Gettin’ a Buzz On

A couple weeks ago I drove up to Rosendale, New York, near New Paltz, to take a beekeeping class given by Chris Harp of Honeybee Lives. It’s a beautiful area of New York, full of pretty little towns where things are actually happening. There are many admirable hippies living up there—not the stupid, pothead hippies who lie around in their own excrement because it’s “natural,” but hard-working hippies who know how to modify their diesel automobiles to run on vegetable oil and then start a bio-diesel co-op to provide their own fuel.

The class was held in the Sustainable Resource Living Center, a hexagonal (!) building with many sustainable features that I can’t remember now, but we had to take off our shoes before we could go in and walk on the floor and the coffee was really good. Chris Harp has been a beekeeper for almost 20 years, and has developed a natural, organic approach based on respect for the social structure and behavior of bees.

Bees are amazing creatures: they can communicate with each other, they can count, they can even recognize human faces. (That last one made me feel kind of sad, until my friend the Dawg Lady pointed out that it doesn’t seem to bother me that I can’t make honey, either.) Here is something Scientists and Experts have recently discovered about bees: “‘Our study demonstrated clear brain proteome differences between honey bee nurse and forager subcastes with distinct social roles,’ the researchers write in the Journal of Proteome Research, a publication of the American Chemical Society.” That’s just something I looked up, though—it wasn’t in the class.

The Honeybee Lives class ran all day, from 10:00 AM to 7:30 PM, and we built a hive, and made a stain out of propolis and everclear, and poked around outside in a hive full of bees—without protective clothing, because if you know what you’re doing, and respect the bees, you don’t need much more than a smoker and a hat. I learned so much about bees. And I loved it.

There were about 25 people, old and young, in the class I took, and most of them said they were there at least partly because they want to help the bees. Honeybees are in trouble, from colony collapse disorder, mites, parasites, and other dangers. Since we’re all gonna starve to death if we don’t have honeybees to pollinate crops, helping the bees seems like a reasonable thing to do. And you don’t need a lot of room, or a big field full of flowers, or anything; bees can live very happily in a hive on a little balcony or on a tiny city patio or on a rooftop, and for most of the year they don’t even need a lot of your time. You could probably have some bees. Think about it.

 It’s a little expensive to get started with bees. All the beginner equipment and supplies will cost you around $300, and then after that you’ve got to get your actual bees. The kind I want, a nuc box of local upstate organic “survivor” bees, are gonna cost about $150, and since I’m starting late in the season I might not even be able to get them this year. Given our recent income malfunction, that might be for the best. My plan is to get the stuff and build my hive and also put in some bee-friendly plants this summer, and get on the list for bees for next year.
I never thought I’d look forward to getting hives.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless, and thank you, God, for honeybees.

Comments

[Richard]

Keep in mind, though, that beekeeping is illegal in some places (like New York City). It's not the sort of thing that gets prosecuted much, but it's still a good idea to check the local regulations before you start.

And if the neighbors complain, a jar of real honey goes a long way to make friends...

[bartleby]

I've heard that in some instances that local honey mitigates the effects of hay fever. Also, Bronwyn, I have a very complete book on apiary published by an apiary supply house in upstate NY (maybe this same place) in the late 70s. I will poke around and see if someone is selling a different edition or a reprint cheaper and email you what I come up with.
The above poster is correct, don't underestimate the power of neighborhood busybodies to prevent people from doing anything out of the ordinary. In their defense bee sting allergies are not to be trifled with.

[Thomas Rohde]

VERY cool!

As a big fan of your site and a hobby beekeeper I enjoyed this blog entry very much.

Thanks, and good luck + lots of fun with your bees.

Cheers from Germany, Tom

[michael C]

Great post! And if you don't want to take care of a hive, you can be a bee watcher! Apparently, NYC has about 200 species of native bees. My favorite is the carpenter bee, which are those giant hairy bees that emerge in spring in backyards around NYC. Our native bees are even more important pollinators than hive bees because they pollinate native flowers. And of course they need your help too. Check out:
http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_about/parks_divisions/gnpc/bee_watchers.html
Bless the bees!
listener Michael

[Mike B.]

There is a species of bee in norther New Jersey that lays carpet and flies in a "V' wedge formation like Canada geese.

Not really, but I have no one else to talk to today.

Still no strong explanation for the woes befalling honeybees these days, huh? I'm way more worried about this than Kim Jong Il's typodongs.

[Ken from Hyde Park]

Yep, Rosendale is cool. It's not far from here. My kids like the nature museum at the Mohonk Visitor Center (http://www.mohonkpreserve.org/index.php) just below the hairpin turn on Hwy 44/55 above New Paltz.