Oh, Bee-have: Silly summons vacated

Talk about your “Adventures in Bee sitting.”
After agreeing to care for a friend’s 5,000 bees in a hive on his Douglaston property, Arthur “Tip” Sempliner was almost stung with a $2,000 city fine from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for not providing water for the busy colony before a media firestorm and political action turned the tide.
“I’m just trying to learn their names,” laughed Sempliner, an industrial engineer who works at home. The bees’ true owner, Jon Pettinggill of Brooklyn, originally kept them on a Brooklyn rooftop where access to water was not as accessible as at Sempliner’s waterfront property.
“Bees are very happy with saltwater. Well, I’m on the [Great Neck] Bay. There’s 13 trillion cubic feet of water that they are welcome to. There are half a dozen ponds between Udall Cove and Alley Pond Park . . . the law is really not meant for somebody that’s surrounded by trees.”
After city inspectors showed up at his property in June, they sent him a letter asking for his presence at a hearing in Manhattan and a $2,000 fine for the lack of water. The hive, which resembles a four-drawer cabinet, always has plenty of water two feet away, according to Sempliner, who reached out to Councilmember Dan Halloran for support.
He described the councilmember’s response as if “somebody lit a fire under him.” Halloran explained that the city has much bigger problems than Mr. Sempliner’s bees.
“I’ve been an attorney for over 10 years and I didn’t even know there was a regulation. How absolutely ridiculous,” said Halloran, who made Sempliner’s case on the local evening news.
The story created such a buzz that the fine got reduced to a warning.
“A warning for what, exactly? I don’t know,” said Sempliner, who enjoys a laid back lifestyle in his circa 1841 home that was previously owned by Samuel B. Parsons; a Queens historical figure.
A Douglaston resident since 1975, Sempliner says he has not been turned off from continuing to watch his friend’s bees.
“I’m happy I don’t have to go to this meeting in the city . . . I’m just their landlord and they are happy, industrious creatures.”