Honey and Venom

by Andrew Coté

  Way back in the 1990s, my father and brother, Mike, were hired by Late Night with David Letterman to accompany another beekeeper who was bringing in live bees to be used as part of a skit. The unnamed beekeeper transported the bees in a glass case that was poorly sealed, and the routine became much more dramatic than intended when the bees escaped. The mystery beekeeper promptly fled the Ed Sullivan Theater, and my father and brother were left to try to capture the hundreds of honey bees that were homing in on the powerful television lights, where they would scorch their wings and fall alive, but helpless, onto the stage. It wasn’t ideal. A quarter century later, in the Ed Sullivan Theater again, Stephen Colbert from The Late Show borrowed one of my bee veils to do a skit in which he discussed having no apes in his apiary. (Get it?) Years later still, a swarm settled on a traffic signal just in front of the theater—it had come down from the aforementioned world’s highest apiary, more than likely. We borrowed a ladder from the studio and took the bees home.

  More recently I dumped live bees all over a stuntwoman for an episode of The Blacklist and enjoyed chatting with James Spader in between takes. At one point when we were reading through the script together, I apparently made a face in response to one of the lines.

  “Andrew? What was that? Is there something you have to tell us?” Spader said in the manner a vigilant teacher might use to address a pupil caught talking to a friend during class.

  I shifted my eyes to Allison, one of my helpers that day. She gave a soft shrug as if to say “This is your problem; I cannot help you.” There were about twenty people crammed onto the set, which was outfitted with faux beehives and all sorts of beekeeping gear. I looked in Spader’s direction and gently pointed out that the queen bee did not actually gather royal jelly—or whatever incorrect behavior the script had her or one of her hive companions engaging in. Almost immediately we changed gears, and before I knew it the two of us were sitting side by side poring over the minutiae of the script as it pertained to honey bees, two dozen crew members silent and looking none too happy.

  The producers had to send my revisions back to California each time I made a correction. Spader was pleased, as he was as meticulous as his character on the show, and wanted everything to be perfectly accurate. The crew was clearly displeased, as the day dragged on for fourteen hours due in no small part to the script review and the wait for script approval from the higher-ups. I made no friends, aside from Spader, that day. The stuntwoman fancied herself something of an expert on bees and everything else, did not take instruction well, and among other departures from normative behavior when handling live bees, made the mistake of being too much in a hurry—not a good idea when it comes to Apis mellifera. She ended up being stung dozens of times. But they “got the shot,” so the producers didn’t balk.

  The Blacklist, of course, was a high-end production. On the low-end side, a woman once tried very hard to convince me to cover her in honey bees as she did a tai chi exercise. She also wanted me to find a rooftop on which to perform this escapade. And she wanted me to volunteer my time since she would be “promoting honey bees.” I can’t remember what her motivation was. Lack of adequate prescription psychiatric medication, probably. I passed on that one. Another request I let fall by the wayside was from a bartender in Hell’s Kitchen. She wanted me to gather bee venom, which she would, she imagined, spread on the rims of the glasses “to make the drinker’s lips feel numb and tingly.” Never mind anyone who might be allergic, I suppose. So beyond just maintaining my small charges in a beehive and stealing their honey, beekeeping in and around New York City has led me to some unusual situations with bees and humans. And I love it all.

  The most memorable television venture was when I was hired to shoot a commercial for the state of New York, one of those “I w New York” commercials that show people in the other forty-nine states how great a time they would have if only they’d come spend their time and money in the Big Apple. We moved ten beehives from our Connecticut farm onto the rooftop of a tall building on Beekman Street in the Financial District. The building, which had formerly housed a century-old law firm, had magnificent detail within and a commanding view of lower Manhattan from above. Since this was during the time that One World Trade Center was being built where the Twin Towers had fallen, the view was both impressive and poignant. Among other scenes, the commercial featured, for a brief moment, me lifting up a frame of honey bees from a beehive, smiling at them, and looking tremendously pleased to be on a New York City rooftop. My scene was so short that if you sneezed, you would have missed it.

  But it was an amazing piece of work in the end: The soundtrack to the commercial was “Empire State of Mind” performed by Jay-Z and featuring Alicia Keys, and the narration was done by Robert De Niro. But the most interesting and fun part for me was that Spike Lee himself directed the spot. I’ve enjoyed Spike Lee joints since I worked as a projectionist at an alternative movie theater back in the 1980s. At that point, the small, independent SoNo Cinema in South Norwalk was the only option for seeing many of the foreign films and smaller releases of the day without heading into New York City. It was there, working as a projectionist, using an old-fashioned and even then outdated two-reel projector system and switching seamlessly between the two reels by listening for the bells and watching out for the cigarette burns in the right-hand corners, that I got to know and largely admire the work of Spike Lee.

  This admiration didn’t diminish upon meeting him. Anna Veccia was helping me again that day, as was my father, Norm. Spike, raised in Brooklyn but originally from the great state of Georgia (whose official state insect, like Utah’s, is the honey bee), called my father “sir,” which placed him on my good side immediately. Spike has a film production company based in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, called Forty Acres and a Mule. He employs a huge crew. Anna was in heaven working among an ensemble of friendly, muscular men. She was so smitten by her surroundings that she didn’t even feel it when she got stung on her cheek.

  Spike himself was a bit smaller, older, and rounder than I remembered him from his days on screen as a pizza delivery boy in Do the Right Thing. He was also terrified of bees. As various preparatory tasks were performed by his underlings, we spent two hours together chatting about bees while he maintained a safe distance from them, and for extra measure and in spite of the heat, wore two hoodies and a bee veil. Maybe this was as a precaution in case any of the bees had seen either of his less impressive works She Hate Me or Red Hook Summer and wanted revenge.

  Spike’s questions were basic and genuinely curious (“Do bees sleep?” and “Is honey their vomit?”). Naturally, my questions on the subject of filmmaking would be just as elementary. But once we started shooting, it was clear that Spike was a master of his craft. The final product, the commercial, was great, and I learned something even more magical that day—all about the world of residual payments. That commercial ran around the country for months, and for every time it appeared on screen, I received a check. Those few hours rewarded me better than an average year of teaching.

  In addition to the thrill of hobnobbing with the likes of Spike Lee and the craziness of fielding inquiries from tai-chi whack-jobs, occasionally there’s the satisfaction of being involved with serious art. One day in 2014, when I was hawking honey at the summer farmers’ market in Rockefeller Center, a nice woman approached me from the Museum of Modern Art to discuss the possibility of collaborating on an art project for the museum that would include live honey bees. The more we talked, the more interested I became. Part of the reason I was intrigued was because the project was familiar to me, in that the artist’s studio had reached out to me about it via email a few years prior, in 2011.

  Dear Andrew Coté,

  I work with the visual artist and filmmaker Pierre Huyghe, a French artist based in New York. He is one of the most celebrated artists of his generation, having exhibited his work at the major museums and galleries worldwide.
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br />   The letter went on about what an incredible hero this guy was to the art world and how he was the best thing to come out of France since baguettes and Madame Curie.

  Would you be willing to have a brief phone conversation with me as soon as possible? I realize you must be very busy but perhaps it’s faster to have a phone call rather than answer email.

  I was busy, but, of course, I did phone Melissa, the assistant who had reached out to me from Pierre’s studio, and we had several conversations about how Pierre could succeed in his idea for incorporating live bees into his art. But soon, in what was and is a pattern, I could sense that the person on the other end of the line didn’t so much want a few minutes’ worth of advice as they did a full-blown complimentary consultation. Dope that I am, by the time I fully realized this, I had pretty much unloaded all of my ideas on the assistant via various chats and emails. When I broached the subject of establishing a paid consultation to continue, contact on their end immediately ceased. They later fully implemented my ideas and insights, giving no credit or payment whatsoever to me. I learned from the experience; now when people attempt to speak to me about special projects, particularly when attempting to utilize honey bees in unconventional ways, I’m pretty tight-lipped until we have some sort of written understanding. Sometimes people take this the wrong way. Though no one expects an attorney, a therapist, a plumber, or any other professional to work for free, it seems that people are often so charmed by honey bees that they forget that the individuals who keep those charming creatures need to make a living, too. If someone who keeps beehives wanders up to me at the Union Square Greenmarket, has a routine question about bees, and I am not too busy, I am more than happy to talk shop and give advice as I am able. But this was different.

  My experience with MoMA was the polar opposite of that with Pierre’s studio. Everyone I came into contact with from MoMA was professional, appreciative, and serious. My interaction with them all began when a wonderful woman named Lynda Zycherman sent an email to the NYCBA in 2014, about which I was naturally curious for a couple of reasons:

  I am one of the Conservators for Sculpture at MoMA. I was hoping to get in contact with Andrew Coté, at the suggestion of Lou Sorkin, Entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History. I need to confer with a beekeeper about a sculpture that includes live bees. Please contact me ASAP at the numbers below, or at this e-mail.

  I remembered speaking on a panel with Dr. Sorkin a year or two prior at a Slow Food event, where we’d chatted over wine and cheese. I was happy that he remembered me at all, let alone that he thought enough of me to recommend me to the Museum of Modern Art. When Lynda Zycherman and I, along with her assistant, Ellen Moody, who is now an associate conservator at MoMA, met in September 2014, we did so at the Rockefeller Center Greenmarket, as arranged in our initial email discussions, since it was just a few blocks from the museum. It was a few days before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which is celebrated in part with dipping apples into honey to ensure a sweet new year. Lynda mentioned she would be out of the office during the High Holidays, which in her case meant about two weeks, and so I loaded both Lynda and Ellen up with various honeys for their respective apple dipping and challah munching, and we made plans to meet in a few weeks. It was an auspicious beginning.

  And meet we did—and meet and meet and meet. Sometimes two of us, sometimes three, sometimes twenty of us at a large table filled with curators, security, public relations, attorneys (always attorneys), and, it seemed, someone from every department of the museum. I got a real taste of the bureaucracy and scope of a place like the Museum of Modern Art. I am in awe of the work that these folks do in housing and displaying the artwork, and educating the public as one of the largest and certainly most important museums of modern art on the planet. The museum—well, to describe MoMA is well above my pay grade so leave it at this: It is an inspiring museum, and though they are routinely changing the exhibits and bringing in new pieces, only about 3 percent of its collection is ever on display at any one time. So to have a place like this send some of their people to come and speak to me while I foisted honey on tourists made me feel very special.

  MoMA contacted me based on a personal recommendation, but I am often the go-to New York City bee guy because I founded and am de facto head of the New York City Beekeepers Association, which means I’m highly accessible. Woody Allen said some variant of “80 percent of success in life is just showing up.” When beekeeping needed to be legalized, I showed up. I was the one who started the NYCBA and spent time preparing the classes, teaching the courses, organizing the meetings, finding speakers, renting halls, answering thousands of emails, opening bank accounts, doing tax prep and paperwork, showing up to events, visiting schools to give talks, and everything else that goes along with leading an organization with a mission “to provide our members with a medium for sharing knowledge and mutual interest in beekeeping, and to educate and promote the benefits of beekeeping to the world, in a forum of friendship and fun, and to do so safely.” Not at all on my own, I rush to say. There were many others who also dedicated and volunteered their time toward bee-centric goals: David Glick, Bettina Utz, Molly Conley, Paulo Anjou, Kelly York, Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, Vivian Wang. But after a few seasons, they largely came and went as life shuffled them to and fro. Jobs relocated some, children emerged from others, and priorities shifted from bee brood to their own brood.

  In time, after a great many meetings and conferences and phone calls and insurance policies and site visits, there was an agreement that MoMA would purchase a statue from Pierre, I would ensure that the honey bees built their hive as specified by the artist’s instructions, which were in reality just as per my 2011 instructions, and the museum would have the first exhibit containing live creatures in its nearly ninety-year history. I was chuffed. I was also amused and felt some satisfaction that the museum had hired me to curate the beehive on the sculpture of the artist who designed the beehive on my suggestions.

  The head of the statue was a concrete copy of a 1930s Max Weber statue, and the body that of a woman who was lying down and propped up on an elbow. It was delivered in a wooden crate to our small, unprotected, totally unsecure farm in Connecticut. We lifted it off the delivery truck with our forklift and set it down, cracked it open, and tried very hard to be impressed. The departure from the Weber version was immediately visible in the form of sheets of honeycomb-imprinted plastic that obscured the reposed woman’s head and face. The idea was to entice the honey bees to build an exposed nest there so that the head of the woman would become a seemingly feral colony of nesting bees. Not wanting to shine too much light on the magic, I won’t explain exactly how this was done. I will say that honey bees in North America are not generally accustomed to or fond of building outside of a small, dark, dry, secure space, so this was slightly challenging. If we had been in the Himalayas, on the other hand, this might have been easier, as Apis dorsata laboriosa, native to that part of the world, enjoy building open-air homes with the comb exposed alfresco.

  But there were stumbling blocks in accomplishing this in New England. In the process, I lost two colonies to absconding. Whereas a swarm is how a beehive splits from one into two colonies, each complete with its own queen, when bees abscond, 100 percent of them leave in search of greener pastures. I watched one group fly away and land on the eaves of the house next door, and a few hours later, mercifully, move again, to where I could more easily grab them. Another left without leaving any forwarding information or eyewitnesses. There is only so much bees will tolerate before they give flight or otherwise express their disapproval.

  Which is partly why I decided to place two beehives atop the roof of the museum. I wanted to be sure that if things went wrong with the sculpture I would have a replacement colony—and a backup colony for the backup colony—ready for action the same day. To that end I reached out to my trusty friends the Pintos.

  Dennis Pinto was
born in Nairobi, Kenya. His wife, Joy, like me, is from Connecticut. They have two teenage children, Sasha and Tristan. Dennis and Joy run a family safari company, Micato Safaris, that covers much of the continent but specializes in East and Southern African safaris. The Pintos had heard about my work with the Samburu tribe in Kenya, and we hit it off. Once the elder Pinto child, Sasha, had peeked inside a beehive at a friend’s school, she was hooked. Generally I don’t take on youngsters, but these kids were so bright and eager that I couldn’t say no.

  When it came time to place two beehives atop MoMA, Sasha and I decided that we could not just slap two average beehives on the roof. “Even if no one sees them, they need to be special,” Sasha implored. She was right. So I dreamed up the idea of building two hives that she then decorated to look like little New York City buildings. (I dreamed, Sasha built. It was a great arrangement!) One was reminiscent of a pair of townhouses and the other looked like a tenement, right down to the exterior fire escapes. Into the tenement hive we placed a strong colony of Italian honey bees, which quickly overpopulated to the point where bees were always hanging around on the tenement’s stoop and fire escape. Had we hung laundry it would have looked perfectly like a nineteenth-century tenement from the Lower East Side. Unfortunately, we did not build our own works of art to withstand being out-of-doors. By the end of their three-month stay on MoMA’s roof, the hive apartment buildings appeared dilapidated, not unlike a lot of city buildings in the 1970s. In both incarnations, first pristine and later ramshackle, they were spectacular-looking abodes for the bees.