Bees in the City!
The title of a recent New York Times article suggests a b-grade horror flick about animals run amuck in the big city, but the story actually reveals a phenomenon that is much gentler, even gentlemanly. “Bees in the City” describes a thriving community of urban beekeepers who spend their spare time tending clandestine hives tucked into the back corners of yards and community gardens, and fixed onto the rooftops of concrete apartment blocks. Typically avid hobbyists, the beekeepers have found their efforts “oddly relaxing” and beneficial to local plant life (which the bees pollinate). Yet this relatively painstaking and benign pastime – especially given the gamut of New York’s preferred amusements – is actually illegal. The honeybee is, surprisingly, categorized with “hyenas, tarantulas, cobras, dingoes, and other animals considered too dangerous or venemous for city life.”
NYC’s beekeepers are presently petitioning the city’s Department of Health to amend the code, and here at the Farm we of course support their efforts. Nonetheless there is something romantic about bee-keeping’s present rogue status. We like the idea of a secret agrarian landscape hidden amidst the city’s skyscrapers, a silent re-colonization of the city by the country.
We also dig beekeeper style, which achieves a uncanny marriage of “fencing suit” and “space suit.”
