Honey and Venom Read online

  According to Adam, our undercover interpreter, it had occurred to Chen that I was responsible for the buyer backing out and his beehives being confiscated. This was partially true. I did inform the buyer of the depleted state of the hives, and he changed his mind based on that. But I certainly did not control the strategy of the New York Police Department, nor did I dictate marching orders to the overwhelming media presence there that evening. In the days that followed I half expected some shady triad characters to make an appearance on my doorstep and demand retribution or extort payment. The evening of the confiscation I told Chen, through an interpreter, that none of what transpired would have happened if he’d dealt fairly with the honey and the hives, which was true. Had he dealt honestly, we could have accommodated his needs. Instead, karma stepped in and kicked him in the balls.

  This story had legs, as they say. The next day, which was really the same day since we’d worked all night, I stood at my market booth at Rockefeller Center, so totally exhausted that I was fit to pass out. In fact, I took a catnap on the slate ground under my table for two hours. Then I was interviewed by at least eight different television networks, in three different languages, about the “un-bee-lievable” event. NBC.com’s “Three Million Bees Seized from Queens Man’s Home” was one of nearly two hundred media accounts that ran in the twenty-four hours following the incident. Several follow-up stories appeared over the next week, with increasingly discordant protests from Chen and the Garis pair. Never once did those parties seem to inquire as to the health or location of the honey bees, though.

  And what of the bees? I held on to them for two days while I tried to get the NYPD, the Department of Health, and every other authority that I could think of to collect them. No one responded. Tony’s answer was “I don’t know, bro!” Since I could not personally care for them, and frankly did not want them, I gave all of the beehives away to foster apiaries. I placed an ad on the NYCBA Facebook page. I contacted beekeepers in Connecticut. Strangers read about the bees and reached out from as far away as California and Kentucky. Every last hive was taken by an eager beekeeper who promised to try to nourish the bees back to health.

  Within another seventy-two hours, all of the bees were off my property. I kept a precise list of who took them and where they went, just in case they needed to be returned or retrieved for any reason. But there was never any follow-up. It seemed that the NYPD, the DOHMH, and Chen himself just moved on and forgot about the bees. I did not forget, though. I kept track, and I discovered that within a week about half of the colonies were dead, and none of the remaining ones appeared in good health. The fact was that the bees had been so badly treated by Chen and had such poor prospects after he removed all of their food that it was unlikely that any would survive the winter. It was a brutal, needless shame.

  Still, August was not a total disaster. I had met Yuliana at the market in Rockefeller Center, midway through the month, and by the end of it, she was still tolerating me and my unconventional work hours and lifestyle. That seemed auspicious. We met frequently for drinks and dinner. She told me that she knew I was a hard worker because I eat quickly—that in Ukraine she was taught that lazy men linger over their food. I cautioned her to beware of becoming entangled with a beekeeper, as Tolstoy enjoyed beekeeping to such an extent that his wife, Sophia, questioned his lucidity. My warnings unheeded, in time, I got to know her son, now my stepson, Max, and lured him to accompany me on apiary inspection visits and to sell honey at the farmers’ markets. He is a smart, handsome kid, so he was a natural there. Now he’s approaching his teenage years, so he has better things to do with his time than hang around with a guy who plays with bees, alas. But who knows what the future holds?

  So in spite of a month of frustration, wasted effort, and deceit, the summer was coming to a satisfying conclusion. There was a definite sweetness in the air and the promise of more good things to bloom.

  * Usually made from sheepskin, or rabbit or muskrat fur, but not limited to those animals, a ushanka is a hat with ear flaps that can either be tied atop the hat or flipped down and tied under the chin. It protects much of the head, face, and jaw from the cold. The word ushanka derives from ushi which means “ears” in Russian. And before anyone gets cross with me, yes, I realize there is a world of difference between Ukraine and Russia. But this book isn’t about the varieties of headgear found in the former Soviet empire, so please, allow a little room for poetry here.

  SEPTEMBER

  My son, eat honey, for it is good,

  Yes, the honey from the comb, is sweet to your taste;

  Know that wisdom is thus for your soul.

  —Proverbs 24:13–14

  September can be a difficult time for bees and beekeepers alike. The flowers are largely dying and the nectar is drying up. The colony as a unit is expiring, and the bees know it. There are some fall flowers, like goldenrod, bee balm, aster, and black-eyed Susan, that feed the bees, but it’s nothing like the spring and early summer buffet. The bees start to feel hunger pains. This leads to contentious behavior toward all, two- and six-legged. Under stress, bees often become extremely aggressive, making it an onerous period for them. It is no picnic for the beekeepers, either.

  My household is its own melting pot. We blend Judaism and Russian Orthodoxy and season it with a soupçon of Catholicism leftovers. My several years of living in Japan also cultivated in me an appreciation for and an attachment to Buddhism. So we truly have a hodgepodge of religious influences under our roof. We celebrate a variety of holidays, which means we are celebrating quite often.

  September is chock-full of Jewish holidays, including Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. With well over a million Jews, New York City has more than three times the number of Jews than there are in Jerusalem. Since Rosh Hashanah is celebrated by dipping slices of apple into honey, the week preceding the holiday is a killer time to have a honey stand in New York, and it’s all hands on deck as we empty the truck of all the bottles of sweetness we can haul to the Union Square Greenmarket. It doesn’t matter if one is not an especially religious Jew; apples and honey are eaten to give a symbolically sweet start to the New Year, and for Jews, the combination is as common as chocolate rabbits and colored eggs at Easter for Christians. Observing these traditions is part of the fabric of the culture—part of the group identity, if you will—even for those who feel themselves secular. For a honey hawker at Union Square, it is a sweet New Year indeed when Rosh Hashanah comes around.

  A few weeks after Rosh Hashanah comes Sukkoth, which was originally an agricultural festival, like a Thanksgiving for the fall harvest. Part of the observance is to build a sukkah, a temporary hutlike structure similar to what the Jews lived in during their forty years of wandering in the wilderness after fleeing from Egypt, or what farmers would often fabricate to rest and take their meals in during harvest time. The structure is meant to be interim, frail—much like our own lives and that of the honey bee. The sukkah, unfortunately, is the source of yearly misunderstandings between humans and honey bees. This is because the upper corners of the sukkah are adorned with fresh fruits and gourds, attracting wasps. These wasps tend to infiltrate the areas where people are celebrating Sukkoth, and as often happens, bees are blamed for the misdeeds of wasps. (Though I cannot deny that some honey bees might be attracted as well. It’s just that wasps are mostly to blame.)

  Since Sukkoth is always in September or October, coinciding with autumn, the bees are hungry and desperate, as the attentive reader will have learned. September is a tough time to be a bee in general, but it is particularly tough on the drone. The drones are no longer needed inside the hive. Often when they’ll return from an afternoon of exercise and socializing among the clouds with their equally idle brethren, the guard bees will refuse them entry. With nowhere to go and no food to eat, these virgins will remain outside of the colony and die from exposure or starvation. For their part, the workers are defensive a
nd aggressive. Varroa and tracheal mites take stronger footholds within the colony. The beekeeper must be fully suited and gloved, use smoke liberally, and expect to face hostile fliers when approaching a hive.

  Honey bees themselves will attack fellow colonies. Stronger hives prey upon weaker ones, overpowering the guards, raiding their food warehouses, and leaving them decimated and virtually empty. This is called robbing. The strong colonies attack weaker domiciles en masse in order to relieve them of their winter provisions. Fortunately, there are ways to prevent this from happening, or to slow it down. Small screens may be placed on the fronts of the hives, reducing the size of the entrance to make defending it easier. If the beekeeper is able to see the behavior commencing, he or she may throw a wet sheet over the weaker hive, which will deter a strong colony from robbing it, yet allow the workers from the weak hive to come and go to at least try to bring home the bacon. Technically, the members of the robbing hive could find their way in and out of the wet sheet, but they won’t bother, and will move on to softer targets. But all in all it is a tough time for the honey bees, and they bring that frustration and desperation to bear in how they behave toward one another and their keepers.

  At the farmers’ market, we have an issue during these months with honey bees, wasps, and other insects paying too much attention to our products. Desperate for food and with a serious lack of nectar, the bees are drawn to vendors who sell any sweet items such as grapes, jams, maple syrup—and, of course, honey. On late September days that are warm, we often have massive clouds of honey bees, sometimes numbering in the thousands, clamoring to extract the nectar from within the bottles. I oftentimes feel a little sorry for these flying creatures with brains the size of sesame seeds. This is a proposition that’s never going to work—as bright as they are, the bees have not yet learned how to topple over and break a bottle or even unscrew a lid. But if the bottles are even just a tad sticky with honey residue, the bees will be all the more aggressive and come in even greater numbers. If, G-d forbid, a jar of honey drops and breaks open, the honey bees will convey that message to their sisters with the waggle dance, and in short order throngs of Apis mellifera will be gratefully sucking that already-digested nectar into their bodies for return to their colony. Though it creates a spectacle at the market that is appreciated by some and entertaining to many, the thick cloud of dancing bees does not enhance sales.

  This leads us back to the sukkah. In New York, with the population such as it is, these tipsy, temporary structures can be found all over the city for the seven to eight days of the Sukkoth celebration. Sukkahs can be made of organic materials topped with branches, palm leaves, or bamboo, and are frequently decorated with shiny ornaments, pictures, wind chimes, and, in the upper corners, dried, plastic, or even, as previously mentioned, fresh fruits and gourds. They are erected outside of synagogues, in front of kosher restaurants, and even on the backs of trucks, which are then driven from place to place to make them accessible to all the faithful.

  So the fresh foods, like small pumpkins and squash, that are hung from the corners of the sukkahs attract the wasps and yes, okay, the hungry bees. And the riper the foods get, the more the insects are drawn to them. And once the ravenous insects discover that there are sweet secretions to be lapped up, they return to the hive to tell their sisters, who return in force, just as with a honey spill at the market. So I get loads of distressed calls and emails from concerned religious types when Sukkoth rolls around.

  * * *

  —

  Aside from inciting fear among some of the Semitic faithful, September brings beekeepers and honey lovers out to Rockaway Beach in Queens to celebrate the New York City Honey Fest. Annually since 2011 the New York Honey Fest has taken place along the boardwalk at Rockaway Beach. It is a great event and gets bigger every year, and is now run by my former beekeeping student and apprentice Tom Wilk.

  The New York City Honey Fest is a lively celebration of the area’s beekeepers, their industrious charges, and the mouthwatering honey that they produce together. A score of beekeepers set up shop on the boardwalk, and most of us sell out of everything we’ve brought while drinking craft beers and eating tacos and arepas from the local vendors. I usually also take a quick dip in the Atlantic Ocean just behind us.

  Many New York City–based beekeepers sell their honey at the event, including Tom Wilk, of course; Ruth Harrington, mother of four and keeper of both chickens and bees; Ralph Gaeta, Astoria resident and father of two, who keeps his beehives on his roof with views of Hell Gate Bridge. All of them began their beekeeping careers by taking the course my father and I teach annually for the NYCBA, and it gives me great pleasure and a small measure of pride to see them with their own bottles of honey and their distinct labels, and mentoring up-and-coming beekeepers themselves. Aside from all of these homegrown urban beekeepers, others from New York City and the surrounding areas attend as well. Representatives from national beekeeping supply companies, makers of beeswax soaps, and purveyors of woodenware for beekeeping saturate the boardwalk, and several thousand people come out to support the industry and get sweet deals on local honey.

  One year when I was there with Yuliana and a few other friends, the sun was stronger than we had expected, so we fashioned a wide-brimmed bee veil into a sun hat for Yuliana, who had braved the eighty-minute subway ride to reach me out in Far Rockaway. Our friend Mia Woolrich, a native of Australia who was living in Rockaway Beach, was helping us sell honey that day. I had known Mia for many years, since she first arrived in New York at seventeen to commence her modeling career in America. She has gone to great heights in the industry but could not be more down-to-earth. More impressive to me than her modeling success is her beekeeping skill set. After being part of the inaugural group of NYCBA apprentices, she set up her own hives out in the Rockaways and has never looked back. She once helped me tear up a brick wall in the alley behind the old CBGB club in Greenwich Village when an infestation of honey bees made a hole behind the bricks their home, terrorizing a very sensitive and special man who owned the apartment above it. “Get them out! Get them ouuuuut!” was about all he could shout between his tears. So Mia is not just another pretty face obscured by a bee veil.

  But back to the Honey Fest, or, more particularly, its location. I have beehives in each of the five boroughs, but there is no honey from any neighborhood that tastes as good to me as the honey from the Rockaways. I don’t know exactly why this is. The bees seem to be foraging on something unique to the area. Maybe it’s the thousands of acres of untouched growth around the coast of the salty Jamaica Bay, or something in the marshes and weeds around John F. Kennedy International Airport. But the Rockaway Beach honey to me is the most divine. This divinity cannot be hurt and is possibly enhanced by the fact that some of my beehives are housed at a modest monastery called Buddhist Insights. Thanks to the benevolence of the orange-robe-wearing monks there, I have a place of refuge for my girls, and the girls assist with pollinating the monastery’s flower and vegetable garden.

  * * *

  —

  The Honey Fest is a lovely event to round off the season, but late summer/early fall is not all sweetness. In 2011, Hurricane Irene swept through the Eastern Seaboard, including New York City. Aside from the much more serious and sad business of killing about fifty people and causing billions of dollars’ worth of damage, the storm battered the city’s honey bees with its winds and rain. The storm’s aftermath sparked a fierce debate between rival beekeeping groups as to who could lay claim to some displaced bees, and prompted an important epiphany for me. Namely, if I would leave the safety and security of academia and focus on bees as my only job (spoiler alert: I did leave academia).

  Just prior to Irene, I had spent a few days visiting every one of my beehives, particularly concerned about those that were anywhere near the edge of a building, to make absolutely sure that they were secure. Of course, hurricanes can uproot trees and do all sorts
of damage, so there was only so much I could do to guarantee a beehive would not become a 250-pound meteor during the tempest. But I did my best.

  Irene hit New York City as a tropical storm with substantial winds and rain, starting in Coney Island, and creating havoc and flooding in several parts of the five boroughs. Very soon after the storm passed, I was behind the wheel of my truck, charging south down the deserted FDR Drive along the East River. It was a humid and windy morning of syrupy, damp air, and yet the sky was still pale and overcast, almost smoky, obscuring the promise of sunshine. I was on my way to Brooklyn, having been told that the storm had torn a hollowed-out branch from a tree in Fort Greene, exposing a hive of feral bees that lived inside it. Bees often house in the dead limbs of decaying trees. These colonies are the first to be exposed when a storm tears weakened limbs apart, and so this was one of many such calls. It came from Liz Dory, a beekeeping Brooklynite who had seen the broken limb herself and worried for the plight of the colony.

  The Fort Greene feral bees were up for grabs to whoever could capture them. Word spread quickly in urban beekeeping circles on Facebook and Twitter, and hooded hopefuls made beelines from all over the city to claim the hive, or at least to watch the entertainment unfold. The stakes were decidedly high for some: A new hive meant new honey, and for many in the current world of urban beekeeping, in which apiarists peddle their products at weekend farmers’ markets where activity resembles the chaos of the New York Stock Exchange, the general attitude is that the more bees one has at one’s beck and call, the better. Many people believe that a beehive is a gold mine. Not so. A Wall Street Journal headline from April 2019 pretty much sums it up: NYC BEEKEEPERS ARE MAKING HONEY BUT LITTLE MONEY.