were harmed.)
Legalizing Urban Beekeeping The Very Very Hard Way
The three other beekeepers known to me in Manhattan kept as low profile as I did in the early 2000s, as years before, New York mayor Rudolph Gulliani had added bees to the list of “dangerous animals” that were not to be kept in the City. No one ever explained this. He also had an obsessive fear of ferrets that one can learn more about on YouTube.
In October 2007, PBS aired the “Nova” episode “The Silence of the Bees”, making bees the newest charismatic megafauna, the hood ornament on the environmental movement. But unlike Elsa the lion from “Born Free”, or the orca Willy from “Free Willy”, bees were the first “endangered animal” one could actually save in one’s own backyard,3 with mail-order houses to ship everything, even the bees. This was going to be a serious problem and threat to my quiet anonymity. Bees were suddenly trendy.
I started a free Sunday beekeeping class at Central Park HQ to teach some skills to the hundreds of hipsters who wanted a hive. My hope was to avoid chaos long enough to get beekeeping “legalized”, and to build a core group of people who had learned enough to mentor others.
The health department, when approached, freely admitted that bees were plainly not at all dangerous, and scheduled public hearings required to correct the “technical error” in the health code, and to establish City beekeeping regulations. But a “Food Justice” organization caught wind of this, and decided to hijack our quiet little bureaucratic exercise for their own promotional and fundraising purposes.
A rally with over a hundred “Food Justice” and “Slow Food” members was held on the steps of City Hall, complete with a novice beekeeper defiantly willing to be a martyr, and be fined $250 for the “violation” of keeping bees. They got TV coverage, and solicited donations to “save the bees” without explaining how they might do so. A city council member introduced a bill legalizing beekeeping, and that halted our effort, as the health department could not act on its own in the face of impeding City Council legislation. City and state legislators, even our local congressman elbowed their way into the process, not to tangibly help, but just to be seen as “involved” and “supportive”.
Public hearings were held, far more public than we liked. A wide assortment of performance artists who thought themselves beekeepers spoke eloquently about how bees were going to change their lives, and transform the City. Community gardeners, who had amazingly convinced the City to sign titles to vacant lots over to them, supported us, as vegetables need bees.
The group that had loosely formed around my free beekeeping course attended the circus-like hearings I designed the flag shown in Fig. 1, on page 42. Our slogan was “If Beekeeping is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Keep Bees”. I wish I had kept a flag for myself.
What resulted may be the least restrictive bee regulations known to man – the sole requirement, other than not being a nuisance, was to provide water for one’s bees. Even this was a formality, as bees love the evaporation pan water from rooftop HVAC units, as this is a continual supply of trickling water.
The moral here is that even an apparent “ally” like a “Food Justice” group may not be your friend at all, and the one who seems to be the opponent (the Health Department) can end up being your best friend.
While the head of the Parks department, who offered me free classroom and workshop apiary space, had grown up next door to beekeeping legend Charles Mraz, and had thus been exposed to beekeeping from an early age, the head of the Health department mosquito control division, being the only city entomologist, became the “regulator of bees” in the City. He had joined the Long Island Beekeepers during our negotiations, and set up a few hives in his own Long Island backyard. He became a member of our little cult. Good times.
1 See Bee Culture 9/2010 Pg 39 – “West Virginia Passes Immunity Law”
2 Briefly, by briefly writing briefs – presumably while wearing superhero briefs and a cape.
3 In the 70s, there was the “Save The Whales” movement, and I had only one guest bathroom with only
the one bathtub, so I could only save that one whale, but that’s another story.