[Pollinator] Beekeepers Keep the Lid On - NPW New York

[ladadams at aol.com]

New York Times (NY/Region)

Summer Rituals | Tending Hives
Beekeepers Keep the Lid On
 Jessica Ebelhar/The New York Times
HIDE-OUT Bees are the illegal occupants of a rooftop in the Clinton 
Hill section of Brooklyn.


Mr.Gannon pumps smoke into one of their hives. It has a calming effect 
on the bees.
“I can’t think of anything more relaxing than sitting in front of my 
beehive, drinking a beer, smoking a cigar, letting the bees fly,” Mr. 
Gannon said on a recent Saturday afternoon. “And the smell. It’s the 
most beautiful smell.”

Mr. Gannon moved to City Island from Manhattan in 2003, lured by the 
opportunity of sailing. But after trading a sixth-story walk-up 
apartment for a house, Mr. Gannon decided to return to beekeeping, a 
hobby he had discovered as a young man in rural England.

His pastime, however, means breaking the law. His hives, like all those 
in New York City, are illegal, and Mr. Gannon could face thousands of 
dollars in fines if someone complained and the authorities took action.

Though it’s almost impossible to keep a bee colony a secret, the number 
of New Yorkers taking the risk is growing: beehives are popping up in 
various neighborhoods, and seem particularly popular in Brooklyn, say 
those who track beekeeping.

A group called the New York City Beekeepers Association is encouraging 
novices: it offers classes, matches people who want to=2
0keep bees with 
people who have room for hives, and sells beekeeping starter kits.

The growing popularity of beekeeping may be due, in part, to reports of 
colony collapse — the mysterious disappearance, reported by scientists, 
of bees across the country. It is also considered a worthy avocation 
among the environmentally conscious, because bees pollinate flowers and 
crops as well as produce honey.

City Councilman David Yassky of Brooklyn introduced a bill this year 
that would legalize beekeeping. Beekeeping enthusiasts are waiting for 
the Council’s Health Committee to schedule a hearing on it.

Mr. Yassky and Just Food, a New York group focused on hunger issues, 
argue that beekeeping is a legitimate form of agriculture.

Just Food is coordinating Pollinator Week — it begins Monday — in New 
York City to make the case for legalizing beekeeping.

The city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is charged with 
enforcing the ban against beekeeping, but officials there said 
beekeepers are pursued only when a complaint is lodged. This year, the 
city had received 49 complaints by Friday; officials made nine 
inspections and issued four summonses.

Mr. Gannon said that a fear of thousands of bees roaming across City 
Island was initially unsettling to some residents. But the sight of his 
children playing near his hives helped ease fears, and the family’s 
first honey harvest in 2004 attract
ed 30 curious neighbors.

Then there is a built-in incentive for neighborly tolerance: Each 
summer Mr. Gannon harvests 150 to 200 pounds of honey; almost all of it 
is jarred and handed out as gifts.

In a demonstration of beekeeping practice, Mr. Gannon and his son 
filled a hive with smoke, using a bee smoker, a small device equipped 
with a hand pump. Smoke calms the bees, but also makes them anticipate 
having to abandon the hive because of fire. They gorge on honey, in 
preparation for a quick exit, and, like humans, they mellow out after 
their big meal. It makes them less likely to object when someone pokes 
around their home and allows Mr. Gannon to inspect the hive.

Then he rolled out his centrifuge — a large metal cylinder. It was time 
to extract 2009’s first batch of honey from a different hive.

Mr. Gannon loaded the racks inside the centrifuge with two beeless 
honeycombs, then stepped back and let Julian begin spinning them with a 
hand crank. The honey oozed out of the combs, down the walls in the 
cylinder and into a reservoir at the bottom. Two young girls from the 
neighborhood appeared, each wanting a turn at the handle and a taste of 
the honey. Mr. Gannon obliged for a few minutes, then shooed them away 
so he could finish.

In the first few decades of the 20th century, beekeepers were far more 
prevalent in the city — there were even beehives inside Radio 
City 
Music Hall and atop the American Museum of Natural History. But the 
number of hives dwindled: An article in The New York Times in 1956 
included laments from a beekeeping supplier that he did not know of a 
single active hive remaining in Manhattan.

The practice was officially outlawed in 1999, when honeybees were 
included on a health code list of more than 100 wild animals that New 
Yorkers could not keep, including vultures, iguanas, ferrets and even 
whales: they were all potential menaces. The change to the health code 
sparked one of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s more memorable outbursts: 
when a ferret owner called his weekly radio program to complain about 
the rule, the mayor admonished the man for “devoting your life to 
weasels.”

The illicit status of their bees affects beekeepers in different ways. 
Mr. Gannon fears a crackdown the same way that the average pedestrian 
worries about jaywalking. But a new beekeeper named Barry, with hives 
on the roof of his brownstone in Clinton Hill, asked that his last name 
not be used.

He mentioned his new hobby to a neighbor, who seemed put off by the 
idea. He has not told other neighbors.

But can he keep it a secret?

“It’s kind of hard,” he said, “to be inconspicuous in a beekeeper’s 
veil.”

He blames his friend Amy Azzarito’s “latent desire to be a farmer” for 
maki
ng him a beekeeper.

Ms. Azzarito, on a quest to learn more about the food she was eating, 
read a book called “The Urban Homestead,” which included advice on 
growing vegetables, harnessing energy and raising animals. She ruled 
out various possibilities she deemed unsuitable for city living, like 
raising chickens. “The only thing that seemed plausible was 
beekeeping,” she said.

The idea was spurred last summer, when Ms. Azzarito, who works for the 
New York Public Library, went to a honey harvest that doubled as a 
crowded convention of bees on the Lower East Side. Ms. Azzarito was 
wearing shoes that left a lot of skin exposed, so she slipped a pair of 
rubber gloves on her feet for protection from stings. But she was 
thrilled by the experience and persuaded Barry, who was one of her 
college professors, to put a hive on his roof.

Now, several times a month, she and Barry don mesh masks and climb a 
ladder to the roof to check on their roughly 40,000 bees. There have 
been a few stings, some tar from the roof tracked into the house, and a 
stir-crazy month spent assembling the hive.

But they are enthralled by their project.

“It’s so different from my subway ride,” Ms. Azzarito said. “It’s so 
different from sitting in a cubicle every day.”