Have you ever really looked closely at a beeswing? This fineness may hold true for rareness and as a lyric in a song but if you get one of those beeswing stuck between your teeth it can be a real bugger to get out! A few years ago I cut my finger on a sugar cube and I think it is a cosmically comparable experience to the beeswing-between-teeth scenario that occurred this weekend.
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1932 news about bees |
Because this weekend was Honey Harvest and I was nipping at a pile of oozing honey and comb when the fine beeswing found me! I harbor mostly allergic and allegoric relationships to bees and was thrilled to expand experientially at my first ever Harvest. I also highly recommend that if you happen to have lost track of a dear friend in the world the best place to reunite is in a garage cutting and scratching honeycomb…thank you for the invitation Al!
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| Honey Harvesting |
And thank you Kurt and Rita for being urban beekeepers!
The first thing I learned was no space is too small or neighborhood too residential to hold a few hives of bees. For some (but not all) of these hives spend their time in a fenced-off area in the backyard approximately the size of a VW bus which makes me think that a lot of us are not utilizing our yards to there full potential! (Of course not all of us can measure up to my father’s suburban empty pool raccoon reserve either!) The hives also spend quality time in generous fields and the bees’ largess can be tasted in every spoonful of honey!
The first thing I learned was no space is too small or neighborhood too residential to hold a few hives of bees. For some (but not all) of these hives spend their time in a fenced-off area in the backyard approximately the size of a VW bus which makes me think that a lot of us are not utilizing our yards to there full potential! (Of course not all of us can measure up to my father’s suburban empty pool raccoon reserve either!) The hives also spend quality time in generous fields and the bees’ largess can be tasted in every spoonful of honey!
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| Bee Keeper Kurt (L) |
I did recently witness the dark-side of urban beekeeping however in NYC’s Chinatown. I had been walking along when I saw that the street had been quarantined off with ribbon and that there were emergency vehicles and policemen flanking the street corner where a post box was covered completely in bees! I quarried a police officer who told me he had been there for hours and I imagined he had orders to ‘shoot to kill’ in case of a swarm.
Next year I plan on coming to the Honey Harvest again and learning more about the bee keeping process. In the meantime I am licking my paw as I barrel through my jars of secretly sourced honey.
Next year I plan on coming to the Honey Harvest again and learning more about the bee keeping process. In the meantime I am licking my paw as I barrel through my jars of secretly sourced honey.
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Cutting the comb with a hot knife (L) and scratching the comb (R) |
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| Filling the jars |
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| Honey Sieve |
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| Bee filled with 2 magic beans |
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