Banning beehives in

"residential areas" is the latest proposal from a council in the hills behind me. It has come about because some of the "city slicker" residents have complained about bees, roosters, pigeons and livestock kept by their neighbours.

Sorry, you have moved to "the country". It was your choice to move out of the urban areas into what you thought was the idyllic countryside. You expected it to be all clean and fresh and quiet. You expected it all to just be that way without any work on your part too. 

Many years ago a very close friend of the Senior Cat moved his family on to a twenty acre block in the hills. We thought it was a crazy idea at the time but they were English migrants who had fallen in love with the idea of living in a rural location. They had done their homework. They knew it was going to be very hard work. 

Even with the amount of research K... and his partner had done they still found it much harder than they had anticipated. They worked very hard at teaching full time during the day, preparing lessons at night and then spending snatched hours during the week and all of the weekend in developing the land. It was made possible only because they allowed someone else to keep bees at the far end of their property and they had no other livestock to care for.  The bee keeper was a professional apiarist. 

Their decision to move there was made at a time when they had no immediate neighbours. The services available were limited. They needed two cars to get to work and to get the children to school some distance away. 

There is still no public transport but the nearby "town" has grown to the point where there is now a medical centre, another school, a shopping precinct, a nursing home for the aged and more. It is becoming more like a suburb of the city in the plains below it. 

Therein lies the problem. People have romantic ideas about "living in the country" but they want all the amenities associated with living in the city. They really have no idea what actual country living is like. They do not have the skills they need to live there. They do not want to put the time in to caring for the property they have so gleefully bought. Many of them start with the best of intentions perhaps but they simply do not know.  

There is also a tendency to forget the lack of public transport and the time it takes to get to work if they still work in the city. Yes, there are now some buses although some of them are just express services from a larger area along the "freeway".  Many people do not want to use those. They are not as "convenient" so they use cars and complain about the traffic, the speed limits and more.

Once back at home they want to "relax". Someone else will come in and mow the lawn they have planted and prune the "natives" they have planted in their "easy care" garden.  They have no desire to care for a hive of bees - the very wonders who pollinate the plants which provide their food... and how dare a rooster crow in the morning!

I wonder if it would help if these "we want to live in the country" dwellers had to pass a stiff exam before they actually moved in. "Living in the country" is not romantic. It is smelly, dirty, noisy and very hard work.