Helping Our Honeybees

A friend who lives in the city asked what she could do to help bees. Until Asheville changes its ordinance regarding honeybee keeping, it's really difficult to have a big enough piece of property within the city limits to keep a hive. But here are the ideas I told her. Maybe someone out there has more that they'd like to add:

Pesticide free is wonderful!
Preserve wild areas because wildflowers and blooming trees (even inconspicuous maples) are great for bees.
Grow plenty of flowers that bees like.
Buy local honey, particularly from people who are trying to raise survivor bees (resistant to diseases). (i.e. they are not medicating their bees.)
Write our city council people and convince them to change the anti-honeybee ordinance. Here is the Asheville city ordinance: Sec. 3-16. Keeping of bees.No beehive shall be kept by any person within the city within 150 feet of any household other than that of the owner of the beehive.
(Also those people running for Asheville city council, particularly Cecil Bothwell and Gordon Smith).
Read Fruitless Fall and other books about our pollinators.
Visit these and other websites: http://www.xerces.org/ andhttp://www.thehoneybeeconservancy.org/The_Hive.html
Visit a beekeeper.
And finally, the most expensive idea: keep a beehive, but put it on someone else's property!