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A 10-year-old beekeeper won a months-long battle against city officials after they tried to force him to remove his colony of thousands of bees in California. The city of Santa Rosa instructed Nicholas Bard to remove his hives following an anonymous complaint about them, according to the Los Angeles Times. Santa Rosa determined that the Bards' beekeeping operation was equivalent to running a home business, which was a violation and defied zoning laws. Nicholas and his family reached out to the Sonoma County Beekeepers Association, and outrage spread across the community. City Hall was swarmed with emails and letters about Bard's bees until Santa Rosa Mayor Mark Stapp announced that staff were working to revise the zoning ordinance. When the family first appealed the order, they were unaware that they were flying into a six-month battle. The city supervisor not only denied their request to keep the bees but also stated that they were looking into a second offense of having nuisance insects on their property. 'I was pretty sad and they were sad too [the bees],' Nicholas said. 'When I told them, you can hear how they're feeling because the tone of their wings, the vibrating changes... so you could hear that they were sad.' Ettamarie Peterson, who met Nicholas when he was seven at a science fair, seemed shocked when she heard the boy would have to get rid of his bees. Peterson told the outlet that many backyards in Santa Rosa have hives, so it made no sense why the city was targeting the Bard's colony. The 86-year-old suggested that the family reach out to the Sonoma County Beekeepers Association. The association answered the call for help, and a swarm of supporters came to Nicholas's side to fight for his bees. Newspapers contacted the boy and he even received a postcard from Wales. Nicholas said he always checked in with the bees before local TV appearances: 'Because all the bees are girls, worker bees are girls, I say, "Girls, you're going to be on the news tonight."' 'Or I'll say, "Girls, how are you doing this morning?" I just want to give them a heads-up.' The little boy, who had a deep connection to his bees, would read to his colony, his parents said. 'I just find it very interesting to see how they work together as one organism,' he said. Similar to the way bees work as a team, he led a colony of people to get Santa Rosa to amend their code. Sonoma County Beekeepers Association President Cheryl Koeller provided information stating that the zoning code was too general in the city to determine it was a violation, and that an exception should be made. The city agrees and is in the process of amending the code. 'The city of Santa Rosa does not want to do anything to discourage people who want to support our pollinator community,' Mayor Stapp said. 'We were thankful to Nicholas and his family for raising this issue, because we didn’t even know that we were preventing this.' The Santa Rosa City Council will still vote on the ordinance next year, but for now, the bees are to stay with the Bards.
