Global Swarming Honeybees: Swarm Season '08: Code Black-&-Yellow in NYC

5.29.2008

Swarm Season '08: Code Black-&-Yellow in NYC

New York City's "thriving illegal bee scene"! The "underground honeybee world"! Read all about it!

It's all so illicit and city-health-code violation-y! YUM!

Legalities aside, there is a significant urban beekeeping scene in NYC as this latest swarm season reminds us. And once again I say, it's a good and healthy thing for urban denizens to be reminded of our place in the order of things—and the fact that, urban, rural, or whatever (by which I guess I mean suburban) this world is to be shared.

One wonders why the city doesn't just change this stupid law (it would be a very green initiative, Mayor Bloomberg).

Many other cities actively encourage beekeeping. Take Paris for example. See also: Paris is Buzzing. Meet a San Francisco Beek. Or pay a visit to the fine individuals at the Chicago Honey Co-op. And know that all this is just the tip of the urban-beek iceberg.

2 comments:

Abelisto said...: Finally... some civil dis-o-bee-dience in the name of sustainability!; June 2, 2008 at 9:45 PM
Abelisto said...: P.S.

A friend tells me that Marla Spivak has encouraged the residents of St. Paul MN to break their city ordinances and keep bees in the city limits.; June 2, 2008 at 9:47 PM

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Quotes of Note

"The cynicism that you have is not your real soul."—Yoko Ono
"The country that elected George Bush — sort of — because he seemed like he’d be more fun to have a beer with than Al Gore or John Kerry is really getting its comeuppance."—Gail Collins
"How do you inherit the earth? By being awake."—Joni Mitchell
Causing the right amount of trouble is an art form.”—Judith Coche
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."—Philip K. Dick
"A meddling beekeeper is said to be the bees' worst enemy, and this may be true."—Ormond Aebi, The Art and Adventure of Beekeeping
"For too long we have been locked in an old fashioned, reductionist approach, dealing with bees as if they were mere machines created solely for our benefit, instead of highly evolved, wild creatures, with which we are privileged to work."—Phil Chandler, The Barefoot Beekeeper
"Neither among the bees nor any other animals that have a ray of our intellect, do things happen with the precision our books record. Too many circumstances remain unknown to us."—Maurice Maeterlinck
"In these times, acceleration spoils everything."—Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Musicologist
"Whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of dirt."—Barbara Kingsolver
"Healthy, happy bees don't need any additives."—Dee A. Lusby
"When the bird and the book disagree, always believe the bird."—Audubon
"There is a certain valid moment for every cloud."—Paul Strand

"For the bee, honey is the ultimate reality. It represents the fulfillment of her life mission, the triumph over her enemies, the continuity of the hive, the justification for working herself to death. Honey is to bees what money in the bank is to people—a measure of prosperity and well-being. But there is nothing abstract or symbolic about honey, as there is about money, which has no intrinsic value. There is more real wealth in a pound of honey, or a load of manure for that matter, than all the currency in the world. We often destroy the world's real wealth to create an illusion of wealth, confusing symbol and substance."—Wm. Longgood, The Queen Must Die