Sneak Preview: Summer Honey

There have been many things in 2009 that I'd never have dreamt would've happened to me. For example, I never would've thought that I'd meet a future employer while fully decked out in bee camo at the Beekeepers' Ball, waggle dancing my little stinger off. While traversing Wall Street in full costume, I didn't feel incredibly "employable." But a few weeks later and I've begun my new (awesome) job at Added Value, a farm in Brooklyn. Yes, a farm in Brooklyn. Check out these stunners: verdant collard greens so robust that a single leaf could act as the Jolly Green Giant's loin cloth! Delicious and nutritious!

All this farm work is building muscles and character, but it is also making me want to crawl into bed before double-digits. I have so many tales to tell about the honeybees but am simply too fatigued to do them justice. Instead, I will share highlights from my 4th of July Weekend, beginning with a 6am walk in good old Wash Heights. (No, this is not a Cara-impersonator, and no, I didn't mean 6pm.)

Morning light never fails to amaze me.

I wanted to sew my western shadow to my feet, but brought the wrong color thread so captured it on my camera instead.
Waiting for the train in Harlem...
...to visit this guy:
And this guy:
And these girls:
Look at that honey glimmering in the sunlight! The bees are capping it with wax.
Everything looked A-OK in the hive.
Both queens were photographed... but you have to come back tomorrow to see them! Ha!
Look at that sweet smile... human bean Hayden:
On the farm today, I learned about the 3 sisters: beans, squash, and corn. Feel free to assign each veggie to each Chard sister at your discretion.
I finally got the broom to work!
So did Dana. She was a natural.
Just a regular Independence Day.

Hayden's shadow looks firmly attached.

Marley and Bosco are my idols. They know how to kick it.
In between my stick-shift lessons, roses:
A perfect Sunday night in early July.

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!

Cuckoo Bumblebees

Fort Tryon Park was abuzz with bumblebees today. I was lucky enough to catch this one on my camera. Look how adorable she is! She hovered noisily, then dipped down and squeezed her fat little self into a flower, gobbled up the nectar and pollen voraciously, then buzzed out, wiggled into another flower, and so on. When I realized that I didn't know much about bumblebees other than their cute factor, I figured this is information that a burgeoning beekeeper should know.

First of all, I thought they didn't sting. I realize now that I based this belief on my experience petting bumblebees, which is extensive (albeit extraordinary.) But they do sting, especially when they're defending their nest. The main difference between of bumblebees and honeybees is colony size; bumblebees usually have less than 50 members per colony, and we've all seen how many honeybees there can be. Plus, all except specially-created queens die before winter. The overwintering queens emerge in the spring and lay eggs conceived with the previous generation's drones. Honeybees, like humans, are forced to deal with the winter by mostly staying inside, eating, and cuddling together.

Bumblebees are skilled pollinators with funny names and cute little fuzzy stripes, so I love them too. Look at that gorgeous poppy pollen.... yum.Interestingly, there is a parasitic species of bumblebee called the Cuckoo bumblebee, who has lost the ability to collect pollen and thus support him/herself. There is no Queen Cuckoo. A female Cuckoo bumblebee will act like a normal bumblebee, foraging nectar and returning to the nest of the normal bees, an invader and impostor. Then, she enslaves the normal bumblebee queen and her entire colony, reproduces, and feeds the normal bees to her young. The Cuckoo Bumblebees have bigger sacks of venom and bigger mandibles, so there's really no defending yourself against the Cuckoos, if you're a bumblebee. The Cuckoo is the baddest bitch in the blossoms. Personally, I find it suspect that for the first few days of her insidious takeover plan, she feeds directly from the flowers. I mean, if she really wanted to she could just continue this practice, rather than brainwashing a bunch of other bees to do all her work for her and then eating them. It just seems a little over the top. For those of you who worry that my irreverently public insults about the Cuckoos will incite some kind of Cuckoo Assassination Mission against me, (and you know who you are,) don't worry. They are totally oblivious to humans and other mammals. Plus, I doubt they'd read a honeybee blog over a bumblebee blog, so I'm 90% safe.

Next time you see a cute little bumblebee waddling into a flower, ask yourself: Could this bee be Cuckoo? Or, could it be the slave bee of a Cuckoo master?

Although you can't see my shoes in the picture below, all of these photos were taken in bee camo. I could say that I didn't even realize it, but that'd be a lie. I did. What can I say? Bees make me happy.

Royal Encounters

I searched for my keys for 30 minutes before I found them in my pocket of all crazy places. Unless someone gave me a ticket for a super-secret express train from Washington Heights directly to Williamsburg, I'd be late for the hive-check, and considered staying home instead. But soon, I was remembering their fuzzy little stripes, and the way they always find your most vulnerable, exposed area (hand, ankle, neck,) and crawl all over it... before I knew it, my heart dragged me to the A train.

As I'd imagined, I'd missed the initial "check in:" opening the hive, taking out some frames, checking for normalcy. The diagnosis was good, but since we'd never put the 10th frame in the brood box, the bees had started building bridges of waxy comb in the empty space. Although the world below felt pleasant, up on the roof it felt like we were on the brink of a hurricane. Jon and Eddie decided it best to leave the little dudes alone and deal with the comb another day.

Those southern bees were most likely freaking out about the menacing winds and impending rainstorms. East coast weather is always a bit of a shock. The interminable winters. The odd 65 degree day in February presumably designed to tantalize naive newcomers. As an native East Coaster, even I forget what spring is... it's a transition from one extreme to the other. It takes on the characteristics of both summer and winter. It disappoints, but it also dazzles.

The bees undoubtedly sensed the turbulent weather and were on guard. (Well, these three were on guard. Although the middle one looks like she could use some help.)

Another hypothesis is that they sensed that we'd change our minds and decide to go back in. Each bee assigned to attack one of us...

But really, that's just what they do. There are always a few guard bees outside making sure no feral outsiders attempt to break in and squat in some dank corner of their home.

Eddie raised the point that if we didn't remove the comb at that time, they'd continue building in the empty space over the next few days, which called for rain. Michelle Obama was out of her box and would soon start laying eggs. We didn't want anything to go wrong in that vital stage the of bee cycle. We had to remove the extra comb and insert the 10th frame.

(Notice the dead bee on the bottom of the hive... for later)

Or, perhaps I made this face when I heard I wouldn't get to check on my girls:

Jon made a friend.

He also decided to ditch the onesie for the first time. Coincidence?

Removing the frames gave us a chance to search for the queen.

There was a small chance we'd see her; sometimes beekeepers go as long as 4 months without a queen sighting. It felt like Where's Waldo, when you're not sure if you should speed up or slow down, focus on small areas or take it all in... The bees were swirling before our eyes when out of nowhere, Michelle Obama appeared! ...to Eddie and Jon. But I was multitasking, taking photos with one hand, holding bees in the other, lost in the queen search... so I can't be too mad at myself. PLUS, I think I might have gotten a photo of her, but only Jon or Eddie can confirm this:

She was longer, lighter, distinct, say Jon and Eddie. The bees cleared a path for her. Do you see the one I mean? To the left? Here's another queen-area shot. I don't see anything, personally, but in case I'm wrong:

It was an exciting moment, even for those of us who didn't see her. I shared in the glee of my fellow beekeepers. We swiftly removed the excess comb and the queen's box, and put the little buzzers back home, content with the knowledge that our hive is healthy and Michelle Obama is lookin great.

We decided to use the piece of comb and the queen's box for educational purposes, to show other aspiring beekeepers what to expect.

The comb is more or less skeletal at this point, as it holds no honey. The the slightly yellow cells, however, contain nectar that will become honey.

And guess what it tastes like? Bee Tea! It tastes exactly like our tea, with its strong overtones of thyme. And how do I know this?

Because each of us decided to eat the bland wax, and proceeded to suck nectar out of the cells, (and then felt weird about eating it-- the structure created by our pets' own bodies.)

Meanwhile, back at the hive, the bees were clearing out their casualties. Here, you see them dragging a dead bee out of the hive and off the ledge.

They had already chilled out from their stressful encounter with us. Below, the three on the left look like they're going to burst into a choreographed dance, (to me. Frank thinks they look like fighter jets ready for takeoff. )

Then I realized that Eddie had more bee camo on! I swear, the bees are affecting us unconsciously as well... as we reach for the stray t-shirt on the ground that happens to be...yellow! I think Eddie's shoes, chosen long before any of this bee business started up, indicate a percolating interest in honeybees, whether he knew it or not at the time.

I say this half in jest but half in earnest, because I'm still in a daze at how involved I am with this whole undertaking. I never thought to myself, "I should raise honeybees." I'm obsessed with every aspect of honey. Texture. Scent. Process. Sweet, sticky, amber ooze. A relative of flowers and bees. It satiates so many of my senses at once. It tickles my imagination: I want to live in a world where funny little striped insects disseminate nectar from one flower to another, propagating the natural cycle and making things colorful.

One day I was sitting at my computer eating heaping spoonfuls of comb honey while simultaneously reading about all of honey's natural benefits to humans and of honeybees' benefits to everything. Before I knew it, I was smearing the honey all over my face (moisturizing, exfoliating,) and paying the 20 bucks to WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) for access to a Bee Master in the Hudson Valley who would teach me the way of the bee.

Coincidentally and simultaneously, another bee brouhaha brewed in Brooklyn. There was talk of some dudes who owned a building in Williamsburg and wanted to keep bees on their roof. One of these dudes, Jason, happened to be Jon's friend from summer camp. (Adorable.) Little did we know, the Bee Team egg had been laid.

Even though he lives directly under the bees, Jason hadn't been properly introduced to them. After a few hours of talking bees (etc.) and sawing small, perfect squares into bedroom walls in search of a specific part of a water pipe for bee garden irrigation, we headed up to the roof again. John took care not to disturb the little buggers as Jason and Lori gazed into their magical world.

See the magic?