NEW YORK — Urban beekeepers in New York City no longer have to keep the honey of their labors a secret.
The city’s health board voted Tuesday to overturn a longtime ban on beekeeping within city limits.
Previously, the city’s health code had placed honeybees in the same category as about 100 other creatures deemed too hazardous for the city, including ferrets and poisonous snakes.
Yet, for years, the ban was both little known and lightly enforced. Some New Yorkers have secretly tended hives on rooftops and gardens in either defiance or ignorance of the ban.
And lately, bees have picked up political cachet among a growing number of green-minded folk interested in seeing organic agriculture return to big American cities. The movement to end the ban picked up after Michelle Obama had a hive installed on the South Lawn of the White House.
Beekeeping was legalized in Denver in 2008. The Associated Press
