Illegal beekeeping in New York City catches on

[opsec]

http://www.chow.com/stories/12022

It’s illegal to keep bees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, or any of the five boroughs, but Paska is one of a growing number of New Yorkers doing it anyway. The New York City Beekeepers Association, a hobbyist group started a few years ago to provide new beekeepers with  Paska’s Brooklyn bees on honeycomb  Removing the honeycomb; pumping smoke into the hive to calm the bees training and supplies, already has 180 members. New York City honey is showing up at area farmers’ markets and mainstream specialty food retailers. Paska, who does marketing and project management for a children’s clothing company, gives the honey to friends and sells it at a local market.

Beekeeping is legal in most U.S. cities and Europe (you can buy honey made by bees that live in hives on the roof of the Paris opera house). It was outlawed in NYC in 1999, when bees were added to a list of banned “wild animals” in the city’s health code, along with ferrets and, oddly, zebras.

My only concern about this is what happens if/when the northward progression of Africanized bees makes it to New York city. These colonies are like the bee equivalent of manchurian candidates waiting for the day they get Africanized. 

[darwinslair]

"africanized" is basically meaningless now.  All bees are hybrids now, and they are either agressive or non-agressive.  Has to do with the queen.  Friend says that they are having agressive hives come up from Texas every year now, and what you do is take out the queen, replace her with a different one (that has been cultivated in a non-agressive hive) and 3 weeks later all of the old queens kids are dead and are replaced by the new children.  Friend says that you cannot find bees, even in the wild, that do not have some of the african genes in them.  The agressive tendancies though are not throughout all those with the genes.

Fast turnover in the hives.  Short worker lifespans.

Tom

[Atash Hagmahani]

Speaking of beekeeping, I'm concerned for Beeherder, from whom we haven't heard in a while. Anybody have some time to check up on him?

[Lady Lilya]

He posted 2 days ago and was last active this evening.

[Mike]

He posted 2 days ago and was last active this evening.

Well!  That's relief.  I've been missing beeherder too.

[Lady Lilya]

Anybody can look him up in the member list, see when he was last active, and read his last posts.  And even send him a message if one feels so inclined.

[Beeherder]

 

Thanks for your concerns everyone!! Beeherder was recently advised by a wise soul that sometimes life comes in clumps, well sometimes my clumps get together and form a support group and the groups become herds and the next thing you know there a stampede and there isn't enough time to do the things that need doing much less write about doing them. And then when you are at your very very top overload that's when something breaks, like say your 6 year old computer at say the last moment as you are trying to file your taxes. Well if that ever happens to you i hope you can resist the urge to turn that old thing into a pile of electronic shrapnel! Oh well, now i have this brand new wiz bang newest gizmo from apple because i could just have the hard drive from that old POS mounted in a new enclosure and it is now just another USB external disk on this mac thingy. wow this is like learning to drive a really fast car when you are used to a horse and buggy, whoopee sure is fun.

heeee's baaaack