by Andrew Coté
One such case where DOHMH requested assistance was in Harlem in what appeared to be an abandoned lot. Later, it was suggested that it was a registered community garden, but it displayed no plaque, no signage of any kind, and bore no resemblance to anything other than a pile of dirt and refuse in a space between two buildings on a dilapidated block. DOHMH did not consider the ground more than a vacant lot.
* * *
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So there I sat, in the stagnant little room within the detective squad on the second floor, alternately reading about how Tajōmaru confesses to some of the crimes of which he is accused, and nodding off. After about an hour, Detective Lonnie Brown entered the cramped room and took up about half of it. Detective Brown is a tall, handsome, powerfully built African American man, and he seemed like a swell guy. I know plenty of police officers and have been around them all of my life. My father’s brother Irv, who is also my godfather, was a police officer. My brother, Mike, is, too, as are many of his friends, of course. I have known loads of them, so I feel comfortable around them. I did not, however, mistake my comfort as a guarantee of their good nature or their investment in my best interest. Still, I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. Whether it’s fair or not (it’s not), I knew I had relatively little to fear from Johnny Law given that I was an innocent, middle-class, middle-aged white man. I really felt like Detective Brown was simply trying to figure out a few things. So he sat down, and we started to chat. But I wasn’t quite ready to throw caution to the wind and spill my guts. His easy manner and empathetic nature were possibly just part of his interrogation style.
“Do you know anything about some beehives that were taken from a spot on 119th Street?” he asked directly. The truth is that I did know about it. All about it. Months earlier I had received an email from one of my several contacts at the Department of Health, who sent me several pictures and wrote:
Good afternoon Andrew,
One of our staff members came across these abandoned active hives (there are live bees)…located at 13 West 119 Street, Manhattan….Please let me know if and when you can send someone at the location to investigate and remove the hives.
I missed the first email but they re-sent it a week later, at which point I had followed up and made sure, in writing, that the DOHMH bosses knew about the request to remove the hives. They did. So I went there myself with a few of NYCBA’s apprentices. Sure enough, we found three live beehives in deplorable condition. I checked the insides of the boxes and the tops of the frames for a name—sometimes beekeepers write or burn names or initials into the equipment—but this is more of a commercial beekeeper’s practice than a hobbyist’s. Although apparently orphans, the bees seemed healthy. However, the wooden boxes were tilted back, allowing in moisture, which causes a whole host of problems, including rotting wood. They were on or near the ground, which was also contributing to the rotting wood, and they seemed fit to burst with activity, so they had either overwintered well or were recently installed packages. In either case, they needed room to grow or else they would soon swarm. Indeed, it was later discovered that one colony had swarm cells already.
I wanted to put a note on the gate of the seemingly abandoned apiary and give the owner(s) a chance to relocate them, if, in fact, there were still owners. But DOHMH responded negatively to my request to do so. They wanted the bees removed immediately. I never asked them why, but I assumed it had to do with the fact that they were only a few inches from the property line to the neighboring lot, where there was construction taking place on what had clearly long been an abandoned building. I was later told by the NYPD that the hives were considered abandoned property, by the police department at least; DOHMH considered them abandoned simply by virtue of having no registered owner. Whatever the reasons behind their desire, the authorities wished them moved posthaste.
It was springtime when all this happened, so I was slammed with work. Rather than handle the removal myself, I contacted three of my fellow beekeepers. They appeared at the site at daybreak one day, crank-strapped the hives together, screened the bees in, and started to carry them the thirty or so feet to a waiting pickup truck parked halfway on the sidewalk. It was child’s play to do this, but as my father always tells me, “There are no five-minute jobs.” The morning calm of the two men carrying that hive vanished as both the figurative and literal bottom fell out and thousands of angry bees let their displeasure at the disturbance be known. One of the beehives, screened and strapped securely, was so thoroughly rotted out on the bottom that when it was lifted and moved a few steps, all present found themselves under full assault. Perhaps the former owners can find some emotional compensation in the fact that a couple of the guys ended up with swollen ankles that day from a plethora of stings given by their former bees. It is all the reparation they will ever receive.
To my knowledge all of the equipment was discarded, primarily because it was pine (a softwood) and left exposed to the elements at least all winter. There were additional boxes, too, which had been left out in the elements and not even covered by a tarp. It all amounted to a mildewy, dry-rotted, undesirable stack of wood. But the bees themselves, unaware of their impoverished state, were healthy and happy and were put to work immediately in new and certainly improved lodgings. When a car is stolen, it is sometimes taken to a chop shop and broken up into pieces, and ends up being worth more in parts than it was as a whole. This is not the case with appropriated live colonies of honey bees. Only the bees and the frames they were on remained; the rest was tossed. Then spring continued.
Upon questioning, I told Detective Brown that I had heard from DOHMH that the beehives needed to be removed, and I had passed that information around the NYCBA, and several people had been interested in relocating the beehives. I told him that I had been to the spot myself and had seen the apiary, which had appeared to me also to be abandoned. In any case, the beehives had been moved to three different apiaries, in two states, by the end of the day.
Months after the hives were moved, I was standing at my booth at the Union Square Greenmarket when a fellow I’d known peripherally for perhaps eight years wandered up to my tidy little stall. He was a regular at the bee club meetings and often purchased packages of bees through the bee club or from me. He was a nice enough guy, and he and his partner lived in my neighborhood in a nice duplex. I sometimes saw them walking their two mastiffs in and around Central Park. When I asked him how his bees were doing, the floodgates opened. He told me a whole long saga about how his hives had been stolen.
I had no idea when he started talking that I had helped arrange for his bees to be taken; I am called upon so often for similar jobs that once they’re in the past, they often blend together. When I eventually started to get an inkling that I may have been involved, I asked him some specific questions to try to ascertain whether there was a connection. He told me that he had filed a police report, but he didn’t know which precinct it was he’d visited or even where it was. That seemed strange to me. He said that his hives had been registered, but I knew that no hives had ever been registered at the address I’d visited in Harlem. He told me that the property where his hives were located was an established community garden, but at the time there was zero signage at the Harlem location I’d visited. A call later to GreenThumb, which oversees all community gardens in the city of New York, said there was a pending application for the Harlem site, but there were problems with it. So I figured this must be a different location, a different situation.*
“Too bad,” I thought, sincerely. Not a unique tale. I’ve had beehives stolen from my farm in Connecticut, and the theft of hundreds of beehives at a time from rural areas is a sadly common occurrence. Some beekeepers now outfit their beehives with GPS or other tracking devices in case of such larceny, but not most that I know, and not people with only a few hives.
* * *
—
So Detective Brown and I went through the entire ep
isode, and he excused himself. He asked me if I wanted a drink. I declined but thanked him. Sometimes suspects are offered a drink to fill up their bladders, which puts them ill at ease. To further unsettle them, they might not even be permitted to use the facilities in a timely manner. But I’m guessing that was my paranoia more than anything else. Probably Detective Brown just thought I might be thirsty.
So I sat in the interrogation room for a good while longer wondering what would happen next. One aspect of all of this that bothered me was that I was supposed to meet up with my father later that morning and, assuming I could reach him, I didn’t want him to worry about me sitting in the Harlem police station. He had many similar experiences with the police, with no out like I had. Dirt poor, as a teenager he and his best friend, Eddie—my mother’s brother—would often walk at night. It gave them something to do, and they might walk and talk for hours. My father is slightly bow-legged and Eddie is somewhat knock-kneed, so the family joked that walking side by side they spelled the word “OX.” Sometimes the police would pick them up and take them into interrogation rooms just to mess with them. Anyway, I didn’t want him to worry needlessly.
Another hour later and again true to the script of every television crime drama that has ever been aired, Detective Brown reentered the room and said, “Okay, you’re free to go.” I was much relieved but not surprised. “I just got a call from DOHMH. They confirmed they authorized the removal.” I put my book back into my pocket as I stood up. “I guess you need to get back to your market,” Detective Brown said, smiling, showing me that he knew my schedule. He walked me out and we chatted about bees some more, and I answered his questions, which had been informed by videos and articles he had read about urban beekeeping—and me—as he pursued this case. He confided that he hadn’t bothered to work the case sooner because it seemed a bit ridiculous to him, and once he started investigating me, he realized that I would probably not “risk it all over a few beehives.” My gut feeling that he was a good guy was correct. The beekeeping neighbor who accused me of stealing his beehives was still not at all happy when I ran into him shortly thereafter and told him what had transpired. I do not know if he was upset that I was not charged or that he had lost his apiary. Or both. I did find out that it was his beekeeping partner who had filed the police report, so he had come to me at the market sort of half-cocked and under-informed. Still, I figured we might be able to help him out as perhaps the next few wayward beehives, or at least swarms, could be passed to him to help ease the sting of having lost his own.
* * *
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December is usually filled with all sorts of activities related to holidays and end-of-the-year celebrations. Usually this results in a rush of shopping, which means that the Union Square Greenmarket can remain quite busy throughout the month. One evening, despite business being as brisk as the weather, I needed to close my stand a little early because I was scheduled to attend a function at the United Nations. The previous year I had installed the apiary on UN grounds, and since then had replaced the center Langstroth beehive with a traditional Slovenian double beehive. Slovenians are serious beekeepers with a long tradition of maintaining colonies and harvesting fine honey. When they decided to introduce the idea of a worldwide day of recognition of the humble honey bee and her cousins, they donated a gorgeous traditional Slovenian beehive to Bees Without Borders, which I placed in the apiary at the United Nations. There was even a special honey bee stamp issued by the UN post office to commemorate the occasion and celebrate the honey bee.
I was very happy to have been invited to the gala at the United Nations celebrating the passage of the proposal for World Bee Day. Though it was December, and May 20—the agreed-upon date of the celebratory day—was far off, a vote had been cast earlier that week, and some delegates from Slovenia who were themselves beekeepers had made the trip from Europe to celebrate the event. It was nice because we all knew one another by reputation, and when we met for the first time it was like meeting old friends. The camaraderie found among beekeepers is refreshing and encouraging in a world that is often divisive.
That day was the last Wednesday before Christmas, so many people at the Union Square Greenmarket were buying last-minute gifts, and I was happy for the business. I’d carried a suit with me to the market, but forgotten to bring appropriate dress socks. When the sun went down and I was done at the market for the day, I climbed into the back of my Honey Mobile—a converted U-Haul onto which we’d hand-painted scenes of honey bees buzzing high above Manhattan as a sort of rolling, roving billboard—pulled the rolling gate shut, and donned my suit. My one nice pair of Brooks Brothers Italian shoes just barely fit over my thick gray wool winter socks. I emerged from the rear of the vehicle a new man, confusing the few people who happened to be standing by my truck.
I drove crosstown and left my worker, Zeke, to sit in the truck for three hours since finding legal parking for an oversized vehicle anywhere near the United Nations is nearly impossible. So Zeke generated a little extra income while napping and babysitting my truck, and I drank red wine and hobnobbed amid a couple hundred finely dressed people, including a few Balkan diplomats and a motley crew of local beekeepers whom I had invited to join me at the suggestion of the hosts. We all cleaned up reasonably well. Possibly we lent an air of rustic authenticity to the festivities, but more likely we weren’t noticed by the diplomatic crew.
Among my guests was a guy named Flynn, who worked in security at the United Nations. Flynn was raised by a single mother who was a police officer in the south Bronx during the worst of the crack epidemic. He skated through Desert Storm as a marine without incident, and then survived being shot in the Bronx while he raised three daughters as a single father. He still lives in the Bronx with his youngest, Alaura, who was there to enjoy the evening with us, too. In their apartment they keep beehives in a spare bedroom. The bees fly in and out of the windows and do quite well for themselves, feasting at Van Cortlandt Park and Woodlawn Cemetery. I am unaware of anyone else who has placed an NYC apiary indoors with sustained success. I do not mean a simple observation hive with a hose out a crack in the window—I mean full-blown hives in a screened-off room. It is a remarkable testimony to the intrinsic neurosis of apiculturists. And supports Alaura’s assertion that her father is nuts.
Then there was Toby Bloch, an iconoclastic country boy pulled to the big city by his hopeless love for a Prada-wearing better half, Daniela, and seeking to reconnect with his homesteading roots by keeping bees on his roof with his daughter, Olivia. He loves explaining to anyone who will listen how bees epitomize the concept of collective action, maintaining a network of mutual care. His favorite pastimes are sharing what bees have to teach us about a socialist utopia, and trying to instill a sense of collaboration for the greater good around issues of housing, transportation, and environmental justice. So in essence his values align with those of the honey bees perfectly.
My beekeeping friend Robert Deschak attended and was even kind and generous enough to provide me with a lovely necktie adorned with honey bees embroidered in gold thread, which I, of course, changed into immediately. Like bees in a winter hive we huddled together much of the time, but more to chat than to share warmth and food, though we did that, too.
Yuliana came along to impart an air of class and respectability to the entourage. Like me, she had left work a little early, then walked in the biting cold to meet me in front of the Japan Society, half a block from the UN. We then met the rest of the retinue in front of the 193 flags that adorn the perimeter of the international territory in the Turtle Bay area of Manhattan. We all went inside and through security, which resembled TSA at an airport, complete with bag X-rays and metal detectors. We entered the area designated for the party, grabbed some wine and fancy hors d’oeuvres, and were immediately impressed by the wonderful honeycomb sculpture that had been erected for the event. It was massive, large enough for dozens of people to stand in. More than
that, it was a learning station where people could see videos, play interactive games, and even wear virtual reality goggles that would transport them into a beehive, as it were.
At one point Yuliana and I were inside the honeycomb sculpture when I sensed a malevolent rumbling from below. I glanced downward to find Liane Newton. Liane had come onto the beekeeping scene around the time legalization passed, though she was not involved in that effort. Appearing around sixty years old and an attorney who as far as I could find has never practiced law, Liane was living with her mother on the Upper East Side. She is the current head of another beekeeping group, which has a name that was deliberately created to be confusingly similar to the New York City Beekeepers Association. She came over to say hello. Sort of.
Leashed in pearls, she sashayed over to us with all of the grace of a hobbled penguin. “Andrew, why, I hardly know you,” she began, as I craned my neck downward to hear her. “You’ve grown a beard and you’ve put on a lot of weight.” I had not expected to be fat-shamed on international territory so early into the evening. But I could not deny the truth of her observation, either. In respect to the latter, in Japan my new bulk is called shiawase-butori, or happily plump (幸せ太り). The delightful and apt expression refers to the weight a man gains that is the result of someone new in his life who’s feeding him and making him happy, healthy, and comfortable enough to let himself go a little. I must have been very happy at that point—euphoric—if we were to judge by the snugness of my suit. The irony was that this commentary came from a woman who, as a bulky bantam beekeeper, commands greater heights supine.