Dear City of San Mateo Sustainability Commissioners

Chair Sherrie Taguchi, Vice Chair Rafael Reyes, Josh Hugg, Adam Lorraine, and Greg St. Clair

San Mateo City Staff

Christine Ferry, Sustainability Program Manager

Kathy Kleinbaum, Deputy City Manager

Cc: San Mateo City Councilors

David Lim, Mayor

Joe Goethals, Vice Mayor

Rick Bonilla

Maureen Freschet

Diane Papan

Our business is concerned about ongoing declines of honey bees and its impact on our food supply, ecosystem, and economy. Bees pollinate 35% of our food supply and are key to the production and quality of most fruits and vegetables. Honey bees in backyard gardens increase community-wide yields of fruit trees, vegetables, and berries and provide high quality, nutritious food to our community with improved pollination. Many residents especially value unfiltered honey and other hive products from bees that feed on neighborhood nectar and pollen and they would like to have access to local sources.

A more bee-friendly policy has become especially critical since 2006, when deep declines in bee populations worldwide began to raise worldwide concerns. More than a decade later annual hive losses are at an all-time high; the City of San Mateo needs to develop a plan for reducing losses to sustainable levels within 10 years.

We are delighted to hear that the Sustainability Commission will consider bee-friendly changes to the San Mateo beekeeping regulation on Thursday September 14, 2017. We ask your leadership to support pollinator health in our community by adoptinga mitigation-nuisance policy that promotes good management by beekeepers and a safe environment for neighbors. Current restrictive policies, while well meaning, make it hard in practice for beekeepers to maintain healthy bees, are less responsive to neighbors, and undermine neighborhood pollination benefits.

For decades most San Mateo County jurisdictions and the City of San Francisco have useda nuisance policy to directly and effectively respond to rare neighbor concerns about bees, without creatingbarriers for beekeepers to manage healthy honey-bee colonies for the benefit of the community. It’s a proven win-win approach that works and the City of San Mateo should do the same.

Thank you,

We support bee-friendly changes for mitigation-nuisance to the City of San Mateo beekeeping regulations!

Date ______

NameEmailHome Town

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______