Honey and Venom

by Andrew Coté

  Not all beekeepers wait for someone to appropriate the bees for them. Some people have them shipped via the post office. Yes, packages of honey bees have been shipped via the United States Postal Service for more than a century, and still are to this day. Most breeders don’t recommend this since temperature control is not optimum and, generally speaking, postal workers would rather have nothing to do with bees, which may lead to less-than-ideal care. But it is done. One example comes from the 1970 Sears, Roebuck catalog, which, at least according to The Christian Science Monitor, listed packages of honey bees for “$7–$12 each, depending on the strain.” It elaborates: “In fact, Sears ships up to three tons of bees a year to mail order customers.” That’s a lot of bees, considering they are usually sold in packages of three pounds.

  It should be no great surprise that packages of twelve thousand honey bees each can be shipped via USPS, given that when the USPS introduced the parcel post service in 1913, it was used on occasion to ship babies and children. There are at least two recorded instances. One, involving a boy shipped from Stratford, Oklahoma, to Wellington, Kansas, was reported in The New York Times about a year later:

  Mrs. E. H. Staley of this city received her two-year-old nephew by parcel post to-day from his grandmother in Stratford, Okla., where he had been left for a visit three weeks ago. The boy wore a tag about his neck showing it had cost 18 cents to send him through the mails. He was transported 25 miles by rural route before reaching the railroad. He rode with the mail clerks, shared his lunch with them and arrived here in good condition.

  As a parent, I can attest to the fact that children are much more difficult and challenging to manage than honey bees. Compared to a screaming baby with a bursting diaper, a box of thousands of venomous stinging insects sounds positively tame to me. In any case, the practice of shipping children via the mail ended by 1920, as The Washington Herald exclaimed in its headline: CAN’T MAIL KIDDIES—DANGEROUS ANIMALS. The post office, in its wisdom, had finally ruled that children were not “harmless animals,” and because of their potentiality for danger may not be mailed as parcel post. “By no stretch of imagination or language,” said the ruling, “can children be classified as harmless, live animals that do not require food or water.” But bees were and still are accepted for shipment.

  So in any given year, the anticipated arrival date of a package of honey bees in New York from Georgia might be, for instance, the first Friday in April. People place their orders, plans are made, anticipation builds. But we are dealing with nature. If one plans an outdoor wedding for June 1 and it rains all day, plans for the altar may need to be altered, and everyone understands that provisions must be made for this. We gently hammer it into the heads of all beekeepers and beekeepers-to-be that weather is a critical factor in the timing of the actual arrival of the bees. In the end, the bees may not be ready when one wishes them to be ready. Managing people’s expectations is routinely more difficult than handling the bees themselves. Particularly when it comes to our valued but often mollycoddled customers in New York City, the notion of letting something like weather interfere with their plans is often too much for their delicate sensibilities to fathom, and they often exhaust themselves with a long series of verbal gymnastics and “what if” hypothetical arguments designed to bring them their desired results. To no avail.

  We do not control nature; we merely cajole the circumstances around it, and usually not very well. One could prune a tree. Mayhap bend its limbs to cause it to grow a certain way. In the end, that tree still needs to have a root system in the ground and it still needs water and nutrient-rich soil and it still needs sunshine. It needs space to grow. There’s only so far we can force nature—in this case, bees—and have things work for us the way we would prefer them to. So while we are able to control and incentivize honey bees to do certain things—like, thanks to their uncanny olfactory abilities, detect bombs, or even, by virtue of a patient’s breath, detect tuberculosis and certain types of cancer—there’s only so much we can manipulate nature and not destroy what it is we are trying to cultivate.

  When mid-March torrential rains disrupt queen breeding, package production will slow down. Similarly, if the weather is too dry or too cold, bee populations will be insufficient to create the packages requested, and the arrival date will be pushed back one or two or three weeks or even more. Of course, we advertise this fact just as strongly as I tried to impress upon the Ugandan farmers how important it is not to eat banana mash in the morning before visiting an apiary. With nothing like the Ugandans’ excuse of a tricky language barrier, my fellow New Yorkers often fail to follow the plot.

  My cohorts of New York–area beekeepers are generally cognizant and understanding of these truths. Some, however, are not swayed by logic or facts when put up against their own desires for things to be as they wish them to be. Herein the humble honey bees have many lessons to teach us. Perhaps aside from humility, which is the first and most important lesson honey bees drill into their keepers, one of the best lessons they have for us is patience. Honey bees can teach us to be patient through a Gandhian style method of civil disobedience. Meaning, the bees are going to do what they want to do, and we need to adapt our ways to their choices if as a joint endeavor we are to be successful.

  One of the many things I love about honey bees is that they will always let a person know where he or she stands. A brief moment here for a personal example using yours truly and my beloved wife, Yuliana. As difficult as those who know me might find it to believe, perhaps, on any given day Yuliana might seem a bit miffed with me. When I ask her about it, she may look directly at me, smile her lovely smile, and assure me that nothing is wrong. If I have my doubts, persist in gently asking, and the response remains the same, I might be lulled into believing that, in fact, nothing is wrong. But an hour or a month later, I may well find out that Yuliana was actually upset about something of which I, dumb drone that I am, had been blissfully unaware. In these cases, the pain is a long, slow, drawn-out burn.

  The point is, the bees will not put one through all of this anguish the way a human might. With the worker bees there is reliable and unqualified clarity. Judgment and retribution are quick. If bees are upset with someone for whatever reason, they will make that displeasure known posthaste. They may hover around one’s face, they may mob a veil and attempt to get in, or they may simply sting. Unlike with some human females, there is no ambiguity. Rudyard Kipling was spot-on when he wrote “The female of the species is more deadly than the male.” There is something wonderfully absolute and pure in knowing that the bees will always be direct. Nature has much to teach us.

  In terms of distributing packages of bees in April, these days we give people two options. One is to pick them up at my parents’ home in Norwalk, where my mother, Polly; my niece, Megan; and my nephew, Patrick, check names against a master list and distribute the bees until they are all gone. My mother comes out to greet us when we arrive at her place, usually around two A.M., and we offload as many packages as she needs for her pickups. We set up a tent for the rain or the sun and make sure she is all settled with her lists and highlighters. We notify customers from the road that we are on schedule, and they start arriving at dawn to collect their girls.

  But before we reach as far north as Connecticut, some of us meet up at a highway rest stop or perhaps near Yankee Stadium where we transfer around 250 packages into a smaller truck and drive into Manhattan, while the other continues north to New England. Once in Manhattan, in collaboration with the crew of the New York City Beekeepers Association, we make our early morning deadline, usually six or seven A.M., to meet the city-dwelling beekeepers who are anxiously awaiting their own packages of twelve thousand fresh new bees. In both locations, city and country, the exchange is generally a happy occasion. People are pleased to meet their new bees and to see familiar human faces among the crowds. There are plenty of reunions, as we have many repeat customers from the fiv
e boroughs and the neighboring states, and people value the opportunity to talk about their yields, display samples of their harvests, and enjoy some good bee chat with like-minded folk.

  Sometimes, and this is particularly a thing in New York City, where people complain as if it is a competitive sport with big cash prizes, people whine that there do not appear to be a full twelve thousand bees in their packages. We invite them to count the legs and divide by six. No one has yet taken us up on that. But we have had people get tremendously upset when there is a delay due to rain, cold, or some other issue beyond the control of mere mortals. As explained, poor weather means that the queens cannot be mated, and so the populations cannot grow to meet the need to create the packages in a timely fashion. At these times the bees may end up being ready on, say, the weekend of Easter. When folks “get ugly,” as my Alabama-born mother would say, about all we can do is hope they remember their Scripture (bless their hearts):

  “Therefore be patient, brethren….The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains. You too be patient” (James 5:7–8). Or perhaps, “And He said to them, ‘Which one of you, will have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?’ ” (Luke 14:5). But I cannot win—those who rally against me that their bees disrupted their Easter plans do not want Scripture quoted to them. They want their egg hunts, ham, and family gatherings, and perhaps, a visit to church in a bright showy hat and not a beekeeper’s veil.

  As beekeepers we must understand that even on inopportune days, sometimes we need to do things that need to be done. Like changing a flat tire, or retrieving our bees, or dredging a fallen child out of a well on the Sabbath. It can be considered a lesson in beekeeping that we must bend to the schedule of the bees and to the elements. Unfortunately, the bees are ready as soon as they are ready—meaning, alas, we cannot postpone a week, or even forty-eight hours. When the season is upon us, it begins.

  In Connecticut, the handoff from my mother, Polly, is rather laid-back as there is an open window over two days when people may pick up their packages during daylight hours.

  In New York City, the package pickup schedule is more compressed, as we cannot sit on the side of the road with millions of bees for too long. When the bees arrive, clusters of “hobo” bees hang on to the outside of the packages, creating confusion and sometimes horror in onlookers who believe that the bees are escaping. These hangers-on have been gripping the screen with their six feet for the last thousand miles, smelling a queen within and wishing to join the party. But to the uninitiated, the hobos appear to be escaping bees, and may disturb those walking to work. Also, some years the heat may stifle the bees. Most important, we have to tend to our own colonies. So we generally have a set time and place, and people form a line and get their bees, exchange a few pleasantries, then head for their bicycle/subway/bus/car to get themselves and their tiny charges home.

  As urban beekeepers, we have certainly come a long way since the days of hiding our beehives on rooftops, painted to resemble chimneys or in shades of gray so they blend in with rooftop machinery. During what I jestingly refer to as “the Bitter Years” of illegal beekeeping, the New York City distributions used to take place in clandestine locations: a community garden in Prospect Heights on the corner of Vanderbilt and St. Marks, or a quiet spot near a synagogue in Forest Hills, Queens, for example. For several years, illicit distribution was a fun part of the Union Square Greenmarket, until we outgrew that space and started to disrupt the farmers’ market with people seeking their bee packages, and wayward hobos of both the insect and human form.

  The packages were disseminated publicly in Columbus Circle for a few years once distribution was no longer a clandestine operation. More recently, we have made use of Bryant Park, behind the main branch of the New York Public Library, to distribute to the hundreds of people who turn up to stand in a long line to receive their packages of bees. In 2018, distribution there garnered a New York Times front-page story focused on the congeniality that urban beekeeping and beeks contribute to city life.

  Now and again during distribution, some bystander will become disturbed and call 911 for no good reason. The NYPD is required to respond. But any potential police interference halts as soon as the bees rear their heads; the cops don’t have enough cuffs for the six-legged creatures, and it is amazing how one of the largest police forces in the world can seem so powerless in the face of a few flying insects.

  Jesting aside, the NYPD and its Emergency Services Unit have always worked with us in a friendly and positive way, calling upon us to deal with these insects on a regular basis. Not that the NYPD doesn’t have staff fit and able to handle bee disturbances. In the late 1990s, up until he effectively talked his way out of a job, Anthony Planakis—known as “Tony Bees”—was the fellow they used for beekeeping issues. Following Tony’s departure from the force, a detective from counterterrorism named Dan Higgins took over the semi-official role as department beekeeper. He held it until he transferred out of the NYPD to take a position closer to home in Westchester. That’s when Officer Darren Mays, who lives in rural upstate New York but whose precinct is in Queens, took over the job. He now shares it with Officer Michael Lauriano of Long Island. So, as of this writing, there are two NYPD officers who help this city of millions deal with the swarms and honey bee situations that crop up now and again. I have worked with both of them, and have been friends with all.

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  There is always something interesting—at least to beekeepers—happening with honey bees in New York City. One spring day some years back I was asked by a producer to appear on a television show called Cake Boss, a reality show dedicated to cake making. In the United States, the majority of the population seems to not only enjoy eating foods that are bad for them in great abundance, but watching others do so, too, so this show was wildly successful. The Cake Boss people wanted to film their star, Buddy Valastro, of the family-owned business Carlo’s Bakery in Hoboken, New Jersey, following me onto a rooftop in Manhattan to obtain honey from some hives there. The way we portrayed it all—harvesting the honey one bottle at a time—is not the way honey harvesting is done, but there are a lot of liberties taken with making these sorts of shows, as I quickly came to learn. In the aired episode, the crew took the honey to their shop in New Jersey to become an ingredient in a cake. Finally, in what was meant to be another day, there was a reveal at a community garden and a group of us were gobsmacked by the magnificent cake and in shock and awe of the tremendous talents the bakers displayed in creating it. At least that is how the program was edited and how we were instructed to react. In reality, the finished cake was actually a bit odd. It was also a prop and, as such, inedible.

  I told a beekeeping acquaintance of mine, an aspiring actor named Mickey, about the upcoming Cake Boss shoot, and he begged me to include him. Between rare auditions, Mickey had been introduced to beekeeping in 2005 in the Clinton Community Garden on Forty-eighth Street between Ninth and Tenth avenues, coincidentally where I currently take care of the beehives.

  “I [had] just started taking dance classes, and I heard honey bees love to dance, and they do have a little dance that the scout bees have when they go back to the hive,” Mickey said in an interview on National Public Radio that year. It is true that honey bees use dance to communicate. In fact, there are two types of dances—the waggle dance and the round dance. The first is used to communicate to other bees the distance and directions to sources of nectar, water, or other colony needs. The second is more or less used for the same thing, but for locations much closer to the hive.

  Once his interest was kindled, he worked alongside and learned about beekeeping from a man named Sidney Glaser. Glaser had learned beekeeping while working in Paraguay with the Peace Corps. There, among the Guarani, Glaser developed a love of and appreciation for the honey bees, even th
ough most of the bees there were Africanized and therefore much more defensive and challenging to handle than those in North America. A decade later, working with the honey bees in what was still a dicey Hell’s Kitchen must have been a cakewalk compared to the belligerency of the honey bees in South America. So Mickey learned from someone who had truly made his bones in the beeyard.

  Mickey introduced himself to me sometime thereafter. We saw each other at various bee functions, became pals, caught swarms together, and did a cut-out or two. (A cut-out is when honey bees have entered a space within a house or other dwelling, built comb, and fully taken up residence. The colony needs to be removed by opening up the structure and removing all of the comb and the bees. It is messy work.)

  At the insistence of Mickey and his wife, I visited their apartment, where she gushed about how much she loved Cake Boss, begged me to get Mickey in the shoot, and started to tell me all about her pole-dancing class. Hoping not to hear more about that last item, I said, sure, I would ask if Mickey could attend the filming with me, and if the producers agreed, he could assist me with the beehive inspection and make his debut on the small screen. I approached the producers with the idea, and though they were initially against any changes to the plan, I knew it was important to Mickey. So I gently pushed, and they relented.

  Prior to the legalization of beekeeping in New York City, a reporter from ABC’s Nightline visited me at a rooftop apiary belonging to my friends Peter and Deborah Dowling, where they filmed me for my own television debut. I was excited. The night that the segment was to air, I went to a bar where there were a couple of televisions. I asked the bartender to tune to the appropriate channel, and he did so with about as much interest as I had in helping him wash lipstick-smeared glasses. In my mind, when my big moment came on, it would be like in the movies. The bar would be crowded, I would sit there acting disinterested, nursing my drink. Someone would look at the screen, then me, then the screen and back at me again. Maybe nudge a companion and nonchalantly bend their head in my direction, then dart their eyes to the television screen. Then someone would say, “Hey! That’s you!” And I would act as if I did not care, like it was an everyday occurrence. Or something like that.