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On Wednesday, February 3, the New York City Department of Health and Hygiene heard public comments about the proposed change to Title 24 of the New York City health code (PDF, section 161) which will allow New Yorkers to keep non-aggressive honey bees in the city. You can read the proposed changes here (opens a PDF file).
According to Mary Plummer at onearth and Ilene Rosen at DNAinfo, no one spoke against changing the regulations. Additionally, the Department of Health has not received written comments according to its web site (as of February 5). The Department will make a final decision on the changes in March.
New Yorkers interested in starting a hive can get in touch with local beekeepers through the New York City Beekeepers Association and the New York City Beekeeping Meetup Group. There are many good books on beekeeping in the NY Public Library System as well as numerous online sources such as Beesource.com. The Beesource forums have a wealth of information and hundreds of beekeepers from all areas of the US willing to answer questions. Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, a commercial beekeeping supplier, also has a video library collection about numerous beekeeping topics. The webinar about Urban Beekeeping with Tony Burnham, Cameo Wood, & Cindy Bee explores urban beekeeping from three different perspectives and cities.