Andrew and Rania the beekeeper guy + gal at the St. Marks Garden opened up their hives and told us all about their residents. I tasted fresh honey right off the hive and learned all about laying eggs, making queens, impregnating queens, pollen, royal jelly, drones and swarms. Did you know that Queens eat only royal jelly and that drones can 'make' new queens by feeding royal jelly to the eggs?
Rania's hive had recently swarmed so there wasn't much activity, but Andrew's was alive and kicking.
Andrew's Hive
Then, just a few days later, I caught an interesting segment on WNYC about a new movie - The Queen of the Sun. The segment featured an interview with the filmmakers to answer the question - "Why Are Honeybees Disappearing?" Like most other agricultural crops, bees have been victimized by the use of pesticides, genetically modified crops, monocultures, and mechanization. One interesting and highly disturbing tidbit from the interview:
Bees eat honey as their food (honey as carbohydrate, pollen as protein). When industrial beekeepers harvest all the honey, what do the bees eat? You guessed it! Corn Syrup. That just may be man's greatest insult to nature. Take the most delicious naturally sweet substance on the planet away from the species who worked so hard to produce it and feed them corn syrup instead.
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