From the Rooftop

A Roof Full of People

2008-05-04T08:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I hosted a beekeeping presentation to the Leadership Program, a group of educators, at the Epoca Restaurant around the corner and at the apiary on my roof. At the restaurant they viewed "Rooftop Bees" a documentary about me by filmmaker Melissa Lohman Wild and I did a PowerPoint presentation on bees and beekeeping. . There was a lot of discussion about CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) accompanied by a short video on the subject. They also tasted a large variety of honeys. Then 30 teachers and educators, in two waves, braved their way up the ladder to the roof and several donned bee suits and veils to help inspect the hives and show the group honey and brood in the making.
It was gloomy chill day, but the sun broke out in a half-hearted sort of way and it warmed up just as we were going up to the roof, then turned drear again just as we finished. The Great Bee was with us! A good time was had by all!

Wow! It's been a while since the last post!

2008-04-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

April 2008
My two remaining hives are alive. Hive A is less populated than Hive B. It needs to be requeened. It's a matter of finding the current queen and killing her, then replacing her with a new one. I haven't been able to find the queen yet , thus being spared the (for me) moral dilemma of killing her. (I'm sort of a Buddhist in many ways). Meanwhile Hive Bee is really buzzing with action.
We inspected and supered the hives yesterday. Hive B is chock-a-block with honey in the hive body.
I ordered new cypress woodenware from Rossman Apiaries, since my four 7 year old hive bodies are getting dilapidated. Cypress is the most weather-resistant wood on the beekeeping market and your best bet if you don't go polystyrene.
I hope to restore my third hive when the Rossman equipment arrives
Also fed both colonies a bee patty, which offers both protein and carbohydrates.
Last summer was sparse pickin's for honey because I had to introduce new packages, but I hope that we have jump-started the honey storing by supering early.
The meet-up has been very active in helping me, which I need, having undergone a total knee rplacement in February. It's gradually healing and I'm able to climb the ladder up to the roof.
Last week we cleaned up the roof, gleaning the good stuff from the rotting junk and chucking the junk. It looks fabulous! Thanks to all for the help!
I hope to harvest in August this year. Stay tuned.
Best regards to all,
John

bee on spice bush in the garden at Brooklyn Bee

2007-07-28T06:06:00.000-07:00

My honey bees are after the flowers on my spice bush this year.
In past years, foraging on it was dominated by bumblebees. They have disappeared this year!

Summer '07

2007-07-16T11:10:00.000-07:00

We now have TWO apiaries. One on my roof (The Brooklyn Bee) and one on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (Green Oasis Garden). They hope to mainly pollinate their fruit trees. Honey production is only a secondary bonus. Shown are some Meetup members hiving the bees and the package they are going to hive The bees come from an apiary in Georgia.

Below: (top to bottom)

The package of bees (6,000 workers and a queen) ready to be dumped into one of the two hives at Green Oasis

Meetup members putting the inner cover on the just-hived bees

THe two hives are perched on a ten-foot high platform

Winter Crafts Workshop

2007-02-10T11:55:00.000-08:00

candle and soap making

We had a lot of fun while the bees were clustering in the February chill

Baby, it's warm outside

2007-01-12T14:26:00.000-08:00

This winter has been tough on the bees. They have been flying all December instead of clustering and thereby consuming more of their valuable winter honey stores than if they were in cluster. I made them a 2 to 1 sugar syrup in November and put it in the top feeders, but it has all glazed over. The surface was covered with a sheetof crystallized sugar and they hadn't been able to get at it. I broke up the surface except on one which had crystallized almost entirely. and we'll see, but it's a major hassle making 2 to 1 in my cramped kitchen and getting it up to the roof, plus I don't understand why it crystallizes. Everybody recommends 2 to 1 and nobody mentions this problem.
I can only hope for seasonable weather or face a major death unless I can manage to nurse them through somehow.

The Harvest is Over; the Honey is Gone

2006-10-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

Today I sold my last jar of this year's harvest.
We (the Meetup) extracted honey from three supers. Two yielded a pale gold honey; the third, mysteriously, was a deep, rich amber, thick and creamy. Yum! I'll miss it. (I sold it all because I'm on the South Beach diet and honey is a no-no).
I sold it in 1 lb. jars for $8 and 1/2 lb. bears for $5. The bears were very popular.
Noiw it's getting time to settle the bees down for winter: inspecting for pests and diseases, treating for tracheal mites giving sugar syrup as needed, and wrapping the hives. against the fierce winter wind up there.

In the Honey Room

2006-09-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

uncapping a frame of honeycomb

pouring honey from the extractor

Harvest Time

2006-08-29T00:36:00.000-07:00

Well, it's the end of August. I now have a gang of helpers: the Brooklyn Beekeeping Meetup. Six of us checked the hives last Saturday and found 4 supers full of honey. We are set to extract at the next meetup, Sept. 2.

scraping off honeycomb for a little taste.

Yum!

The Daily News, July 13, 2006

2006-06-13T10:19:00.000-07:00

Lots of New Bees!

2006-06-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

I checked my hives last week and they were brimming over with bees. Afraid of a swarm, I added new hive bodies (brood chambers) on top. They seem quite happy now. Will check for brood and honey later this week when the weather is good. (It's rainy here in NYC)

Brooklyn Beekeeping Meetup

2006-05-22T20:47:00.000-07:00

I am the organizer for this Meetup. If you are interested in meeting NYC beekeepers in person, follow this link
http://beekeeping.meetup.com/128/events/
John

new brood

2006-05-12T09:34:00.000-07:00

Josh and I checked back after a week and a half to see how the new bees were coming along.
All three queens were out of their cages and at work laying. A lot of larvae and capped brood (pupae) in two hives, a modest amount in the third. One hive body was almost full what with last year's honey and brood soI added another hive body.

2006-04-16T11:16:00.000-07:00

The New Bees Are In
Yesterday I picked up three packages of bees from a guy in my bee club who schlepped a whole lot of packages up from an apiary in Georgia. I got three not two hives with queens because my one remaining live hive to examine the "live" hive for the queen who clearly hasn't been laying well and to "terminate" her. Yes , though I hated to think about it , I would have to kill her by squishing her.
My son Josh helped me hive the bees. The first two went smoothly and when we took down the third hive we didn't find any sign of a queen's activity: no eggs, no brood, nada. So I prononounced her dead, de facto, and installed the new queen, thus saving me the moral conflict of deliberately killing a beautiful creature. I put the old bees on top and the new bees with the new queen on the bottom separtated by a sheet of newspaper. This is so that they will slowly comingle odors and slowly eat away the barrier and mix. You don't want a sudden confrontation when addind new bees to an existing colony.
Anyhow, they all seem to be settling in nicely. They have old honey from last year's bees to sustain them while they lay in new stores and they have drawn comb to deposit their various things in (pollen, honey, brood, etc.) saving them the labor of making new wax. They are all set to start storing honey. So I am hopeful I will have some sort of crop this year. I'll keep you posted.

2006-04-10T11:22:00.000-07:00

Showing the bees to a play group

From the Rooftop

2006-04-10T11:09:00.000-07:00

From the Rooftop

2006-04-09T13:25:00.000-07:00

2006-04-09T13:15:00.000-07:00

New bees coming this weekend! Can't wait. Will keep you posted

2006-04-09T13:01:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Tracheal Mites

By asking around, the consensus is that my absconding bees had tracheal mites, a tiny parasite that lodges in the bee's trachea and is only detectable by dissection and observation under a microscope. Furthermore they at their worst in Winter when the bees are inside the hive and inspection is not common. So it's a real difficult nuisance to diagnose. The good part is that they are treatable with various natural medications like menthol and grease patties which don't harm the honey.I liked the idea of selling honey from "totally unmedicated bees" but that is no longer realistic. Luckily I can avoid some of the nastier chemicals because I don't have varroa mites or foulbrood which requires antiobiotics.
posted by John at 1:00 PM 0 comments
Monday, March 20, 2006

DISASTER!

I lost two of my three hives this Winter. I had pneumonia in February and wasn't able to feed them supplemental sugar syrup at a crucial time when their winter stores are running out.So when I went up on the roof and saw only one hive flying I assumed that's what happened. A hive of dead bees. But this week when I finally fed the surviving hive, I opened the "dead" hive and found NO BEES! Not dead not alive. They had pulled a Houdini and just vanished. They left no sign of their departure unlike the Roanoke Virginia colony's mysterious scrawl of "Croatan" on a tree. And, no, bees don't go to an elephant's graveyard to die, like in the myth. Nor did anybody in the neighborhood report a swarm hanging in their tree last Fall when they might have absconded, so who knows.........??At any rate THE GOOD NEWS:I have one strong hive and I have ordered two new packages for the empty hives so we'll just start up again and see. I doubt a bumper crop like last summer but time will tyell
posted by John at 11:23 AM 0 comments

How I Got into BeeKeeping

I was sitting at an outdoor table at the Hungarian pastry shop across from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Manhattan's Upper West Side one September about five years ago when a bee landed on my table. I knew it was a honey bee because I had grown up in the country and had been a nature counselor at a summer camp in the Catskills where I had taken the kids to an apiary I had always been fascinated by bees (at a distance) and had even imagined raising them some day in the future when I had grown old and moved to the country. But this little bee really got my attention. A honeybee in NYC?? Where did it come from? It must be possible for bees to live in the City. And then.........why not? Why not investigate? So when I got home I got on ther Internet and started googling. Boy, did I find out a lot. And I just took off. I ordered eqipment, joined a local bee club and got my first three packages ( a smallish box of wood and wire containing three pounds of bees (12,00-14,000 critters) each and a queen. I successfully hived them and have never looked back. I extracted honey that first summer and have increased my yield each year.
posted by John at 5:07 PM 0 comments