Legalize It

NYC Public Hearing on Bee Code

1999 had a lot going on, but most importantly, it was the year the honeybee, fuzzy little apis mellifera, was classified by Rudi Guiliani as an animal "naturally inclined to do harm," along with pit vipers and komodo dragons, and forbidden to be kept by anyone within city limits.

This past Wednesday, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (yes, Mental Hygiene... a whole other matter in itself...) held a public hearing to discuss City Council member David Yassky's bill to remove our buzzy buddy from the dreaded list included in Article 161 of the city's Health Code. This would make beekeeping legal in NYC as early as April. (Just in time for aspiring beekeepers to take the plunge!)

There were many honeybee supporters at the hearing, and not a naysayer in sight. Even the four members of the panel seemed pro-bee. (Or at least pro-local honey.) Arborists, activists, and bee lovers spoke passionately about the virtues of the honeybee. Of the bajillion points made about how rad bees are, the following ones stuck with me:

1. Most New Yorkers have heard of the Parks Department's Million Trees initiative, with its self-explanatory goal. (At this moment, they're at 315,678.) Said million trees begin their lives as million saplings outside city limits, where they're pollinated by million bees. Most of the initiative's trees are hardwood, a species that relies heavily on all kinds of bees for pollination. These trees need bees!

2. According to The Great Pollinator Project of 2009, bee watchers recorded a total of 226 species of bees in the city. 54 species were found in the Bronx, while 58 were found in Central Park alone, and 59 in Prospect Park! It's not like we live in a bee-free zone. The honeybee's illegality is arbitrary (226 species except apis mellifera??) and disadvantageous (no local honey, fewer flowers, less food grown within city limits, polluted air, etc.)

3. The legalization of beekeeping would create more "green jobs," including what one speaker referred to as "Bee Rangers" in public parks. Oh, how I'd love to be able to call myself a Bee Ranger! (Maybe I will, informally...)

4. Like so many New Yorkers, our trees are stressed out. The cure? You guessed it: BEES!

5. This past January 21, Reverend Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, a Philly native who discovered the concept of "bee space" and invented the hives in which my bees live, would have celebrated his 200th birthday. Happy Belated Birthday, Rev!

Since the public hearing was a seeming lovefest for bees, I'd say there's a pretty good chance this stupid law will be eradicated.

But Article 161 dictates the city's policies on all animals, and much more contentious than the bee code was the debate over carriage horses in the city's parks and streets, another piece up for reconsideration. Man, was that heated. A woman in the audience shouted "Shame on you!" during somebody's speech. Without going into detail, as I am unschooled in all things horses, I will say this: I do not think carriage horses should remain on 59th Street. Just two days before the hearing I was walking on Central Park South past all the horses, with their pastel-colored carriages equipped with blankets and drivers half-heartedly suggesting rides to suspected tourists, when I passed a beautiful white equine with a big, silly, blue feather sticking up above her head. The feather must have been intended to separate that particular horse from the rest, and served its purpose: the white horse looked even more miserable than the others, seemingly aware of her forced buffoonery. I felt the kind of shared embarrassment that one experiences watching unwitting participants on reality television, particularly the young children of abhorrent "characters" (or more aptly, "spectacles.") The blue-feathered horse reminded me of a scene in Follow That Bird in which Big Bird is captured, painted blue, and stuck in a cage at the circus. (I trust at least one of you will remember this reference.) Embarrassing costumes are the very least of the carriage horses' woes. For details on the horrible tragedies involving NYC carriage horses, and to support the ban on horse-drawn carriages in NYC, click here.

The final decision on bees will be made in March... come on, New York! We're practically the only city in the world to outlaw beekeeping! We want bees!

If you haven't already, sign Just Food's petition to legalize beekeeping in NYC.

Stragglers Postpone the Inevitable

As far as holidays go, Thanksgiving is relatively virtuous.


Unsullied by the tempestuous filth and debauchery of Halloween and the crazy, crowd-crushing consumerism that infects the entire month of December, Thanksgiving's focus on turkey and family seems quaint.


We call Autumn "Fall" because we envision colorful leaves becoming brittle and either falling or being swept by wind to the ground. The temperature drops, the sun becomes elusive, the once-verdant leaves blush brilliantly in a grand finale before deciding to move on. They are just visitors here.


Really, though, these visitors are being pushed out the door, having overstayed their welcome at first flush. Just as honeybee colonies ruthlessly murder their big, dumb drones when summer ends, so too do trees shed their functional flourishes when they render themselves useless.


Without enough daylight to warrant the existence of leaves, those fanciful sunlight-eaters, trees are content to remain naked throughout the coldest months to conserve as much energy as possible. So it turns out that leaves, like drones, are simultaneously necessary and superflous elements to the existence of their respective wholes.


So it is December. Still Fall until the 21st, but December nonetheless, and December is filed under "Winter." But it has been so warm here in New York City that plants are slow to die.


Trees hesitate to expel their leaves. Delicate herbs are untouched by frost, and some confused trees are even mistakenly budding!


To me, the tragedy will be that much greater when Jack Frost does draw his icy sword and indiscriminately destroy all life, old and new.

The wise ones gave up the fight months ago and pass from this season to the next with grace and delicate beauty.

When will the magnolia tree notice the low sun?

She continues to bud in blissful ignorance of the winter sky.

"'Tis a Maple Tree!" posits B-Bot

My truly radical friend Brianne sent me an incredibly informative response to my question in the previous post. Her description of how trees grow was so easy to understand, and enabled me to create this awesome 4th-grade-ish project. I mean, freshman year we had to pull the old Natty Ice-Nyquil bait-and-switch at 8am to prevent B-dude from attending Bio. Her bejeweled beret (photo coming soon) couldn't block her brainy contagion, and I was infected with with curiosity, plus a need to express myself visually and a desire to summarize, label. Double-click on the photo to see clearly. (This was news to me.)

In B-jeweled's own words:

"I got to lie down inside a ginormous redwood a couple of summers ago up in northern California. The hollow inside was probably at least 10 feet in diameter and you could lie inside and look all the way up and out to the sky through the center of it (it was probably around 200-250ft tall). It was fully alive and well!"

In Bee World, The Most Enthusiastic Dancer Wins

I just signed up to become an official NYC Bee Watcher. Bee Watchers observe bee activity in the city, and submit data to The Great Pollinator Project. Without pollinators, our lives would be a lot less green. Since green's great, it is in our own best interest to protect our precious pollinators. The data that Bee Watchers gather will determine which areas of the city have good pollinator service (lush, nectar-filled flowers,) and help us understand more about bee distribution in the Big Apple. (Sounds a bit like Gawker Stalker for bees.) Pretty exciting stuff, anyone want to join me at the orientation on Monday, 6-8?

I've been pondering kept bees vs. wild bees. I want my bees tough for the winter, so I've popped on some extra supers and left them alone. Too much human attention can be harmful. Bees are considered "wild" if they're doing their own thing in nature; note that kept bees can become wild bees, and, one might argue, vice versa. Honeybees aren't native to North America; they were brought over by Europeans for the honey. Although there are many types of bees, (20,000 in the world, 4,000 in North America, 400 in NY State and 200 in the city,) all honeybees originally come from somewhere between Southern Europe and Southern Africa. Thus, the only difference between one of Beula's Italian workers and a "wild" "American" honeybee is circumstance.

When the colony's quarters become too cramped, the hive splits and temporarily inhabits something random. The swarm essentially sublets the new place until scout bees set out and find a better home. They divide up and check out the potential new pads and do a waggle dance upon returning to relay information to the swarm. The more excited a scout bee is about her find, the more enthusiastically she will waggle, and the most enthusiasm she musters, the more buzz she will create!

Then, the scout bees essentially vote for the best choice by flying to it and waggle dancing on it. 15 seems to be the magic number; as soon as 15 scout bees dig a location, the rest of the swarm follows and moves into its new home.

An ideal home for wild bees is a tree cavity high above the ground, with a southward-facing opening and lots of room for honey storage and the pitter patter of little bee feet.

If I were a wild honeybee scout, I'd dance my little ass off if I came across this tree. It's just perfect!

One thing I'd really like to improve is my identification skills. To be able to name things. I spent way too much time on the internet searching for the answer to what kind of tree is that? I don't remember the leaves, they were so high and green, the trunk was bulbous and enormous, it looked totally empty but stalwart and strong; I still can't figure out how so much life can spring from something hollow. Ideas?

The tree cavity makes me blush. Especially with the towering tree shooting all the way up there.

Looking up into the tree feels like you're at the midway point between the tips of roots and branches.

Does anyone recognize this tree?