Honey Bees and Ethics

“When I put the bees in, I knew it probably would be against the covenant, but I knew it was going to be a safe situation and if it wasn’t, I was going to remove them.  I was bending the rules, but it’s not like I was raising vicious pit bulls in my backyard.  I wasn’t doing anything I felt was unsafe.”

Apiarist Bryce Martin of Spring Hill, Tennessee is having difficulty understanding why the Homeowner’s Association in his 346 home subdivision cited him for violation of restrictive covenants regarding his honey bees.  Martin said his bees are “wild but docile” and “totally harmless unless you start messing with their hive.”

Martin’s problems arose when several homeowners reported being swarmed by bees.  “If that actually happened, which I’m pretty sure it did not, they’re not my bees if they were in a swarm,” said Martin.  Sounds a lot like “my dog doesn’t bite.”

And how does Martin propose to resolve this stinging saga?  “I’ll probably move them because it is in violation of the covenant, but I’ll do it on my own terms.”

When I read Martin’s plight of the honey bees, I at first thought what’s the big deal.  One hive, a few thousand bees, jars of honey for the neighbors…and an overly regulated hobby.  But the more I thought about it the more I realized that the issue is not honey bees any more than it is about keeping pythons as pets or raising chickens in urban areas or keeping dogs fenced or leashed.  

The key issue is playing by the rules—rules established under due process with civic involvement.  Rules established for the common good not necessarily for a particular individual or even a group of individuals.  

This principle of playing by the rules was made painfully clear to Sally and me recently when she was bitten by an unleashed, unfenced basset hound.  Of course basset hounds are always friendly, make great pets and are just too fat and lazy to hurt anyone, right?  Wrong!  

And playing by the rules doesn’t mean that I can “do it on my own terms.”  We’ve seen all too often how that rationalization fares for the rest of society.  One man’s beekeeping is another man’s Enron, WorldCom or Madoff.

Dan Ariely’s recently published book, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty:  How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves, makes the uncomfortable point that rationalized small-scale cheating and lying (which he posits all of us do) in the aggregate is more corrosive to society than a 20 billion dollar Madoff scandal.  And to make matters worse for society, cheating and lying even in small ways are contagious and infectious.

We are human and imperfect and will, perhaps inadvertently or unwittingly, cheat or lie at times (e.g. rounding up and never rounding down on an expense report).  So what’s the big buzz here?  The issue is one of intentional disregard for the rules so that I benefit in some way from noncompliance.  “It’s always about me” is the problem and that mindset is the root of ethics and integrity lapses leading to broken trust.  And whether it’s investments, a used car or honey bees, if I’m stung it matters little to me that you gave someone else a jar of honey! 

David A. Costello

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