Beekeepers' Ball

It goes without saying that I'm obsessed with the culture of the bee. It is utterly enlightening to observe, from a privileged perspective, a microcosmic social system seemingly as complex as our own. Although I enjoy anthropomorphizing the little buzzers, I believe that the pleasure I derive from their presence in my life exemplifies an essential difference between humans and bees. Bees are all work, no play. Humans, on the other hand, are capable of both. Interestingly, humans dressed as bees are incapable of work (unless that work involves drinking mead and waggle dancing,) and achieve greater pleasure than humans not dressed as bees.

Beekeeper and Queen Bee Waggle Dancing (and indulging in a delicious honey-glazed donut)

(Note bees stuck to veil... a brilliant detail. The Queen looked stunning. I want that dress.)

Me, waggle dancing

We didn't let those dreary skies get us down!

Two worker bees, chatting about how they love costume parties

Awash in a sea of yellow, united by a love of honeybees

The Beekeepers' Ball kicked off the first day of Pollinator Week, organized by Just Food. Beekeepers, bee lovers, urban gardeners and costume enthusiasts gathered at the South Street Water Taxi Beach last night to raise awareness about the importance of honeybees. Beekeeping is illegal in NYC for stupid reasons. (Read: stupid people.) Pretty much every major city in the US has legalized beekeeping because residents understand the important role pollination plays in our environment. Somehow, New York is still living in the dark ages, fining beekeepers for contributing to the health and diversity of our ecosystem. As I mentioned in an earlier post, honeybees are gentle, like fuzzy puppies who fly. If you haven't already, please sign the petition to legalize beekeeping in the city!

People often ask me how/why I got into beekeeping. My best answer has been this: a whim collided with an opportunity. Last night, as I posed for photos in full-on bee camo in front of delighted tourists at South Street Seaport, I was reminded how strange, fortuitous, and sweet these last few months have been.

I lost my job as an English Teacher at a public, bilingual high school in the Bronx in March, due to "budget cuts." According to my evil principal, my 9th graders could do without English Language Arts, (think Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, etc.) because they had ESL (think I am, you are, etc.). Although this logic continues to baffle me, I was forced to accept my situation and make the most of it. Beekeeping has introduced me to an entirely different way of life: slower, with less stress and more joy. I've returned to the things that I love: writing, nature, learning, activism... I've met incredible people. I'm happier than I've been in a long time.

In his awesome, beautifully written, informative book The Queen Must Die, writer and beekeeper William Longgood ruminates, "How many of us would be other than we are if not for chance, because some small cog slipped in here when it could as easily have gone in there?" One of my cogs, (a very expensive cog,) fell into grad school, another cog subsequently slipped into teaching, which ultimately led to a surprise cog being forcefully jammed into unemployment. Somewhere along the way I changed my entire idea of what my life might look like. I cannot congratulate myself for this newfound perspective, as Longgood so eloquently reminds me: "Any credit or blame that we take for what befalls us must be shared with the capricious god of chance."

The god of chance is certainly capricious, but his mighty winds are blowing good things in my direction for the time being. If only he could stop the rain...

Feeling like Bee Jackson

Happy Pollinator Week!!!

There's a great article about the Ball (and photo of the costume winners) in the Dining blog of the New York Times! Read!

The Sisterhood of the Waggling Hammer-Pants

Astute observers who live in the Northeast will have undoubtedly noticed that June, that famously splendid month filled with beautiful blossoms, BBQs, and bikinis, has been a real Betty Bummer this year. As I consume my own version of "bee tea" and wax melancholy about the rain, I cannot help but worry about my flying friends.

When it rains, honeybees seek cover, just like us. Some of them stay home on "lookout duty" (see above,) while others are hard at work cleaning comb, nursing brood, and tending to the queen. The young'uns (0-10 days old) usually perform these duties. The teenagers(10-20 days old) have more complicated chores like storing nectar brought by foragers, building comb, and making sure that the brood chamber stays properly heated and ventilated. The adult honeybee (20-30 days old and aka "The Fearless Forager,") is most likely to display behavior akin to that of the adult human, dipping under leaf coverings and bar awnings, respectively, to take a "time out" until the rain passes.

At times, it rains for so long that honeybees, like humans, spend more time in their temporary shelters than they had originally anticipated. This proves costly for the honeybees, as each moment spent waiting out the storm means less honey for the colony, and come winter, they could starve. Similarly, each moment an adult human spends waiting out the storm means less money for the landlord, and come winter, they could starve. (Analogies, like plants, require sunlight to grow. Perhaps the reader would prefer a more explicit yet formal induction? Human: Money::Bee: Honey)

The Fearless Foragers wait patiently for gravity to ease up on the raindrops, then scramble to collect as much nectar as possible before the next downpour. Fearless Foragers constantly gather information about flower patches, rain or shine. Dodging fat raindrops, they'll return to their hives with samples of nectar for their friends to try. If the nectar tantalizes their tiny taste buds, they'll pay attention to said Fearless Forager, who will most certainly be performing an intricate dance at that very moment.

Honeybees can fly up to 3 miles to find a sublime patch of honeysuckle or the like, so succulent nectar sources require in-depth directions. The Fearless Forager will perform a "waggle dance," (known in some circles as a "figure-8 dance,) on the dance floor located immediately inside the hive entrance, in front of an eager audience.

For those of you who are kinesthetic learners, follow these steps:

1. wiggle while advancing slowly ahead

2. turn to the left, full circle

3. repeat step 1

4. turn to the right, full circle

5. repeat steps 1-4

The dance conveys a boatload of info:

-the more vigorously a honeybee waggles, the better quality the nectar source. (Whatever naturally blooms at any given time of the year is simultaneously the honeybee's number one choice.)

-one full waggle (steps 1-4) is equal to a certain number of feet, and a bee usually waggles between 1 and 100 times! We humans use units of measurements like yards and miles and funlongs... honeybees use waggles.

-the honeybee angles her body during the dance to precisely triangulate the nectar source using the sun's position at the given moment. Imagine a gigantic protractor drawing straight lines from the sun to the flowers-in-question to the bee's tiny dancing shoes. Now that's some kind of delightful math that I never learned in school!

Honeybees are most concerned with sharing. A honeybee will provide her friends with samples of found riches, assess the quality of the riches and opine her conclusions, then provide detailed directions to the source of the riches. Charmingly, all this is expressed in a sassy little dance!

The honeybee's survival depends on other honeybees. She cannot exist alone; without her sisters, she becomes wholly obsolete. Btw, I'm not just tossing around these feminine personal pronouns to mix up the status quo, I'm saying that the honeybee colony is 85% female, and all the males do are laze around, bang the queen, and die. They can't even sting. They live off the labor of their busy sisters and fulfill their singular purpose efficiently. Just sayin. Let the ladies lovingly labor at leisure, and lovely things will likely happen.

The rain's ghost infests the air completely. If I were a cow, I'd be lying down with my girls. If I were a bee, I'd be a senior citizen. But I'd be a brave forager. And even I, brave, senior honeybee that I'd be, would stay inside tonight.

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?