Illegal Beekeeping in New York City Catches On
March 1st, 2010Via: Chow:
On a fall morning before work, 29-year-old Meg Paska climbs a rickety ladder, opens a trapdoor, and steps out onto the roof of her vinyl-sided row house in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Set incongruously against the Manhattan skyline and the satellite dishes of neighboring roofs, a healthy cloud of honeybees swoops in and around two white box hives.
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 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. Over the past few months, she has been contacted by scores of fellow Brooklynites wanting to see her hives and learn how to get started.
Like opting for a dachshund rather than having a baby, city dwellers choose bees because they are easier and take up less space than other urban farming operations, like, say, rooftop vegetable gardens. Amy Azzarito, a New York Public Library digital producer who lives in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, desperately wanted to keep chickens but had no backyard in which to put a coop. A friend in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, had roof access, so they got a hive together instead. “Bees are like the gateway agriculture crop in New York,” says Azzarito.
Research Credit: JH
The other nice thing is that pigs of various species do not feel comfortable around swarms of bees. So, if NYC residents have some concern about thos feral hogs, the beekeepers will be seen as major allies.