Covered in bees!

I have a feeling you’ve been waiting for this day. Because today, I can award myself my very first badge . . . Bee Farming.

I took a trip to the slightly-further-away reaches of Brooklyn to interview John Howe, a rooftop beekeeper. Tracy in tow (again!) we visited John first for a video introduction to his beekeeping background, and then to actually check out his hives.

Did I mention that, while 1000 bees sound like a lot, they look like a hell of a lot more?

John’s been a beekeeper for the past eight years, first with three hives and later with two. A self-taught beekeeper, he coordinates the New York Beekeepers Meetup. He harvests roughly 100 pounds of honey each year from his hives (buy some here).

In the backyard, John showed me his display hive, which he takes to schools and other public functions. It’s home to roughly 1000 bees, who, like I said, are a lot more than you’d imagine. (See that box right there? There are 1000 bees inside it. Seriously.)

John also showed us his honey harvesting room, where he uses a warm knife to remove the wax caps from the combs, then places the frame — the wood or plastic piece that holds the honeycombs — into his extractor, a giant steel salad shooter of a machine, which spins off the honey for filtration. Then? Delicious, delicious honey.

By this point, fully prepared with information about honey harvesting and with a little preparation for seeing a whole lot of bees, it was time to head up to the roof for a little hands-on research.

Would it be too dorky of me to say that the hives were buzzing? Seriously, they were.

I followed John’s advice, keeping away from the fronts of the hives. He tells me that he barely wears protective gear anymore — “I’m just not afraid.”

The hives are wooden langstroth models, the kind that almost look like a chest of drawers. He also has a single polystyrene tray. I wondered if bees might have housing preferences — the old-fashioned log cabin bees vs. the new money bees. Not so. “The bees don’t seem to notice, but I don’t like the look of it.”

One more beekeeping tidbit: while I’d imagined NYC’s beekeeping ban to go back hundreds of years (it seems like a colonial type of law, doesn’t it?), John tells me it only dates back as far as the Giuliani administration. Know what other cities ban beekeeping? As far as I can tell, Ypsilanti, MI. Seriously. That may be it, kids.

(Check out this article for a more London-y take on beekeeping.)

(Oh, right, and check out the sidebar for a running tally of badges.)

(Oh right, and for Kate.)