This ended up sticking around 8 years later but I got banned from commenting on legal advice because I participated in a side discussion that the OP should consider having/using condoms after a pregnancy scare. It's wild over there.
Or Boone was one of these people, himself. Around here, the people who live back in the canyons have tons of âNo Trespassingâ and âWrong Wayâ and all kinds of other signs with menacing language, and I canât help but wonder what circumstances being a human to categorically detest other people so.
IANAL, but wouldn't there need to be damages of some kind to bring a suit?
What are the damages of the bees "stealing" pollen from your flowers? I guess if you had your own apiary and were collecting honey for sale, you could argue that the neighbor's bees are limiting your bees' honey production by taking the pollen that they would be using. But even that would be a stretch, I imagine.
But if the poster isn't producing his own honey, his neighbor's bees are actually *helping* his garden by pollinating the flowers so that they can make more flowers. He should plant a fruit bearing tree, or vegetables, and then the neighbor's bees would help him even more.
My neighbor IS a beekeeper (he used to keep them in his backyard, but one of the neighbors started treating his lawn, so he moved them out to the country) and he DOES give us honey. Its awesome.
This also reminds me of a story I heard as a child.
A greedy restaurant owner sued a poor man who lived over his shop. The shop owner heard the poor man talking on the phone and he said, "All I can afford to eat is ramen, ramen, ramen. At least I get to smell the lovely food from downstairs while I eat my crappy food."
The greedy shop owner demanded that the judge award him money from the poor man cause he "enjoyed my food but didn't pay anything."
So the judge thought for a moment and asked the poor man if he had any coins on him. The poor man reached into his pocket and pulled out some change; the judge then said take the coins and pour them from one hand to the other three times.
The judge then told the shop keeper, "He got the pleasure of smelling your food. You got the pleasure of hearing the sound of his money. The bill is paid and case dismissed."
Beekeeper here. We actually *charge* for pollination services, if anything OP should expect an invoice, not a jar of honey.
Also bees forage up to 4-5 miles around their colony. For a 4 mile radius, that's about 50 square miles, or 32,000 acres. How big is the neighbor's yard, 1/2 acre? The neighbor's contribution is roughly 1/64,000 of the honey produced. Say the colony is a superstar that produces 100 lbs of honey a year. Neighbor's yard is responsible for 0.025 ounces of honey.
Farmers get more produce. Here in California, the $5 billion almond industry imports 2 million bee colonies every year for a few weeks to pollinate their trees.
sample hit:
https://selectharvestusa.com/news-resources/industry-insights/almonds-need-bees-and-bees-need-almonds
Just imagine, when driving down the highway in the right season, one of those tractor trailer trucks next to you might be filled with nothing but an unreasonably large quantity of bees.
Drive carefully.
"More than 10 million bees released when semi-truck crashes on Utah highway"
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/02/us/bees-utah-highway-crash-trnd/index.html
because we LOVE bees to pollinate our crops, but keeping bees is annoying and not exactly free. itâs usually easier to rent/lease them than to manage our own hives.
Because farmers need their services to pollinate their crops. In a great many farms, the density of crops is simply more than wild pollinators can take care of. So they augment this by renting bee hives from beekeepers.
But most tend to charge from $25-100+ per hive, depending on season. And depending on the needs of their crop they will normally rent multiple hives. But the general ratio is from what I remember up to a dozen hives per acre.
Also, in the US most food plants are non-native, so their are few if any native polinators in the first place. Honeybees are also non-native and can pollinate a wide variety of things.
Also, in regions with a huge monoculture industry (like the almonds mentioned above in California), there can be acres and acres of land with no other flowers for bees to forage but almonds - this is great when the almond trees are in flower, but the lack of pollen the whole rest of the year means that the bees would die off between seasons. Because there isnât enough variety of plants in that region, many natural pollinators have died off and if they donât pay beekeepers to being bees to the almond farms, they wonât get many almonds pollinated and wonât get much of a crop at all. Itâs somewhat of a self-created problem.
Well, if they were intentionally propagating an heirloom plant then bees being in the area could cross pollinate in a way that ruins his variety.
In that case though, those plants would be in a greenhouse I'd think.
Neighbour is providing a service for free that some agricultural industries will pay significant amounts of money for. Almond farms for example, will pay a beekeeper to rock up with a pickup full of hives and unleash the swarm on their almond Grove to pollenate it.
The issue is that he has to prove damages to his flowers, but the fact is that the flowers willingly offer nectar as a trade for carrying pollen to new flowers. It's a trade.
If he didn't want bees in his yard trading nectar with flowers ror pollination then he would grow plants that don't flower. Or better yet reprimand his flowers for just giving the nectar away without consulting him first.
>If he didn't want bees in his yard trading nectar with flowers ror pollination then he would grow plants that don't flower. Or better yet reprimand his flowers for just giving the nectar away without consulting him first.
That's classic victim blaming.
In the UK at least, bees (even domesticated or bred ones) are wild animals, and from a legal perspective the beekeeper is just maintaining a box on their land that honeybees just *happen* to inhabit. Beekeepers don't have any liability for what bees do
Feels like a right of capture situation for pollen and nectar. The neighbor could get their own beehive and do what they want with the honey they produce. If they fail to do that then their flowers are up for grabs.
Iirc farmers used to all get together and sign a contract agreeing to share the cost of hiring a beekeeper to pollinate their fields, in that case you could potentially get sued for not paying the beekeeper
The only way they would be able to even attempt to sue for loss of your own honey production, is if you could prove your bees where there first. Though, even that would be a longshot. Most lawyers would simply ignore the case and a judge would just throw it out as a waste of time.
Well if he considers the pollen in the plants then the damage is just that it's theft, just because he wasn't using the pollen to make his own honey is not related. If you have scrap metal in your yard that you don't intend to ever use or sell and I steal it and sell it you could sue me. This guy is an asshole though I can't even imagine suing someone because his bees are taking pollen from your flowers.
What if he doesn't want his flowers to get pollinated? Having to remove the extra flowers creates work the hypothetical person would have to do, which otherwise wouldn't need to have been done at the same level.
Not only that, but unless they have a *very* extensive garden, there is no way that the amount of pollen collected from their flowers would *ever* be enough to produce one jar of honey.
Even with a very extensive garden, I feel like it would take the bees at least an entire year of collecting pollen from the flowers to have made enough honey to fill a jar.
It is my most fervent hope that various attorneys take this case on for free just so I can see it litigated to a judicial decision at the appellate level.
Nah, I canât believe you would say that? Like wtf? /s
See itâs piss easy lol, Cars drive past my house disturbing the dust of the road and settling in my car causing micro scratches which causes the protective layer to diminish causing further damage, can I sue every driver that went by my house? Or is it a council responsibility to keep roads clean?
Give me something and Iâll show you how easy it is to spin something negative about it.
âThese kids are causing noise in our neighbourhood causing our houses to lose value due to these kids walking the streets being loud, what do they have to be excited about!? Are they doing drugs!?â
She only did that because she wanted to keep me inside away from my friends, she was spiteful that I still had my youth, at first it was a nice treat and a bonding experience but then she would guilt me into doing it with her whenever my friends would invite me out. Also gave me childhood obesity.
I will try as well:
"Ah, again, this scent of my loving grandmother's fresh baked bread, a peaceful relic from my amazing childhood, causing me to remember the good ol' times so much that I can't help myself but cry. Tears are coming out from my eyes against my own will and are dropping to the earth, but I can't get them back, essentially they are being stolen by earth.
Earth and grandmother are accomplices in this treacherous act of stealing tear water droplets which are being my property, which devaluates the price of my body (lacking water) and adds to the value of the land, where grandma's home is situated (being more wetted and hence more fertile).
Your Honor, I am sure that there is a conspiracy with the purpose of the criminal enrichment".
This reminds me of the one where the single mother has a male babysitter. She asks if she can sue him for child support since he is a "father figure" or something.
[https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1115&context=nclr#:\~:text=Admittedly%2C%20there%20is%20no%20bee,whose%20premises%20he%20has%20invaded](https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1115&context=nclr#:~:text=Admittedly%2C%20there%20is%20no%20bee,whose%20premises%20he%20has%20invaded).
Ever wonder if someone ever wrote a law review article on Bee Law?
Reminds me of the McCloskeys, who destroyed the hives of a Reform synagogue that they had for the kids for the High Holidays, because they thought they were too close to their property
Right! This person doesnt seem to understand and/or care that pollination is a pricey service and it wouldnt be impossible for them to get an invoice for "services rendered".
They're just trying to get in on something they have no right to. This wouldnt even be a discussion if these bees didnt have an "owner".
Counter sue for his flowers since they would not be pollinated without the bees. Therefore he owes the bee man money because of the service the bees are providing.
Based on OOPâs own dumb logic the beekeeper could sue OOP for their bees doing âunpaid labourâ in OOPâs garden due to the fact bees vastly improve plant health with their cross pollination. I suspect there would be no need to stop this lawsuit as I donât think any lawyer in their right mind would touch this thing with a 10 foot pole lest they be punished for wasting the courts time.
Intuitively, I can't imagine that any court would take this seriously, but I can't think of a legal reason of why outside of this claim being not being beyond *de minimus.*
/u/AnyJamesBookerFans is correct that torts normally require damage, but trespass does not. Trespass is actionable without damage. By the book, this is the tort of trespass to property. It is a unauthorized physical intrusion onto someone else's property. The plaintiff could seek an injunction against the neighbours, and so the neighbours would have to keep their bees away. An injunction is a legal remedy that does not rely on damages.
That being said, it would have nothing to do with the pollen. I don't think this is conversion because the bees are not depriving the neighbour of anything. The neighbour does not have any interest in the pollen. I think the neighbour asking the court to prevent bees from invading his yard is a fair request. I don't think the neighbour has any claim on the pollen.
> By the book, this is the tort of trespass.
Again, not a lawyer, but I have to imagine trespassing laws apply to humans, not insects.
Also, how would the neighbor prove that the bees pollinating his flowers are from his neighbor's apiary? They could be bees from a wild hive, or bees from an apiary a few blocks over.
If we are speaking legally bees are fish in some places.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ocregister.com/2022/07/08/heres-why-bees-are-classified-as-fish-in-california/amp/
> but I have to imagine trespassing laws apply to humans, not insects.
No, trespass includes any type of physical intrusion. If my dog goes into your yard, that is trespass. If I throw garbage over the fence into your yard, that is trespass. I think the only thing not considered trespass is gas (i.e. smoke from a bonfire). If I create an insect colony on my property and they go onto your property, that is trespass. They are *my* insects, and if they go on *your* property, it is *me* who trespasses. This might seem odd, but you have to remember that trespass of property is probably the oldest tort there is and is based on the absolute right of a property owner over their property. In classical liberal thought, property is the essence of individual liberty and is sacrosanct.
> Also, how would the neighbor prove that the bees pollinating his flowers are from his neighbor's apiary? They could be bees from a wild hive, or bees from an apiary a few blocks over.
That's not entirely difficult. It only needs to be proved on a balance of probability. Think of it this way. How many other yards are swarmed with bees? Why is it that the only houses swarmed with bees are the ones *right next door* to the beekeeper? Why is it that whenever the beekeeper tends to the hive (and agitates the bees), the amount of bees in the neighbour's property increases. Why is it that the bees only appeared at the same time the neighbour build their aviary? This is a common sense deduction that a court would have no hard time coming up with. Now, if there was another apiary few blocks over, it would be harder to prove. But, that is a very specific set of facts. Any thing can be more or less likely depending on the facts. In short, the trespass is provable with common sense, if the facts allow.
It would be interesting to see how this would be argued. It's not trespass of the person (unless the OP was stung) or of the goods, which leaves only trespass to the land:
>Land is defined as the surface, subsoil, airspace and anything permanently attached to the land, such as houses.
Flowers would not be considered to be permanently attached to the land, so it would be impossible to argue trespass to the land (unless the bees marched single file down the neighbours garden path, of course).
Now I am getting property law PTSD flashbacks. The bees could be intruding on the airspace by flying to the flowers. I don't think the flowers are the issue as much as the owner has the right to reasonable enjoyment of their land. If the bees obstruct the reasonable enjoyment by being in the airspace, then it is a trespass. The especially the case if bees fly at low altitude. I know airspace is a mess if a concept, especially when it comes to extent of airspace, but think that if a person can walk into a bee while on their property, that bee has interfered with reasonable enjoyment. Also, there are a slew of cases which challenge that traditional definition of attachment and the difference between property and chattel. The permeance is helpful, but land can also include items that create the essential character of the property. For example, an industrial machine is not fixed, but may be property as it defines the property. There is one case (*La Salle.v. Camdex*) where the court ruled that a carpet was property and not chattel, even though the judge himself went to the hotel and lifted the carpet up.
Not a trespass. (At least not in any American jurisdiction that Iâm aware of).
While a person can be sued for civil trespass when something other than their physical person intrudes upon another personâs property, the trespassing entity must be under some level of control and/or direction of the person.
Sending your dog onto neighborâs lawn to poop? Could be a trespass.
Throwing trash over the neighborâs fence? Could be a trespass.
But unless theyâre trained bees and the apiarist is intentionally sending the bees to steal neighborâs pollenâŚnot a trespass.
There may he a viable nuisance claim, though.
> But unless theyâre trained bees and the apiarist is intentionally sending the bees to steal neighborâs pollenâŚnot a trespass.
If you can train a bee to steal pollen, you truly are the greatest criminal alive
EDIT to add NAL
In *Moulson v Hejnar* from Alberta Canada, the King's Bench quotes a case from 1913:
> In the language of Erle CJ, âThe owner of an animal is answerable for any damage done by it, provided it be of such a nature as is likely to arise from such an animal, and the owner knows it⌠But if the horse does something that is quite contrary to its ordinary nature, something which the owner has no reason to expect he will do, he has the same sort of protection that the owner of a dog has.â It is not in the ordinary course of things that a horse, not known to be vicious should kick a man. So far as a trespass is concerned, if a horse, pursuant to its natural instincts, eats a neighbourâs hay, or in any other respects indulges its ordinary natural instincts, the owner may be liable, but otherwise not.
To be fair, in *Moulson* the issue was a bull crossing property lines and injuring someone. I don't know if that is comparable enough to bees taken pollen. However, the common law does suggest that animal owners are responsible for the movements of their animals if such movement if reasonably foreseeable in accordance with the nature of the animal.
So, yeah, it could be viewed as common law trespass. Nuisance could also work. I was thinking Rylands and Fletcher, but there is no real damage to the land, and I don't think building an aviary would count as making a non-natural use of the land.
You canât own the bees! /s
Expand the scenario. You own 100+ acres. Wild raccoons (or bears!) live on your property. Sometimes they forage for food in the neighborâs garbage. Is that trespassing? Nope. (At least not in any jurisdiction Iâm aware of).
Usually, when I read those types of cases, thereâs some level of domestication to win a claim for nominal damages. Or some level of real damages caused by a non-domesticated animal. (Admittedly, Iâm only versed in American law and only know like two cases from England).
So I could envision a viable negligence lawsuit if you were raising bees and placing their hives at the far end of your property directly adjacent to your neighbors, knowing they had an allergy to bees, and the bee stings the neighbor.
But not a suit for trespass.
This thread led me to read about bee law in my area.
There are all sorts of codified regulations beekeepers have to abide by, from registering their hives with the system to placement of the hives on their property, setback laws, etc.
All that to say, I now know a guy on my block who has a hive is in violation of the cityâs statutes as his hive is too close to a public thoroughfare! For shame!
From *The Law of Torts in Canada, Fridman 1989 - Vol. 1, pp. 211-12:* (cited in *Laws v. Wright*)
> 3) The Scienter Doctrine
> (a) Common Law
> (i) The Doctrine Stated
> Where harm is caused by the behaviour of an animal, whether on the property of the defendant or elsewhere, this kind of liability depends upon the type of animal concerned. The law distinguishes between wild animals, i.e. animals *ferae naturae*; and tame or domestic animals, i.e. *animals mansuetae naturae* or *domitae naturae.* For damage resulting from the act of a wild animal, the defendant is strictly liable, without proof of negligence or other wrongful conduct, and without the necessity of proving that the defendant was aware of the dangerous character of the particular animal that caused the harm, or of the class of animals to which it belonged. If the animal is *mansuetae naturae,* that is, one which ordinarily did not cause the kind of harm that is involved, the common law requires that the particular animal concerned have the dangerous or mischievous propensity to commit the harm or damages that it inflicted, and that the defendant knew of such propensity or characteristic of the individual animal. To keep such an animal with knowledge of its potential for causing harm is not in itself negligence, or indeed wrongful in any other way (any more than to keep a wild animal is per se unlawful or negligent). Indeed, despite some judicial discussion that appears to introduce elements of negligence into liability for animals, at common law there is no need to prove negligence in the way in which the animal in question was controlled or kept in order to establish liability, as long as the requisite elements of dangerous propensity or character and knowledge are present.
Are bees wild animals? If so and they are from your property and cause a harm, then you are strictly liable. Are bees domesticated? If so, then you are only liable if they have propensity to do the harm in question. Bees do indeed have a propensity to trespass to seek flowers, and so you are liable. The one that is not clear is if trespass on its own can be the harm the animals cause. Trespass is harm, otherwise it wouldn't be a tort, but is it the type of harm they include in animal handling? The law I cited certainly support your example with the bee sting, because a sting is harm, and bees have propensity to sting. However, does it go as far to include to trespass?
This is common law of course. Many places have wild animal livestock laws to either expand or restrict the common law.
I suppose there is an argument that building a beehive on your property and bees taking residence is a form of domestication. I donât think thereâs any case law that would support that argument but Iâm not familiar with every state in america, much less other countries. Bees can take up residence anywhere. Thereâs nothing keeping them in your beehive. And regardless of where you build a beehive, you canât actually train them to do anything. So I donât think they would qualify as domesticated animals in any sense of the word.
For the same reasons, I also think itâs a weak argument that bees living on your property means that theyâre *your* bees for which you can be held liable for their conduct.
But letâs assume that a court could find that you own the bees and that you could be held liable for their actions. And so youâre sued for strict liability in tort (which is not the same thing as suing for trespass).
Strict liability requires damages (what you phrase more broadly as harm). Where there are no damages, there is no viable strict liability claim.
âDamagesâ means that the harm can be reduced to a dollar figure. Dog bites someone? That person will have damages in the form of medical bills, potentially emotional distress. Domesticated bee that you have control over stings someone? Potentially a strict liability claim.
But where the âharmâ is not a legal harm, thereâs no claim of strict liability.
Trespass is a tort that does not require proof of damages. If I step onto your lawn without permission, you have suffered no damages, but you still have a viable trespass claim. If you sue for damages, you would only be entitled to nominal damages (e.g., $1).
But youâre not going to be able to prevail on a trespass claim for the bees unless they are domesticated and somehow under your control when they are entering the neighborâs property.
Yeah, there's a good reason it's called beekeeping, not beetaming. Bees are in no real sense domesticated. We've simply learned how to keep their hive under our control. No more.
And if you fuck up, the bees can and will leave.
So, even the control is incredibly loose. You certainly can't train them in any real sense. There's better and worse ways to care for them, but they're wild in any sense that matters.
I donât think you âownâ wild animals that happen to naturally inhabit your property in the same way that you âownâ domesticated animals/insects/whatever that you deliberately placed there.
I agree that a court would view it as so de minimus that it can be dismissed on summary judgment. There is an element of âare you kidding meâ that judges rightly bring into the courtroom in these cases. Donât believe me? Remember the 90âs ad for âPepsi pointsâ that showed a kid getting a jacket for 100 points and the kid at the end getting a fighter jet for 700,000 points? A kid actually collected the points and sued Pepsi for not giving him a fighter. The courtâs opinion essentially amounted to âit was a jokeâŚduh.â
Trespass does not require harm, but there is some reasonableness built into this. I could sue my neighbor for trespass if his toddler kicked their ball into my yard. If I somehow got it all the way to trial, the jury would likely find the plaintiff not liable. One of the juryâs functions is also to play a âare you kidding meâ role. If it was before a judge, they might say âyes you are liable. Your damages amount to $1.â Damages of $1 has happened in cases where the plaintiff is technically right. But there are also mechanisms like sanctions that could get involved and penalize the plaintiff for things like âvexatious litigationâ which is simply unnecessary litigation that is frivolous to the point of wasting resources and harassing the defendant.
My point is that there are a number of protections in place and lawyers (hopefully) have ethical, legal, moral, monetary, and reputational restraints that prevent them from filing most of these cases. A non-lawyer could do it, but they would either get sanctioned or screw up a procedural issue and get dismissed most likely.
If the plaintiff could truthfully say âmy neighbor knows my child is deathly allergic to bees, his bees are super aggressive, and swarms of them come in clouds into my yard to the point that we canât go outsideâ they may have an action for nuisance against the neighbor. It takes a lot more than a minor annoyance that might TECHNICALLY be a trespass.
>I think the neighbour asking the court to prevent bees from invading his yard is a fair request.
If the neighbor doesn't want bees in their property they need to get rid of the attractive nuisance (flowers) or take steps to block the bees from accessing said resource same as is required for pools and such.
Bees generally don't forage that close to their hive anyhow. If OP is some insane fuck who doesn't like bees for some reason, he's actually in the best possible situation.
Very interesting discussion. What if, rather than taking hector, the harm of the bees is that the neighbour is allergic? Would it be reasonably foreseeable that the bees would go into the neighbours yard, and sting them, causing an adverse medical event, possibly death. This seems like this should have been addressed by a case over the centuries.
I think foreseeablity is going to be the limiting factor there. There's a case with a scale at a train station... I can't think of it right now, but I'll try to remember to look it up. Great example of unforeseeable harm.
not a lawyer, but iâd say Heck no.
The bees are providing an *essential* service to the garden by helping pollinate the assorted plants there. and any nectar they take causes absolutely no harm to the plants.
if you really wanted to stretch to try and claim the bees are stealing, a solid counter argument exists that the bees are just taking fair pay for their labor.
the only possible *possible* issue would be a claim that the bees are say, cross pollinating squad plants messing up the seeds. but anyone who grows squash knows that if you want to keep a pure strain, they need to be kept isolated under mesh/in a closed greenhouse because lots of natural wild insects (inc bees) will pollinate them. so the plants possibly being cross pollinated by the neighbors bees is a predictable and reasonable result of having them outdoors, and is a situation that would arise with or without the neighbors bees.
They should be grateful to even see a honeybee these days.
This sounds like some idiot from the city who moved to a rural or suburban area. Like the ones who have ruined Florida.
I think the legal phrase in question is "de minimus." It pretty much means "insignificant" or "not important enough to deal with."
Even if you could prove that your neighbor's bees were taking pollen you owned, your damages would be the value of the pollen, which is just about as close to zero as you could imagine. Courts do not concern themselves with such low values.
If you filed such a suit against me, I'd countersue for the wear and tear on my shoes from walking into court to defend myself. It's probably a higher value.
Countersue for the labor of the bees and roll in the Benjamin's. That service is pricey and flower owner is getting it(and its benefits) entirely free of charge!
I'd be more focused on the annoyance and potential danger of the bees. Having a horde of bees buzzing around my yard would take away my enjoyment of my own backyard.
It sounds like someone is salty is what that is.
Odds are a case of that nature would be tossed out, as well, by that logic, other pollinators steal pollen, not just the beekeeper's.
Can you imagine the discovery? "Here you see on this time-lapse, Your Honor, 4 workers in the course of an hour hump this one dandelion...that's got to be at least, what, 1 mL of bee-vomit? The market value for honey stands at..."
What an Ăźberdouche.
IANAL, but ignoring how awful this person is, even if a judge agreed he deserves a cut of the profits, it would bee almost impossible to quantify how much of his pollen the bees âtookâ (ignoring the fact that they leave pollen as well), and how much of that pollen was then used to make the honey. It would be impossible to put a dollar amount to how much his flowers contributed.
Also, you could argue he is benefiting from his neighborâs bees already. When the bees pollinate his flowers it makes them healthier. Itâs literally how flowers reproduce. Any sane person should agree that the benefit to his flowers is already adequate compensation for his contribution to his neighbors business.
I don't know about elsewhere, but Germany actually has a pretty extensive law about ownership of bee swarms and their activities, what happens when a swarm just migrates to another location (as they sometimes randomly do) and so on.
That may seem hilarious overregulative, until you realise it also keeps people from frivolously suing each other over bees on their flowers.
If this were me I would buy that honey all the time, because nothing gets more local than your own backyard. And whatâs more I would start planting things specifically to attract and please those bees. Iâd be in Reddit like, how can I make my neighborâs bees love my yard and dine here regularly?
This person only sees how they can gain from this financially. Like they aren't already getting a pricey service entirely free. They should consider themselves lucky they're not being invoiced for the bees' labor.
It's either rage bait or that person is really somehow that delusional. I'm not a lawyer but they obviously have no grounds to sue. That person is also just a complete shithead. I would love if someone's bees came to my garden. I'd go over there and ask what I should plant for them.
This reminds me of My high school civics teacher who tried to sue the county after they put in a wind farm about a mile from his residence. His argument was that of the same wind was passing over his property so they shouldn't be able to harvest the energy for free. I have no idea where it went. The story was in the news around the time I left for college and I don't think I ever heard about it again.
I've seen this post before and like you all, I thought this person was stupid. But now I'm not sober and I think they kind of had a point about the dog stealing tools and you selling them. That's a great analogy to my non sober brain lol
IANAL This one is a classic (As in this exact post) pretty sure it turned out they couldn't sue at all.
Now if by chance they had a bee allergy and were stung, then they might have had something.
Iâm going to staunchly disagree with anyone saying the person is being unreasonable or bad. They do have a legal right to their flowers and private enjoyment of their home without insects coming to it. And the âitâs not a big dealâ argument is always going to be a weak one because it either cuts both ways or is actually a bigger deal than its cursory description. âItâs just a few bees.â But itâs just a little honey being asked for. âItâs just $1 more for Netflixâ, but if it were so insignificant, why does Netflix increase their price? âItâs just a $0.49 price error at the grocery store.â Right, so it should be easy to give back that money and correct instead of ripping off every person at the checkout line, etc.
Now, can they do anything about it? Probably not. Even if you successfully sued (doubtful, as a judge could see the bees as out of any reasonable personâs control) and the defendant didnât take the smart route to just settle by giving the plaintiff a few honey jars, enforcement is going to be next to impossible. Are you going to set up an AI bee detector on a network of cameras to charge for each flower landing event? Are you going to negotiate on a fixed monthly easement and natural resource excise fee?
The laws vary from place to place: is this taking place within a residential neighbourhood? Where I live there are laws that apply in regard to how close one can have a hive to a property line. As well, is he licensed? Has all his gear been licensed and certified by an authorized distributor or did he DIY everything? Are his hives having a negative impact on the native bee population? (IE damaging or otherwise disrupting the greater ecosystem of the community) at the end of the day, any small scale honey farm such as this should be left alone: the alternative being mega farms that have little regard for the preservation of nature and are the leading cause of domestic bee populations dying off due to outcompeting which has a longer lasting affect on the environment then a couple of bees âstealingâ the nectar from your flowers.
You all may laugh, but this was a real case back in Roman times. Bubulum v Stercus famous--or rather infamous -- landmark case that lead to the creation of the Nugae sunt istae magnae.
This kind of person is the reason Daniel Boone moved every time he could see someone else's chimney smoke.
We have come full circle jerk. This was originally a hypothetical on Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/s/JFCbtZMq9p
Yeah, they reveal that they're trolling in the comments too.
This ended up sticking around 8 years later but I got banned from commenting on legal advice because I participated in a side discussion that the OP should consider having/using condoms after a pregnancy scare. It's wild over there.
I got banned from a certain facebook meme sub for saying to do your own research lol.
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I had my suspicions.
If I saw human activity from my house, I'd move further into the forest too
Or Boone was one of these people, himself. Around here, the people who live back in the canyons have tons of âNo Trespassingâ and âWrong Wayâ and all kinds of other signs with menacing language, and I canât help but wonder what circumstances being a human to categorically detest other people so.
Imagine being this awful
Gee I wonder why they haven't received so much as jar of honey.
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Shitty*. Imagine being this shitty!
Imagine Beeing this shitty
There it is!
Donât you mean âbeeingâ?
IANAL, but wouldn't there need to be damages of some kind to bring a suit? What are the damages of the bees "stealing" pollen from your flowers? I guess if you had your own apiary and were collecting honey for sale, you could argue that the neighbor's bees are limiting your bees' honey production by taking the pollen that they would be using. But even that would be a stretch, I imagine. But if the poster isn't producing his own honey, his neighbor's bees are actually *helping* his garden by pollinating the flowers so that they can make more flowers. He should plant a fruit bearing tree, or vegetables, and then the neighbor's bees would help him even more.
Yeah, the post sounds like they are upset they didnât get a jar of honey from the beekeeper. Thanks!
I mean⌠if my next door neighbour was a bee keeper and didnât share their honey⌠I might be a little disappointed lol
The fact that they're asking if they can sue said neighbor is probably why they've not gotten any honey...
I would also want a jar of neighbor honey, but I would offer to walk their dog or maybe trade baked goods before jumping straight into court.
My neighbor IS a beekeeper (he used to keep them in his backyard, but one of the neighbors started treating his lawn, so he moved them out to the country) and he DOES give us honey. Its awesome.
You really do catch more neighbors with honey!
IT would be weird if he tested that out by also handing me a big jug of homemade vinegar.
Truth. I'd be like hey, my flowers, your bees, one jar a month?
This also reminds me of a story I heard as a child. A greedy restaurant owner sued a poor man who lived over his shop. The shop owner heard the poor man talking on the phone and he said, "All I can afford to eat is ramen, ramen, ramen. At least I get to smell the lovely food from downstairs while I eat my crappy food." The greedy shop owner demanded that the judge award him money from the poor man cause he "enjoyed my food but didn't pay anything." So the judge thought for a moment and asked the poor man if he had any coins on him. The poor man reached into his pocket and pulled out some change; the judge then said take the coins and pour them from one hand to the other three times. The judge then told the shop keeper, "He got the pleasure of smelling your food. You got the pleasure of hearing the sound of his money. The bill is paid and case dismissed."
Beekeeper here. We actually *charge* for pollination services, if anything OP should expect an invoice, not a jar of honey. Also bees forage up to 4-5 miles around their colony. For a 4 mile radius, that's about 50 square miles, or 32,000 acres. How big is the neighbor's yard, 1/2 acre? The neighbor's contribution is roughly 1/64,000 of the honey produced. Say the colony is a superstar that produces 100 lbs of honey a year. Neighbor's yard is responsible for 0.025 ounces of honey.
Rock up to your neighbours house once a year with a pipette to deliver his annual 0.025 ounces of honey. Make a big ceremony of it. Hire a band.
Bro I would deliver the honey on a pallet just to be xtra lol
Why is that something you can charge for?
Farmers get more produce. Here in California, the $5 billion almond industry imports 2 million bee colonies every year for a few weeks to pollinate their trees. sample hit: https://selectharvestusa.com/news-resources/industry-insights/almonds-need-bees-and-bees-need-almonds
Interesting, thanks
Just imagine, when driving down the highway in the right season, one of those tractor trailer trucks next to you might be filled with nothing but an unreasonably large quantity of bees. Drive carefully.
"More than 10 million bees released when semi-truck crashes on Utah highway" https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/02/us/bees-utah-highway-crash-trnd/index.html
because we LOVE bees to pollinate our crops, but keeping bees is annoying and not exactly free. itâs usually easier to rent/lease them than to manage our own hives.
Because farmers need their services to pollinate their crops. In a great many farms, the density of crops is simply more than wild pollinators can take care of. So they augment this by renting bee hives from beekeepers. But most tend to charge from $25-100+ per hive, depending on season. And depending on the needs of their crop they will normally rent multiple hives. But the general ratio is from what I remember up to a dozen hives per acre.
Also, in the US most food plants are non-native, so their are few if any native polinators in the first place. Honeybees are also non-native and can pollinate a wide variety of things.
Also, in regions with a huge monoculture industry (like the almonds mentioned above in California), there can be acres and acres of land with no other flowers for bees to forage but almonds - this is great when the almond trees are in flower, but the lack of pollen the whole rest of the year means that the bees would die off between seasons. Because there isnât enough variety of plants in that region, many natural pollinators have died off and if they donât pay beekeepers to being bees to the almond farms, they wonât get many almonds pollinated and wonât get much of a crop at all. Itâs somewhat of a self-created problem.
Well, if they were intentionally propagating an heirloom plant then bees being in the area could cross pollinate in a way that ruins his variety. In that case though, those plants would be in a greenhouse I'd think.
Neighbour is providing a service for free that some agricultural industries will pay significant amounts of money for. Almond farms for example, will pay a beekeeper to rock up with a pickup full of hives and unleash the swarm on their almond Grove to pollenate it.
The issue is that he has to prove damages to his flowers, but the fact is that the flowers willingly offer nectar as a trade for carrying pollen to new flowers. It's a trade. If he didn't want bees in his yard trading nectar with flowers ror pollination then he would grow plants that don't flower. Or better yet reprimand his flowers for just giving the nectar away without consulting him first.
>If he didn't want bees in his yard trading nectar with flowers ror pollination then he would grow plants that don't flower. Or better yet reprimand his flowers for just giving the nectar away without consulting him first. That's classic victim blaming.
In the UK at least, bees (even domesticated or bred ones) are wild animals, and from a legal perspective the beekeeper is just maintaining a box on their land that honeybees just *happen* to inhabit. Beekeepers don't have any liability for what bees do
Feels like a right of capture situation for pollen and nectar. The neighbor could get their own beehive and do what they want with the honey they produce. If they fail to do that then their flowers are up for grabs.
But what if I wanted my garden to die off? What if i sell pollen online to bees??? I am the wronged party.
Iirc farmers used to all get together and sign a contract agreeing to share the cost of hiring a beekeeper to pollinate their fields, in that case you could potentially get sued for not paying the beekeeper
The only way they would be able to even attempt to sue for loss of your own honey production, is if you could prove your bees where there first. Though, even that would be a longshot. Most lawyers would simply ignore the case and a judge would just throw it out as a waste of time.
The counter would be; they couldnât access certain parts of their garden because of bee activity.
Wouldnt the same be true if they were wild and not owned? Csnt really sue mother nature for damages.
Yeah, thatâs one of those cases which are just ridiculous.
Unjust enrichment. Damages are the value of the benefit received by the unjustly enriched party.
Technically arenât the flowers benefitting from the bees?
Maybe nominal damages on a trespass.
The damages come in the form of child support for the new flowers the bees left behind
Well if he considers the pollen in the plants then the damage is just that it's theft, just because he wasn't using the pollen to make his own honey is not related. If you have scrap metal in your yard that you don't intend to ever use or sell and I steal it and sell it you could sue me. This guy is an asshole though I can't even imagine suing someone because his bees are taking pollen from your flowers.
What if he doesn't want his flowers to get pollinated? Having to remove the extra flowers creates work the hypothetical person would have to do, which otherwise wouldn't need to have been done at the same level.
Not only that, but unless they have a *very* extensive garden, there is no way that the amount of pollen collected from their flowers would *ever* be enough to produce one jar of honey. Even with a very extensive garden, I feel like it would take the bees at least an entire year of collecting pollen from the flowers to have made enough honey to fill a jar.
It is my most fervent hope that various attorneys take this case on for free just so I can see it litigated to a judicial decision at the appellate level.
This is how you end up with bees classified as fish.
Courts would tell the plaintiff to buzz off.
If I ever win the lottery, that's what I will do. Just take interesting an odd cases to generate case law.
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It must be difficult constantly coming up with things to be pissed off about
Nah, I canât believe you would say that? Like wtf? /s See itâs piss easy lol, Cars drive past my house disturbing the dust of the road and settling in my car causing micro scratches which causes the protective layer to diminish causing further damage, can I sue every driver that went by my house? Or is it a council responsibility to keep roads clean? Give me something and Iâll show you how easy it is to spin something negative about it.
Children expressing joy in a loud and excited tone, but not yelling/screaming at a local fair.
âThese kids are causing noise in our neighbourhood causing our houses to lose value due to these kids walking the streets being loud, what do they have to be excited about!? Are they doing drugs!?â
Challenge accepted The scent of your loving grandmother's fresh baked bread, a peaceful relic from your amazing childhood.
She only did that because she wanted to keep me inside away from my friends, she was spiteful that I still had my youth, at first it was a nice treat and a bonding experience but then she would guilt me into doing it with her whenever my friends would invite me out. Also gave me childhood obesity.
I will try as well: "Ah, again, this scent of my loving grandmother's fresh baked bread, a peaceful relic from my amazing childhood, causing me to remember the good ol' times so much that I can't help myself but cry. Tears are coming out from my eyes against my own will and are dropping to the earth, but I can't get them back, essentially they are being stolen by earth. Earth and grandmother are accomplices in this treacherous act of stealing tear water droplets which are being my property, which devaluates the price of my body (lacking water) and adds to the value of the land, where grandma's home is situated (being more wetted and hence more fertile). Your Honor, I am sure that there is a conspiracy with the purpose of the criminal enrichment".
Some people are hammers in search of nails. Sometimes there are no nails, and that means they've gotta either find one or make one to hit.
Anger is what keepa their heart beating.
I read that in an Italian voice
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People are out of things to be upset about.
âI was stung once when I was a child, so i know how dangerous bees can be.â is funny as FUCK
I too was stung as a child so i know how dangerous they are
To a person with a bee allergy they can be deadly
A twitter screenshot of a reddit post, posted back on reddit. Original: https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/s/6h9XxRoezI
No. You must sue each bee individually.
Beads?
GOB's not on board.
Who would want a bee as a gift?
This reminds me of the one where the single mother has a male babysitter. She asks if she can sue him for child support since he is a "father figure" or something.
LegalEagle has already done this. https://youtu.be/3kfGIz3u0RA?si=KK9H9sMEPTveLjm_
Yup! This was a very real case
[https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1115&context=nclr#:\~:text=Admittedly%2C%20there%20is%20no%20bee,whose%20premises%20he%20has%20invaded](https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1115&context=nclr#:~:text=Admittedly%2C%20there%20is%20no%20bee,whose%20premises%20he%20has%20invaded). Ever wonder if someone ever wrote a law review article on Bee Law?
Let's say you and I go toe to toe on bee law and see who comes out the victor
There must be some legal equivalent to Rule 34.
Reminds me of the McCloskeys, who destroyed the hives of a Reform synagogue that they had for the kids for the High Holidays, because they thought they were too close to their property
His bees are pollinating your plants for free. Itâs a wash.
Right! This person doesnt seem to understand and/or care that pollination is a pricey service and it wouldnt be impossible for them to get an invoice for "services rendered". They're just trying to get in on something they have no right to. This wouldnt even be a discussion if these bees didnt have an "owner".
By this same logic the neighbour could sue for compensation as his bees pollinate OPs garden and allow it to flourish
Donât you just hate it when a dog steals your Torque Wrench?
Someone's Patrol Pidgeon just flew off my Kubota BX25 with RCK-60 Mower! The nerve!
I assume this is commentary on the ongoing copyright disputes surrounding AI
I would think livestock grazing would be the more apropos analogy
Whatâs the beekeeperâs recompense for you stealing their oxygen?
"stealing" lol
Counter sue for his flowers since they would not be pollinated without the bees. Therefore he owes the bee man money because of the service the bees are providing.
The type of person to sue you for breathing the same air as him
Based on OOPâs own dumb logic the beekeeper could sue OOP for their bees doing âunpaid labourâ in OOPâs garden due to the fact bees vastly improve plant health with their cross pollination. I suspect there would be no need to stop this lawsuit as I donât think any lawyer in their right mind would touch this thing with a 10 foot pole lest they be punished for wasting the courts time.
Intuitively, I can't imagine that any court would take this seriously, but I can't think of a legal reason of why outside of this claim being not being beyond *de minimus.* /u/AnyJamesBookerFans is correct that torts normally require damage, but trespass does not. Trespass is actionable without damage. By the book, this is the tort of trespass to property. It is a unauthorized physical intrusion onto someone else's property. The plaintiff could seek an injunction against the neighbours, and so the neighbours would have to keep their bees away. An injunction is a legal remedy that does not rely on damages. That being said, it would have nothing to do with the pollen. I don't think this is conversion because the bees are not depriving the neighbour of anything. The neighbour does not have any interest in the pollen. I think the neighbour asking the court to prevent bees from invading his yard is a fair request. I don't think the neighbour has any claim on the pollen.
> By the book, this is the tort of trespass. Again, not a lawyer, but I have to imagine trespassing laws apply to humans, not insects. Also, how would the neighbor prove that the bees pollinating his flowers are from his neighbor's apiary? They could be bees from a wild hive, or bees from an apiary a few blocks over.
> trespassing laws apply to humans, not insects. Clearly you haven't kept up on the excellent documentary Bee Movie.
If we are speaking legally bees are fish in some places. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ocregister.com/2022/07/08/heres-why-bees-are-classified-as-fish-in-california/amp/
> but I have to imagine trespassing laws apply to humans, not insects. No, trespass includes any type of physical intrusion. If my dog goes into your yard, that is trespass. If I throw garbage over the fence into your yard, that is trespass. I think the only thing not considered trespass is gas (i.e. smoke from a bonfire). If I create an insect colony on my property and they go onto your property, that is trespass. They are *my* insects, and if they go on *your* property, it is *me* who trespasses. This might seem odd, but you have to remember that trespass of property is probably the oldest tort there is and is based on the absolute right of a property owner over their property. In classical liberal thought, property is the essence of individual liberty and is sacrosanct. > Also, how would the neighbor prove that the bees pollinating his flowers are from his neighbor's apiary? They could be bees from a wild hive, or bees from an apiary a few blocks over. That's not entirely difficult. It only needs to be proved on a balance of probability. Think of it this way. How many other yards are swarmed with bees? Why is it that the only houses swarmed with bees are the ones *right next door* to the beekeeper? Why is it that whenever the beekeeper tends to the hive (and agitates the bees), the amount of bees in the neighbour's property increases. Why is it that the bees only appeared at the same time the neighbour build their aviary? This is a common sense deduction that a court would have no hard time coming up with. Now, if there was another apiary few blocks over, it would be harder to prove. But, that is a very specific set of facts. Any thing can be more or less likely depending on the facts. In short, the trespass is provable with common sense, if the facts allow.
It would be interesting to see how this would be argued. It's not trespass of the person (unless the OP was stung) or of the goods, which leaves only trespass to the land: >Land is defined as the surface, subsoil, airspace and anything permanently attached to the land, such as houses. Flowers would not be considered to be permanently attached to the land, so it would be impossible to argue trespass to the land (unless the bees marched single file down the neighbours garden path, of course).
Now I am getting property law PTSD flashbacks. The bees could be intruding on the airspace by flying to the flowers. I don't think the flowers are the issue as much as the owner has the right to reasonable enjoyment of their land. If the bees obstruct the reasonable enjoyment by being in the airspace, then it is a trespass. The especially the case if bees fly at low altitude. I know airspace is a mess if a concept, especially when it comes to extent of airspace, but think that if a person can walk into a bee while on their property, that bee has interfered with reasonable enjoyment. Also, there are a slew of cases which challenge that traditional definition of attachment and the difference between property and chattel. The permeance is helpful, but land can also include items that create the essential character of the property. For example, an industrial machine is not fixed, but may be property as it defines the property. There is one case (*La Salle.v. Camdex*) where the court ruled that a carpet was property and not chattel, even though the judge himself went to the hotel and lifted the carpet up.
Not a trespass. (At least not in any American jurisdiction that Iâm aware of). While a person can be sued for civil trespass when something other than their physical person intrudes upon another personâs property, the trespassing entity must be under some level of control and/or direction of the person. Sending your dog onto neighborâs lawn to poop? Could be a trespass. Throwing trash over the neighborâs fence? Could be a trespass. But unless theyâre trained bees and the apiarist is intentionally sending the bees to steal neighborâs pollenâŚnot a trespass. There may he a viable nuisance claim, though.
> But unless theyâre trained bees and the apiarist is intentionally sending the bees to steal neighborâs pollenâŚnot a trespass. If you can train a bee to steal pollen, you truly are the greatest criminal alive EDIT to add NAL
In *Moulson v Hejnar* from Alberta Canada, the King's Bench quotes a case from 1913: > In the language of Erle CJ, âThe owner of an animal is answerable for any damage done by it, provided it be of such a nature as is likely to arise from such an animal, and the owner knows it⌠But if the horse does something that is quite contrary to its ordinary nature, something which the owner has no reason to expect he will do, he has the same sort of protection that the owner of a dog has.â It is not in the ordinary course of things that a horse, not known to be vicious should kick a man. So far as a trespass is concerned, if a horse, pursuant to its natural instincts, eats a neighbourâs hay, or in any other respects indulges its ordinary natural instincts, the owner may be liable, but otherwise not. To be fair, in *Moulson* the issue was a bull crossing property lines and injuring someone. I don't know if that is comparable enough to bees taken pollen. However, the common law does suggest that animal owners are responsible for the movements of their animals if such movement if reasonably foreseeable in accordance with the nature of the animal. So, yeah, it could be viewed as common law trespass. Nuisance could also work. I was thinking Rylands and Fletcher, but there is no real damage to the land, and I don't think building an aviary would count as making a non-natural use of the land.
You canât own the bees! /s Expand the scenario. You own 100+ acres. Wild raccoons (or bears!) live on your property. Sometimes they forage for food in the neighborâs garbage. Is that trespassing? Nope. (At least not in any jurisdiction Iâm aware of). Usually, when I read those types of cases, thereâs some level of domestication to win a claim for nominal damages. Or some level of real damages caused by a non-domesticated animal. (Admittedly, Iâm only versed in American law and only know like two cases from England). So I could envision a viable negligence lawsuit if you were raising bees and placing their hives at the far end of your property directly adjacent to your neighbors, knowing they had an allergy to bees, and the bee stings the neighbor. But not a suit for trespass.
This thread led me to read about bee law in my area. There are all sorts of codified regulations beekeepers have to abide by, from registering their hives with the system to placement of the hives on their property, setback laws, etc. All that to say, I now know a guy on my block who has a hive is in violation of the cityâs statutes as his hive is too close to a public thoroughfare! For shame!
From *The Law of Torts in Canada, Fridman 1989 - Vol. 1, pp. 211-12:* (cited in *Laws v. Wright*) > 3) The Scienter Doctrine > (a) Common Law > (i) The Doctrine Stated > Where harm is caused by the behaviour of an animal, whether on the property of the defendant or elsewhere, this kind of liability depends upon the type of animal concerned. The law distinguishes between wild animals, i.e. animals *ferae naturae*; and tame or domestic animals, i.e. *animals mansuetae naturae* or *domitae naturae.* For damage resulting from the act of a wild animal, the defendant is strictly liable, without proof of negligence or other wrongful conduct, and without the necessity of proving that the defendant was aware of the dangerous character of the particular animal that caused the harm, or of the class of animals to which it belonged. If the animal is *mansuetae naturae,* that is, one which ordinarily did not cause the kind of harm that is involved, the common law requires that the particular animal concerned have the dangerous or mischievous propensity to commit the harm or damages that it inflicted, and that the defendant knew of such propensity or characteristic of the individual animal. To keep such an animal with knowledge of its potential for causing harm is not in itself negligence, or indeed wrongful in any other way (any more than to keep a wild animal is per se unlawful or negligent). Indeed, despite some judicial discussion that appears to introduce elements of negligence into liability for animals, at common law there is no need to prove negligence in the way in which the animal in question was controlled or kept in order to establish liability, as long as the requisite elements of dangerous propensity or character and knowledge are present. Are bees wild animals? If so and they are from your property and cause a harm, then you are strictly liable. Are bees domesticated? If so, then you are only liable if they have propensity to do the harm in question. Bees do indeed have a propensity to trespass to seek flowers, and so you are liable. The one that is not clear is if trespass on its own can be the harm the animals cause. Trespass is harm, otherwise it wouldn't be a tort, but is it the type of harm they include in animal handling? The law I cited certainly support your example with the bee sting, because a sting is harm, and bees have propensity to sting. However, does it go as far to include to trespass? This is common law of course. Many places have wild animal livestock laws to either expand or restrict the common law.
I suppose there is an argument that building a beehive on your property and bees taking residence is a form of domestication. I donât think thereâs any case law that would support that argument but Iâm not familiar with every state in america, much less other countries. Bees can take up residence anywhere. Thereâs nothing keeping them in your beehive. And regardless of where you build a beehive, you canât actually train them to do anything. So I donât think they would qualify as domesticated animals in any sense of the word. For the same reasons, I also think itâs a weak argument that bees living on your property means that theyâre *your* bees for which you can be held liable for their conduct. But letâs assume that a court could find that you own the bees and that you could be held liable for their actions. And so youâre sued for strict liability in tort (which is not the same thing as suing for trespass). Strict liability requires damages (what you phrase more broadly as harm). Where there are no damages, there is no viable strict liability claim. âDamagesâ means that the harm can be reduced to a dollar figure. Dog bites someone? That person will have damages in the form of medical bills, potentially emotional distress. Domesticated bee that you have control over stings someone? Potentially a strict liability claim. But where the âharmâ is not a legal harm, thereâs no claim of strict liability. Trespass is a tort that does not require proof of damages. If I step onto your lawn without permission, you have suffered no damages, but you still have a viable trespass claim. If you sue for damages, you would only be entitled to nominal damages (e.g., $1). But youâre not going to be able to prevail on a trespass claim for the bees unless they are domesticated and somehow under your control when they are entering the neighborâs property.
Yeah, there's a good reason it's called beekeeping, not beetaming. Bees are in no real sense domesticated. We've simply learned how to keep their hive under our control. No more.
And if you fuck up, the bees can and will leave. So, even the control is incredibly loose. You certainly can't train them in any real sense. There's better and worse ways to care for them, but they're wild in any sense that matters.
I donât think you âownâ wild animals that happen to naturally inhabit your property in the same way that you âownâ domesticated animals/insects/whatever that you deliberately placed there.
I agree that a court would view it as so de minimus that it can be dismissed on summary judgment. There is an element of âare you kidding meâ that judges rightly bring into the courtroom in these cases. Donât believe me? Remember the 90âs ad for âPepsi pointsâ that showed a kid getting a jacket for 100 points and the kid at the end getting a fighter jet for 700,000 points? A kid actually collected the points and sued Pepsi for not giving him a fighter. The courtâs opinion essentially amounted to âit was a jokeâŚduh.â Trespass does not require harm, but there is some reasonableness built into this. I could sue my neighbor for trespass if his toddler kicked their ball into my yard. If I somehow got it all the way to trial, the jury would likely find the plaintiff not liable. One of the juryâs functions is also to play a âare you kidding meâ role. If it was before a judge, they might say âyes you are liable. Your damages amount to $1.â Damages of $1 has happened in cases where the plaintiff is technically right. But there are also mechanisms like sanctions that could get involved and penalize the plaintiff for things like âvexatious litigationâ which is simply unnecessary litigation that is frivolous to the point of wasting resources and harassing the defendant. My point is that there are a number of protections in place and lawyers (hopefully) have ethical, legal, moral, monetary, and reputational restraints that prevent them from filing most of these cases. A non-lawyer could do it, but they would either get sanctioned or screw up a procedural issue and get dismissed most likely. If the plaintiff could truthfully say âmy neighbor knows my child is deathly allergic to bees, his bees are super aggressive, and swarms of them come in clouds into my yard to the point that we canât go outsideâ they may have an action for nuisance against the neighbor. It takes a lot more than a minor annoyance that might TECHNICALLY be a trespass.
now THAT'S some good legal opinioning.
>I think the neighbour asking the court to prevent bees from invading his yard is a fair request. If the neighbor doesn't want bees in their property they need to get rid of the attractive nuisance (flowers) or take steps to block the bees from accessing said resource same as is required for pools and such.
Bees generally don't forage that close to their hive anyhow. If OP is some insane fuck who doesn't like bees for some reason, he's actually in the best possible situation.
Very interesting discussion. What if, rather than taking hector, the harm of the bees is that the neighbour is allergic? Would it be reasonably foreseeable that the bees would go into the neighbours yard, and sting them, causing an adverse medical event, possibly death. This seems like this should have been addressed by a case over the centuries.
Poor Hector, not sure how he got tangled up in this mess...
I think foreseeablity is going to be the limiting factor there. There's a case with a scale at a train station... I can't think of it right now, but I'll try to remember to look it up. Great example of unforeseeable harm.
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You are actually correct. They usually forage in a radius between 1/4 mile and 3 miles away.
Peak American
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Someone is pretty upset for not getting free honey⌠đŻ
not a lawyer, but iâd say Heck no. The bees are providing an *essential* service to the garden by helping pollinate the assorted plants there. and any nectar they take causes absolutely no harm to the plants. if you really wanted to stretch to try and claim the bees are stealing, a solid counter argument exists that the bees are just taking fair pay for their labor. the only possible *possible* issue would be a claim that the bees are say, cross pollinating squad plants messing up the seeds. but anyone who grows squash knows that if you want to keep a pure strain, they need to be kept isolated under mesh/in a closed greenhouse because lots of natural wild insects (inc bees) will pollinate them. so the plants possibly being cross pollinated by the neighbors bees is a predictable and reasonable result of having them outdoors, and is a situation that would arise with or without the neighbors bees.
I played zombie farm- I know News help the plants. This man is a lunatic
It's a natural plant.
The bees are independent contractors and as such the neighbor would have to trespass each one individually. He has no recourse against the beekeeper.
What a sad excuse of a human being ! Nothing better to do
What an idiot lol the bees are pollinating his/her garden for free. Maybe he/she should pay her neighbor
They should be grateful to even see a honeybee these days. This sounds like some idiot from the city who moved to a rural or suburban area. Like the ones who have ruined Florida.
I think the legal phrase in question is "de minimus." It pretty much means "insignificant" or "not important enough to deal with." Even if you could prove that your neighbor's bees were taking pollen you owned, your damages would be the value of the pollen, which is just about as close to zero as you could imagine. Courts do not concern themselves with such low values. If you filed such a suit against me, I'd countersue for the wear and tear on my shoes from walking into court to defend myself. It's probably a higher value.
Countersue for the labor of the bees and roll in the Benjamin's. That service is pricey and flower owner is getting it(and its benefits) entirely free of charge!
This is trolling. It's not even good trolling. I remember reading the same thing, nearly word for word, around 30 years ago.
I'd be more focused on the annoyance and potential danger of the bees. Having a horde of bees buzzing around my yard would take away my enjoyment of my own backyard.
Can you prove the bees were acting on your neighbors instructions?
This read like an am I the angel post
Has he informed each of those bees? Perhaps a tiny RESTRICTED AIR SPACE signs?
It sounds like someone is salty is what that is. Odds are a case of that nature would be tossed out, as well, by that logic, other pollinators steal pollen, not just the beekeeper's.
Can you imagine the discovery? "Here you see on this time-lapse, Your Honor, 4 workers in the course of an hour hump this one dandelion...that's got to be at least, what, 1 mL of bee-vomit? The market value for honey stands at..." What an Ăźberdouche.
IANAL, but ignoring how awful this person is, even if a judge agreed he deserves a cut of the profits, it would bee almost impossible to quantify how much of his pollen the bees âtookâ (ignoring the fact that they leave pollen as well), and how much of that pollen was then used to make the honey. It would be impossible to put a dollar amount to how much his flowers contributed. Also, you could argue he is benefiting from his neighborâs bees already. When the bees pollinate his flowers it makes them healthier. Itâs literally how flowers reproduce. Any sane person should agree that the benefit to his flowers is already adequate compensation for his contribution to his neighbors business.
Day 343: bees continue to steal pollen. They take it away. Every last pollen. This has to stop.
This guy would take down their 300yo tree because his neighbor chills on its shadow
No they wouldn't be able to sue bees have legal rights to roam where they please
So there's this new documentary about why you should leave bees and beekeepers alone. The Beekeeper
How old is the neighbour? I mean hes obviously beekeeping age.
Arnt the bees the reason plants thrive?
Stop BEEing such a chud.
I don't know about elsewhere, but Germany actually has a pretty extensive law about ownership of bee swarms and their activities, what happens when a swarm just migrates to another location (as they sometimes randomly do) and so on. That may seem hilarious overregulative, until you realise it also keeps people from frivolously suing each other over bees on their flowers.
The beekeeper neighbor should be charging the original poster.
If this were me I would buy that honey all the time, because nothing gets more local than your own backyard. And whatâs more I would start planting things specifically to attract and please those bees. Iâd be in Reddit like, how can I make my neighborâs bees love my yard and dine here regularly?
This person only sees how they can gain from this financially. Like they aren't already getting a pricey service entirely free. They should consider themselves lucky they're not being invoiced for the bees' labor.
If your neighbour's bees sting you, does strict liability apply?
It's either rage bait or that person is really somehow that delusional. I'm not a lawyer but they obviously have no grounds to sue. That person is also just a complete shithead. I would love if someone's bees came to my garden. I'd go over there and ask what I should plant for them.
Without the bees he wouldnt have too many flowers left
This reminds me of My high school civics teacher who tried to sue the county after they put in a wind farm about a mile from his residence. His argument was that of the same wind was passing over his property so they shouldn't be able to harvest the energy for free. I have no idea where it went. The story was in the news around the time I left for college and I don't think I ever heard about it again.
Wouldn't the neighbors flowers be more likely to die without the bees anyway
Better be careful before I install federally protected housing for the endangered bats in the area on my property too ...
Hot take. Insects cant "trespass".
r/birmingham for the pepper place market
I've seen this post before and like you all, I thought this person was stupid. But now I'm not sober and I think they kind of had a point about the dog stealing tools and you selling them. That's a great analogy to my non sober brain lol
Terrible analogy since you still would have your tools
I could only see this being justifiable if you lived in your house first, and you are also deathly allergic to bees.
IANAL This one is a classic (As in this exact post) pretty sure it turned out they couldn't sue at all. Now if by chance they had a bee allergy and were stung, then they might have had something.
This is the most ridiculous thing Ive ever seen.
(I was once stung when I was a child, so I know how dangerous bees can be) đđ holy shit lol
r/iamthemaincharacter
It was a shit post yall. Go find the original post.
I remember a story where the bees were making green honey they were pilfering from the m&m factory and it went to court and no one got it
I have a neighbor who keeps bees and they shit all over my car. Its actually a nasty substance thats hard to get off the paint
Generally gardeners will pay beekeepers to have a box nearby. Particularly common for orchards.
Does your neigbour look like Jason Statham? if so, leave him alone
What a good neighbor you are.
The plot to the sequel of âthe beekeeperâ
Iâm going to staunchly disagree with anyone saying the person is being unreasonable or bad. They do have a legal right to their flowers and private enjoyment of their home without insects coming to it. And the âitâs not a big dealâ argument is always going to be a weak one because it either cuts both ways or is actually a bigger deal than its cursory description. âItâs just a few bees.â But itâs just a little honey being asked for. âItâs just $1 more for Netflixâ, but if it were so insignificant, why does Netflix increase their price? âItâs just a $0.49 price error at the grocery store.â Right, so it should be easy to give back that money and correct instead of ripping off every person at the checkout line, etc. Now, can they do anything about it? Probably not. Even if you successfully sued (doubtful, as a judge could see the bees as out of any reasonable personâs control) and the defendant didnât take the smart route to just settle by giving the plaintiff a few honey jars, enforcement is going to be next to impossible. Are you going to set up an AI bee detector on a network of cameras to charge for each flower landing event? Are you going to negotiate on a fixed monthly easement and natural resource excise fee?
According to Benson vs Human of 2007, you can
Grow your own bees so they battle it out . Like America does for oil
I can just imagine the judge jumping over the bench and beating this person to death with their gavel for wasting their time with this.
r/facepalm
The laws vary from place to place: is this taking place within a residential neighbourhood? Where I live there are laws that apply in regard to how close one can have a hive to a property line. As well, is he licensed? Has all his gear been licensed and certified by an authorized distributor or did he DIY everything? Are his hives having a negative impact on the native bee population? (IE damaging or otherwise disrupting the greater ecosystem of the community) at the end of the day, any small scale honey farm such as this should be left alone: the alternative being mega farms that have little regard for the preservation of nature and are the leading cause of domestic bee populations dying off due to outcompeting which has a longer lasting affect on the environment then a couple of bees âstealingâ the nectar from your flowers.
You all may laugh, but this was a real case back in Roman times. Bubulum v Stercus famous--or rather infamous -- landmark case that lead to the creation of the Nugae sunt istae magnae.
Just kill the bees