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BANNING BEEKEEPING IS SHORTSIGHTED
I appreciated Hardly Kephart’s dive down the native bee “rabbit hole” in his piece “Should Portland Ban Backyard Beekeeping?” [WW, May 7]. But the dive was not nearly deep enough, and that is why the call to ban beekeeping in Portland is spurious.
It is true that some Portland beekeepers took up beekeeping in the early 2000s to “save the bees.” That was a long time ago. Kephart falls into the same myopic trap as these first early beekeepers by adopting a similarly narrow focus. Portland beekeepers have moved on; they understand that bee conservation needs to be tackled at a scale beyond our backyards and the city limits.
It’s easy to get confused. There are, in fact, many species of native bees in Portland, but they are not in any danger of going extinct. The error is in collapsing “native bees” into a single thing that can be set in opposition to honeybees. Yes, there are native bees in Portland parks and backyards. But these same species can be found in every major city on the West Coast. Some, like the ligated furrow bee (Halictus ligatus), are even a familiar sight in Chicago and Detroit. Many of these bees are social, form large colonies, and thrive in urban environments. Bee conservation involves doing something a lot more ambitious than chiding the people who take pleasure in backyard apiculture.
Oregon has almost 900 species of native bees. Some are exceptionally rare and only known from a handful of sightings in history. These do not live in Portland. They occur in Oregon’s high deserts and alpine areas. If not for the volunteer efforts of the Oregon Bee Atlas, we might not have even known these bees existed. The Atlas is the largest native bee survey in the U.S., and, notably, several of its volunteers are Portland beekeepers.
Backyard beekeepers in Portland are a tangible target for native bee conservation, but the argument against them is mendacious. Aside from Kephart not capturing the scientific disagreements around the impact of honeybees on native bees, the biggest oversight may be his claim that Portland beekeepers equate “saving bees” with apiculture. Most of these beekeepers are educated on native bee conservation and are actively teaching the public on native bee biology at farmers markets, schools and the state fair. Unlike Kephart, they have outgrown the flattened “save the bee” slogan of the early 2000s and have become the key advocates of a more expansive and impactful call to action.
Andony Melathopoulos
Associate Professor, Pollinator Health Extension
Oregon State University
THINK OUTSIDE THE HIVE
I truly appreciate you shedding light on this issue [“To Bee or Not to Bee,” WW, May 7]. My organization works to protect native bees, mostly through federal litigation focused on pesticides and Endangered Species Act protections. As a Portlander obsessed with gardening for food and native plants, and running in those circles, it has been incredibly frustrating to see the proliferation of honeybee hives and demand for ultra-local honey at our farmers markets. I’m glad you circled up with our friends at the Xerces Society to talk about this problem, and I hope that there will be a change on the city level to address it.
Lori Ann Burd
Environmental Health Director
Center for Biological Diversity
HONEYBEES ARE HOMEBODIES
As an urban beekeeper in Portland I must comment on some of the inaccuracies in the urban beekeeping article. Honeybees do not forage for 5 miles as the author says. While it is true that pioneer bees may travel as far as 5 miles, only 0.02% of bees fly more than 2 miles from the hive. With Portland’s abundance of forage, bees seldom fly more than a half-mile. If one looks closely on their neighborhood walk, they can easily find five to eight varieties of bees working the same bush. It is well known that, on an individual basis, mason bees are more efficient pollinators than European honeybees. Since it did not suit his agenda, the writer conveniently left out the many reasons they are not used for food pollination. Just two of the constructs used to lead folks to false conclusions.
Paul Maresh
P and P Apiaries
Hardly Kephart responds: Honeybees will forage as far as it takes to provide food for the hive, which, in a city environment where buildings, lawns, concrete and asphalt cover most of an area, can be quite far. (A typical Portland lot is 5,000 square feet, with 50% of that taken up by the house.) Numerous studies have confirmed up to 5 miles for honeybees, and the Xerces Society’s Matthew Shepherd told me, “I’ve read about foraging 10 miles or more away from their hive.”
CLEVELAND GETS SHORT SHRIFT
Your nonendorsement of the School Modernization Bond was a serious kick in the teeth, and I believe, despite it, the bond will still pass [“WW‘s May 2025 Endorsements,” April 30].
Yes, continue to demand better from Portland Public Schools; my colleagues at Cleveland High School do this every day.
History lesson: We’ve been advocating for a modernized building longer than anyone. Cleveland (when the original building was already 100 years old) was on the first 2011 bond that, as you reported, did not pass. Interesting that you don’t report that Cleveland was on the bond then. We were taken off the successful bond package the next year. For a decade we waited patiently while all the other high schools were rebuilt or modernized. In 2019, we started the process of conceptual design with PPS and architects; it was an exciting time. Then COVID happened. Now, 14 years later, and after two years of design advisory and community meetings, it will finally get greenlit.
You write about “the bond’s lack of a community stakeholder advisory group, and dedicated public comment.” That’s absurd; Cleveland families, staff, community and student groups have been involved in the modernization design every step of the way, since 2009.
Cleveland was the oldest and most dilapidated PPS high school then, and it’s 14 years older now. If you voted for the previous school bonds, you must vote for this one too. Your taxes won’t go up. You’ll just know that 1,600-plus students and staff at Cleveland High School (and other schools) won’t be spending their day surrounded by unreinforced masonry.
Neil Gibson
Southeast Portland
WARRIORS DESERVE BETTER
It’s a hard read when WW publishes content that opposes Measure 26-259. I get it, there’s a great level of uncertainty around why the remodels will cost so much. However, I’d argue it’s what my school needs.
For clarity: I’m a junior at Cleveland High School, and will be long gone when the currently scheduled remodel is finished. Yet, it is unjust to overturn a tax bond that Portland residents have been paying for upwards of 13 years, and has already upgraded six of nine schools. Overturning the bond will save only an average of $1,300 per household per year, and also makes remodeling my school not just improbable, but impossible.
The traction at my school around the remodel project is the most one can ever ask of the school’s community. Why? I fear the community will lack the spirit nor proper motivation to be interested because, as it stands, the school sucks! Every day I come to school and find myself dulled by the grime and everlasting smell of the men’s bathrooms, which are, ever more often, completely broken. Our school from 1916, has much less aged, more has fallen apart. For example, this winter, an entire section of our school was left without heating after a pipe broke, leaving classrooms like my physics teacher’s at the same temperature as it was outside.
This bond is much less a question of funding and much more one of equality in educational institutions. If I were of voting age, I would vote yes on Measure 26-259.
Leo Wood
Southeast Portland
JUST IN TIME
I’m very late in commenting on this, but I have to say: The April 16 issue [“Time of the Signs,” WW] was the right kind of reporting at the right time. It was encouraging to see it again, as I was decluttering my living room today; it made me stop and think. I think I’m going to mount it on the wall, or something—preserve it somehow.
The photos and the writing were very much needed by a population stunned by betrayal. Most people don’t understand the sadistic rage of the very rich, nor how and why they have worked so hard to destroy the life and power of the working classes. So they were taken by surprise by Project 2025, and as your writer(s) commented, it seemed at first that people were too stunned to respond.
Then came the waves of gray-haired protesters, with their homemade signs and determined faces. And you covered the phenomenon brilliantly. I noticed that at about the same time, The New York Times was pointedly ignoring the nationwide protest eruption—thereby revealing their attitude towards popular power. Willamette Week instead made an historic piece of journalism.
We can make a better world—hell yes, we can—and your April 16 issue was a principled step in that direction.
Theresa Mitchell
Southeast Portland
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