#7. Beekeeping enthusiasts fly under the radar

I've been wondering how my neighbors are going to respond to my bee hives.  (I already know how my neighbor Lou, across the street, feels.  He thinks I have a screw loose.  But I don't think that's related to beekeeping.)  So the weekend before last I approached my nearest neighbors, Tonie and Bruce.  Their house is probably 200' from the 'bee yard'-to-be.  I gathered myself, took a deep breath and approached them.  Well, imagine my surprise when Tonie exclaimed "Really!!  That's great!  My father just gave up keeping bees about 10 years ago.  He kept them for years - since I was a kid - in suburban Brentwood."  (Long Island, not Los Angeles.)  So we talked about her father's beekeeping, which was wildly successful.  Tonie says he always had 4 - 5 hives, and reliably produced a couple hundred lbs. of honey a year.  He only quit because of his advanced age.  I asked Tonie to check with him to see if he had any equipment he might want to sell.

What a positive - and totally unanticipated - response.  And then when I mentioned my 'Plan Bee' to my friend Wendy from East Hampton, she told me that as a youngster she spent her summers working on an Amish farm where she worked the apiary.  She talked about how the Amish housed their bees in anything they could get their hands on - including old chests of drawers.

Then, about a week ago, beekeeping was brought even closer to home.    I was talking to Joan Porco, Montauk resident and our favorite newspaper columnist, who told me that an acquaintance of hers is a local beekeeper, but he keeps it very quiet, fearing neighbors' reactions. Finally, the other week, as I was chatting with my old friend and ex-neighbor Maura - who is so supportive of the whole beekeeping/backyard chicken/self-sufficiency thing - she told me that there is some old local she knows out here who used to keep bees, and maybe still does.

I have to say, I was kind of surprised.  I've never seen a hive anywhere on Montauk.  And, though I have lots and lots of different kinds of bees on my property, a honey bee is a very rare sight.  This would make a lot of sense if there are no beekeepers on Montauk.  Honeybees, not being native to the Americas, presumably must be introduced to remote areas like this.  And though bees certainly have the capacity to expand out of their hives and naturalize in the environment, wild colonies would probably spread slowly to Montauk, and in tiny geographical increments, from further west on Long Island and the North Fork.  If I were a bee, it would take some doing to persuade me cross Napeague.  And, presumably, wild honeybee colonies here on Montauk could easily fail without human support and management, given our hostile weather conditions.

But I don't know now.  Maybe I'm wrong and there are a lot more local bees and their keepers than I imagine.  Maybe they're just all flying under the radar.  I will now be on a mission to locate the illusive "Montauk Beekeeper".  He - or she - will have a lot of really useful information to share, I have no doubt.

Bee factoid:  bees belong to the same order of insects as ants - Hymenoptera.