The Denton City Council approved a change allowing beekeeping in
the city, It allows residents to keep honeybee hives
if they meet certain criteria.
The city also has applied for a Bee City USA designation that would help
promote healthy bee habitats and overall knowledge about bees.
To be able to keep honeybees, residents must inform their adjacent
neighbors, have a source of water within 20 feet of all hives and register with
the city. The size of a person’s land also can limit how many hives they can
keep.
Before, most beekeepers followed the nuisance ordinance, which said Denton
residents couldn’t keep bees if they endangered their neighbors’ health or welfare.
Some, however, took this to mean that beekeeping wasn’t allowed at all.
With the addition of beekeeping to the city code, Christina Beck,
president of the Denton County Beekeepers Association, said she hopes this will
encourage more people to keep honeybees. Because bees are such good
pollinators, it could result in more local food sources.
Beck also said the ordinance could help curtail the spread of Africanized
bees, a type of aggressive bee that is often called a “killer bee.” Because our
honeybees travel in larger colonies, they could possibly overpower other bees. “Hopefully, we’ll see more produce in our
community market,” she also said.
A sparrow by any other name… The familiar and often pesky House Sparrow isn’t actually in the
same biological family as our native Sparrows. Imported from Europe in 1851,
it’s actually a weaver-finch. The common name came about because the small
birds look similar to our native Sparrows. House Sparrows (sometimes called English Sparrows) are in north Texas all year long. The real sparrows migrate north for the winter. Our native sparrows belong to the Emberizidae
family, but House Sparrows are in the Passeridae family (if it really matters!).
