NYC Beekeeping: What's All the Buzz?

In an environment where a number of distinct challenges are presented to both beekeepers and bees, the beekeeping scene thrives in New York City. For hobbyists, small honey business owners, bee consultants and amateurs alike, nothing will keep them from tending to the fascinating social insects.

“Have you ever opened a colony and listened to the sound? Thirty thousand plus stinging insects going about their business and we can watch, listen, move them, take their food and it's the most delightful experience.” Queens-based beekeeper, Larry Stone said, marveling over the pleasures of his long-time hobby.

An urban environment certainly isn’t the setting one typically imagines for beehive location. I picture hives sitting on a sloped, bucolic field in the countryside. Perhaps a stream runs alongside the hill they sit on; an ideal water source for the bees. Basking in the dappled sunlight that breaks through the leaves of an overhanging oak tree, these are the hives I think of when I think about beekeeping. Historically, bees were kept in places like such, especially in Europe where they were brought from in the 1700’s to North America. However, certain city dwellers feel no less drawn or connected to the insect than folks in say, rural New Jersey. So, people in cities everywhere have found a way.

The obvious impediments begin with space. Roughly two thirds of New Yorkers are renters, according to a survey conducted by StreetEasy. Unsurprisingly, many landlords are not very keen on having beehives on their building’s rooftop. Not only can it be difficult to get permission granted, the roof has to be fairly flat, no more than 6 stories high with about 10 feet of clearing surrounding the hive space.

Beekeeping is largely a long term commitment. Not unlike raising children, the beekeeper must be readily available to care for their bees year round. To maintain a prosperous hive, the beekeeper is constantly thinking about what the bees will eat and what they’ll be exposed to. Someone who doesn’t live in the same location year-round would be unable to give the necessary attention and care for thriving hives. This is yet another consideration to take into account when securing hive space.

Once space is secured there’s the challenge of accessibility. Urban beekeepers can often be found climbing ladders precariously placed in tight spaces to access their hives. Some work on roofs that aren’t entirely flat. Come honey extraction season in July, they carry their honey-filled hives weighing up to 80 lbs, back down ladders in a cumbersome, almost unthinkable balancing act. It’s no task for the faint-hearted. Keep in mind, they’re doing this on some of the hottest days of summer in NYC. Community gardens, the rare backyard or even cemeteries are a few alternative spaces where beekeepers can access their hives with more ease, although these are less available.

Most beekeepers do their best to keep happy, calm hives as a courtesy to their nearby neighbors. While there are more people coming into contact with hives, urban beekeepers don’t have to worry about larger animals such as bears or skunks knocking over or getting into their hives. There are an abundance of raccoons populating NYC parks, however they don’t seem to care much for honey.

“There's the whole PR angle to it, of course. When I was upstate I specifically chose remote areas where they wouldn't hang out with people who didn't really want to be involved, but that's not really an option here.” said Harlem beekeeper, Tim Maendel on the feats of urban beekeeping. Maendel is a host parent at the Bruderhof House, a Christian community house located in the historic enclave, Strivers Row on 138th street off of 7th Avenue. He has two hives on the House’s rooftop. Maendel’s bees dart around the same street where the famous “King of Ragtime” performer, Scott Joplin and Harlem politician and pastor, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. once lived.

Most children beg their parents for a puppy, but fifteen years ago, Maendel’s then 10-year-old son asked him if they could get a beehive. Though he was wary of the idea at first, he ended up with two nucleus hives that eventually turned into twenty on their spacious property upstate in Walden, New York. Until both of his sons moved out, it was a hobby they worked on together. Both of them continued beekeeping elsewhere after leaving Walden. And in 2017 when Maendel and his wife made the move to Harlem, he brought two hives along.

Upon adjusting to beekeeping in a new setting, Tim commented, “It opened my eyes up to what kind of nature actually exists in the city. I'm just looking at my window now and I see lots of trees, and soon they’ll be putting out pollen. When they’re in full bloom they’ll be full of bees.” In Harlem, there’s an abundance of Japanese scholar trees which Maendel said have a “very nice crop of white flowers” well suited for his bees.

Honey bees are generally not aggressive, they are however, defensive. They only attack when feeling threatened in efforts to defend the hive. There’s often a misconception made that honey bees share the same aggressive qualities of wasps and hornets. This skewed public perception was a part of why beekeeping was always illegal until 2011. The City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene previously classified bees as wild, dangerous animals- placing them in the same category as pythons, wolves and bears. Beekeepers spoke out against the city’s misconstrued motive for outlawing the mild insect. After research showed minimal reports of bee stings in the city, they realized they didn’t pose any real threat to the public. In March 2011, NYC amended a health code which allowed residents to keep hives of Apis mellifera, the common honey bee.

Maendel’s bees are generally mild-mannered. Only when he accidentally drops a hive, neglects to use a smoker or pulls the bees’ hard-earned honey do they get angry and sting. Maendel said, “Even a good beekeeper can get into a situation where the bees become unhappy and you have to make an escape to just let them calm down. In the country that was easy to do. You just walk away. But here if you're, say on a rooftop, you have to plan ahead. If you run back into the building, you're probably going to be bringing bees with you.” He claimed this is one of the biggest challenges in terms of the space he works in on the rooftop of the Bruderhof House.

Typical of many beekeepers, he isn’t phased by a few stings here and there. He added, “ It almost adds to the thrill of it- I'm able to be part of something that is lovable, cute even, but has this background of being dangerous. You’re dealing with power there.”

To keep bees in NYC, one only has to register their hives with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and provide an easily accessible water source for the bees. 34-year-old beekeeper and founder of Astor Apiaries, Nick Hoefly said, “The really cool thing about New York City is the fact that the city itself is incredibly friendly to beekeeping. The rules are fairly lax.” Hoefly said he’s living on an 18 foot wide by 85 foot long property in Astoria and is able to put eight hives on his roof without a problem.

Hoefly continued, “It remains that way because all the beekeepers in the city are very responsible and respectful of the fact that everybody's so tight and close. Pretty much all the beekeepers I know go out of their way to make sure their hives are not impeding on public spaces or common areas, or they're doing whatever they can to make the bees, you know, live in harmony with everybody else here.”

When Hoefly and his wife bought their Astoria home in 2016, he was eager to utilize the roof and small front yard for something interesting. After considering a simple garden or compost pile, Hoefly happened upon the idea of bees when brainstorming with a friend. Him and this friend of his, who was also a new homeowner, leapt into the hobby together. After making it through the steep learning curve that every new beekeeper faces he was hooked. Hoefly decided to try selling the honey to pay for the expensive hobby. And it worked. The operation escalated into his business, Astor Apiaries, which is now one of the largest apiaries in the city. Hoefly sells his own honey along with dozens of other beekeepers’ honey from all over the country. His signature 12 oz. jar of New York City Raw Honey sells for $25. Beyond the honey, Hoefly also offers his services as a beekeeping consultant across all five boroughs for clients ranging from city cemeteries to private homeowners.

“Typically we’re doing some sort of bartering agreement with the property owner. Usually it's a share of the honey, or just the, the ability to kind of join us on some inspections. A lot of this stuff is just kind of on like handshakes and goodwill.” he said.

This will be Hoefly’s fifth season as the head beekeeper at The Green-Wood Cemetery located in western Brooklyn. The nearly 500 acres of parkland boasts endless forage and from certain areas, panoramic views of downtown Manhattan. As one of larger green spaces in the entire city, the cemetery attracts tons of local visitors who wander the rolling hills of gravestones and admire the gothic monuments dispersed throughout. Though the bees are likely indifferent to the views of One World Trade Center peaking over the hilltops, Hoefly’s bees thrive on the endless flowering plants growing among the gravestones. “It’s the perfect place for them.” Hoefly said. The cemetery bees deliver a bountiful harvest of honey, which is sold in a cleverly labeled bottle reading “The Sweet Hereafter.” There’s surely some poetry to be found in bees utilizing flowers planted at the gravestones of the deceased to reap new life in the form of honey.

Within the beekeeping arena, most people find mentors to help guide them through their first few beekeeping seasons. For Hoefly, retired science teacher and Queens beekeeper Larry Stone served as an invaluable resource when starting out. Stone has six hives in Queens, but never ventured into the honey business as Hoefly did. Instead, he works as a consultant offering the extremely niche service of hive ‘cutouts.’ This means he removes entire colonies of bees who’ve made a home for themselves in odd places, oftentimes inside the walls of private homes.

In some pre-war Queens townhouses, a hollow vessel can be found in a wall where a built-in ice box originally presided. This peculiar structural oddity makes for an especially suitable home for bees according to Stone. He said, “Cutouts are extremely demanding, stressful and labor intensive. It's not rocket science but it is science and you definitely have to know what you’re doing. Or you will end up with a bunch of dead bees and make a mess of your client's home.” Stone takes jobs like these anywhere within 50 miles of Queens. He finds a lot of work across the river in New Jersey, in Westchester county and in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx as well. Stone said the financial reward for this service is minimal and he does it mainly for the “amazing adrenaline rush.”

Stone got into beekeeping in 2006 after reading about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) which was attracting a ton of media attention at the time. CCD began in 2005 when beekeepers worldwide noticed a sharp increase in honeybee death rates. Many were losing up to 90 percent of their hives- a shocking, unprecedented level of loss. Various possible causes were speculated, including pesticides, varroa mites, poor transportation conditions in the mass pollination industry, and bacteria. To this day, a single cause has not been pinpointed, however this phenomenon garnered the public’s attention for the honeybee’s plight unlike ever before. It was this heightened awareness that ultimately led both Hoefly and Stone to begin beekeeping and many other hobby beekeepers in NYC and beyond. Though the “Save the Bees” movement has quieted in recent years, this is a hobby that stuck for Maendel, Hoefly and Stone alike.

Ask any beekeeper why they do it, and you’ll hear their voice perk up. For Hoefly, it’s the neverending learning process that keeps him excited. He said, “There's always something new to learn about the bees. And it's such an experience-driven craft that there's no way that you can learn it all in just a handful of years.” After years of learning from others in the beginning, Hoefly aims to pay it forward by hosting urban beekeeping Q&A’s on Facebook regularly. As a Cornell-certified Master Beekeeper, Hoefly shares his extensive knowledge on methodology with the urban beekeepers who attend his sessions remotely from different cities all over the country.

Beekeeping serves as a grounding point for Maendel which he depends on. “Nature has been here for millions of years, animals and trees and birds and they know the deal they just keep on trucking. There's something steady and solid about it. And it's just soothing or relaxing to briefly be a part of this community of creatures that are working together and doing their thing regardless of what is happening around them. They have their own little world, which is very organized and fascinating. And it can happen in Manhattan or LA or in Alaska, it doesn't matter where it is. A beehive is always the same- a little cosmos of nature.” he said, lost in thought just thinking about them. The deep admiration and respect that each beekeeper has for these insects is audible in tone and evident in the thoughtful observations they’ve shared with me.

Articulated in a way that seemed effortless, Stone said, “I learned through my decades long study of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, that bees put together opposites that I want to put together in myself. I learned through personal experience that whenever we have a big emotion about any one thing, it's because of the relation of opposites in that thing, be it a piece of music, a work of art, a 50-foot oak swaying in the breeze or a colony of honeybees. What are the main opposites I see honeybees put together so well? Selfishness and altruism, delicacy and strength. These are opposites I want to have in a better relation in myself. A honeybee colony is called a superorganism because each individual bee works for the good of the whole, and as a result takes care of its own individual survival.” He continued, “Then there is delicacy and strength.They can be fierce and also very gentle. For example, when we need to tell someone we care about that they are doing something against their well being, do we want to be strong, but also gentle - at the same time? Intense and also loving?”

Stone isn’t the first to consider the social order of honey bees as a superior model in contrast to our own. Throughout history, honey bees have fascinated many different cultures who looked to them as symbols of purity, hard-work, efficiency, consistency and selflessness. In ancient Greek and Roman times, philosophers and writers began to compare individual bee functions to roles within their own societies. In fact, Aristotle was so intrigued by the make-up of the hive, he created the first glass observation hive to enable closer observation.

Roman poet Virgil dedicated an entire book to the honey bee within his four book poem about agriculture, “The Georgics” published in 29 BCE. He viewed the inner workings of the beehive as an unattainable ideal that human society could never match. Specifically, bees presented a template for the crucial elements of society including supervision, distribution and incentive for labour. Virgil wrote this poem during a period of great political instability and civil war in Rome and his displeasure with human nature shines through quite bluntly. Generally speaking, he thought the world would be a better place if people were more like bees.

As NYC reaches the beginning of the end of its own period of crisis, it’s hard not to draw some parallels to Virgil’s own disdain for human society. In a perfect world, humans would work together as a globalized ‘hive’ where each and every action is taken with the greater good of the whole in mind. For honey bees, what’s greater for the whole is greater for the individual. I’m not sure this mentality is one that sticks for humans.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and at current, many people have objected to the government recommendations to curb the spread of the deadly virus. Masks were not always worn and the word ‘lockdown’ meant nothing for some people. Beyond that, many countries around the world are experiencing botched vaccination rollouts due to corrupt, dysfunctional governments that operate in the best interest of only a select few. As we observe the disorganization and plain disparity of the global response to COVID-19, the honey bee can serve, once again as a symbol for the selfless society we should strive to be.

Though we might never be able to replicate the perfect social structure that bees have achieved, we do have an opportunity to pay them back for all the lessons they can teach us. In NYC, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene handles the enforcement of all beekeeping ordinances. According to the NYC Beekeeping Association’s President and beekeeper, Andrew Cote, the department’s inspectors have no training in beekeeping, have little extensive knowledge on the matter and no budget is allocated to change this. Some beekeepers agree that the city could be doing more to invest in beekeeping. There is certainly potential for bees to find a place within sustainability efforts as these issues come to the forefront of the political agenda in NYC.

Maendel said, “There's definitely things that the city can do, and they might not be as dramatic as some people think. There's lots of space along the streets for trees. Why not plant the right kind of trees with bees in mind?”

Hoefly added, “Having the city put green roofs on city buildings would be huge. Having different ways to upgrade infrastructure and make it to where, you know we aren't losing as much water, and doing all of these bigger projects to make the city more green, would ultimately ripple out and positively affect the bees.”

It’s no secret that NYC’s beekeepers cherish the company of their bees, and the sacred relationship they form with nature in the heavily urban landscape. Plenty of New Yorkers kept hives illegally long before it was legalized ten years ago. But what about the bees? Are they happy to be here? A popular train of thought which answers these questions, sounds suspiciously like what every urban beekeeper would want to hear; the bees actually thrive more in cities than they do in rural areas. The logic goes as such; cities offer a diverse array of flowering plants for honey bees to pollinate. Unlike the monoculture of rural, farmed land the bees have a varied diet which in turn leads to stronger immune systems. This strength makes them less susceptible to the species biggest threat; the varroa mites. While there’s more air pollution in cities, there’s not nearly as much pesticides sprayed as there are in rural areas. Sounds great right? It’s actually much more nuanced than this.

Bees can fly up to five miles for food, but on average they only fly less than a mile from the hive to find something. Bees residing in a hive one block from Central Park reap easy access to a bountiful supply of nectar and pollen. (This stored nectar later becomes honey.) A hive in a secluded, highly developed area with scarce greenery would not fare as well as the latter. When asked what the distinct challenges are for the urban beekeeper Stone answered, “Expectations. My beekeeper friend Oleg, started a few years ago and his colonies produce 3 to 4 times more honey than mine. Now why is that? Well, he lives right next to Cunningham Park. I don't.” This certainly sounds like it may be a disappointing realization: every hive will fare differently

depending on surrounding conditions.

Hive location and it’s subsequent prosperity must be observed on a case by case basis. There are certain underpinning features to the city that remain the same despite their particular location. Hoefly said, “If you're in the right place in a rural area, and you're not right up against commercial farming and you're not right up against some of the bad things about it, then the bees are going to have a lot more to eat, a lot more to choose from, and just a lot more room to kind of spread their wings. So I can see, I could see good arguments both ways” He added, “But overall, honey bees do well in cities.”

Though success is dependent upon various factors, it seems that urban beekeeping is generally a win-win for the bees and the beekeeper. Stone chimed in, “Us beekeepers are backing up mother nature. The force of ethics that exists in reality - as such - and in each one of us, is working to make this so. We are keeping the ecosystem alive by making up for the enormous losses in commercial beekeeping and also keeping the gene pool diverse.”

Beekeepers like Maendel, Hoefly and Stone are in a lot of ways, socio ecological activists. They are introducing the species to a unique environment which offers them a distinct array of forage to pollinate. In turn, they are diversifying the honey bee’s gene pool as Stone mentioned. In doing so, their immune systems are strengthened and they fare a better chance of survival in the face of their biggest threat: the parasitic varroa mite. Keeping hives in cities is typically fairly public by nature and therefore holds more potential for raising awareness about the insect’s great importance.

Within a city, hobby beekeepers are not utilizing honey bees as a commercial tool for mass pollinating crops. There’s real passion there, plain and simple. As geographer and beekeeper Jennifer Wolch puts it, “We bring the bee into the urban landscape for intellectual, ecological, and moral reasons to re‐imagine the anima Urbis—the breath, life, soul, and spirit of the city—as embodied in its animal life.”