Honey Day at High Line Park NYC

It's Honey Day !!

On Wed July 29th, High Line Park hosted a "Honey Day" event. From 2-7pm Beekeepers from across the New York State area presented their local honey to the public. The vendor lineup included: SkylineHoney, Andrew's Local Honey, The Brooklyn Grange, Mike's Hot Honey, and Ruth Harrigan's Honey / MEEBeauty products, to name a few.

 

While I was there, I got to learn a whole lot about bees and beekeeping! Here are some interesting facts I picked up that day^.^

• The place where bees are kept and farmed are called Apiaries. The process of beekeeping is called apiculture.
• Bees prefer to keep their hives in quiet areas away from humans to protect their Queen and their honey - that is why city rooftops have proven to make great Apiaries!
• The color of honey is dependent on the type of seasonal flowers available. Light to golden-colored honey is harvested from Spring to Mid Summer. The bees pollinate flowers such as Linden in that time. The darker, brown-colored honey is harvested in Late Summer to Early Autumn which have pollen from Goldenrod and Clover.
• Honey is extracted from combs by centrifuge. The "frames" of honeycombs are placed into an extractor that spins the frame until honey is pulled out and drained into a container.

Ever since I watched the eye-opening documentary "Vanishing of the Bees," I have really grown to appreciate the presence of bees. Seeing the bees at Honey Day made me feel really happy. Nowadays, I feel less afraid of them and more appreciative of their existence. When I was very young I was stung by a bee - right on my poor chin! - during a school trip to the Queens Botanical Garden. From that experience I was traumatized and develop a big fear around them. As I grew up too, I was always given the impression that bees are dangerous, or that they are like pests. Bees would make their hives on the gutters of our old house, and my parents would violently spray them down with water to kill them. People around me would also be afraid of bees and run away at the very sight of them. As you can see, I grew up with a strong preconception about bees and was never educated about them until just recently. I truly had no understanding before about what they do besides sting people and make honey!

But bees don't just make honey! They pollinate 80% of flowering crops which includes the numerous fruits and grains that make up 1/3 of the staples in our diet. Bees are also important for livestock as they pollinate crops like Alfalfa feed for cattle. Strawberries, Apples, Avocados, Almonds, Cocoa, Coffee, Tomatoes, Carrot, Flax, even Cotton, and the list goes on, are all crops pollinated by bees both naturally and commercially. So basically, without bees, our entire agricultural system would come to an end.

And what I learned is that it's important to keep chemical pesticides OUT of our food, because bees are unable to withstand the effects of chemical treatment to crops. Upon direct exposure to pesticides, they immediately die. Over time, the bees that pollinate from treated crops also die, although at a slower rate. Chemical pesticides are a direct factor in the occurrence of "colony collapse" when thousands of bees abandon their hive and die. It is a really horrifying and sad situation as documented in "Vanishing of the Bees."

However, the good news is that backyard and city apiculture is helping the bee population regain their numbers, adding to the gene pool of healthy, disease-resistant bees! It also brings more awareness to the value of bees to the larger population who are now separated from methods of food production. Many of the local New York beekeepers at "Honey Day" started out as hobbyists themselves. Robert of SkyLine Honey in the Bronx, and Ruth Harrington of MEEBeauty in Queens, being great examples!

While though they are acting purely out to their own interest and passion for beekeeping, in turn, they represent a new movement that is helping our agricultural system, bringing forward a greater acceptance for an organic and sustainable lifestyle that keeps us close to a more harmonious way of living amongst the earth and our non-human friends.

A big HURRAY for Honey Day! 

Honey Day is an annual event hosted by High Line Park -  a beautiful reclaimed old railway track boasting lush gardens and unique public works in Manhattan. The event is also in partnership with the Brooklyn Grange, the world's largest rooftop soil farm located in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

More Information
How can you help the Bees? [PBS]

Vanishing of the Bees

NYC Beekeepers Association

MEEBeauty

SkyLine Honey

Brooklyn Grange