City Island Gold

Patrick Gannon, City Island Beekeeper.

This was the name that our 5-year old son Julian created for the product that you will can see on the shelves of local venues such as the Sugar & Spice Bakery. We strive to keep our island neighbors as sweet as can be. City Island Gold is the honey that our Italian honeybee ladies have produced from the nectar they collected from the millions of miscellaneous flowers all over our little island and the Pelhan Conservation Site. It is a mellow and distinctive honey with no aftertaste that we feel captures the nature of the people that make this well kept secret oasis so special.

Now for some stories of how this saga began and will continue. As a beekeeper, initiated to the joys of the craft in a small agricultural village called Lode outside Cambridge in England of 1975, I was fortunate to receive tuition from farmers who took beekeeping very seriously. Farmers are heavily reliant on the services of honeybees to pollinate the flowers of their crops such as apples, oil seeds, and clover so that production would be magnified exponentially.

These agri-sages advised me not to expect to harvest too much honey since there were so many bees already there and the competition might be too fierce for local flowers. However, since they mostly out-harvested for agricultural pollination, they did advise me to spend some time looking at local bee-friendly flowers to determine what the nature of the competition might be. As I looked at foraging bees throughout different times of the day over a couple of late spring / early summer weeks, it turned out that things weren’t as bad as they forecasted. I figured that their bees must be totally satisfied with the surplus they got from the fields and weren’t of the disposition to out-compete my Italian debutant ladies when they had so much pollen and honey in storage.

Starting in the fall of 2004 and the beginning of the year in 2005, this exploratory approach is exactly what I did on City Island, the Pelham Park and the Thomas Pell Wildlife Refuge Conservation Areas. I assumed that honeybees were abundant and the competition fierce.  I didn’t want to sink too much effort into a project that might fail for them and me. Beekeeping is not just a way to take get honey; it’s inspirational to manage them, see them flying out and working hard, helping them survive the pitfalls of life and be productive for both them and us. However, I was in for a major disappointment - a dearth of honeybees no matter where I looked. You would think that at least some of the main pollen flowers that show up in the early spring such as purple loosestrife [environmentalists don’t like because its an non-indigenous species that has degraded many prime wetlands resulting in large, monotypic stands that lack native plant species…but honeybees love it to feed their early season baby sisters so well] and the indigenous skunk cabbage where bees line up to sample the abundance of earliest pollen. These pollen bearers are critical to provide nutrition for rearing the early new brood so that they ready to fly and collect lots more pollen and nectar in a few weeks and get things in the hive rolling. Although these plants are abundant, honeybees were noticeably absent. A little later, as the major nectar bearing plants started to bloom across the area, a similar story was unfolding, even though some honeybees were out there doing business, there weren’t that many. In fact, the only competition was the good old Bumblebees. I was concerned, not just for the health of two honeybee colonies that I would be bringing in really soon, but for the status of wild honey-bees and by natural extension for the ecological well-being of City Island and the conservation sites in the absence of a major pollinator. Was there a major destructive element around that was compromising the well-being of nature’s ecological vanguard.  Well, I got good local advise and as you may have already figured, it was nothing to do with the local bay landfill monster, it appears that the insult to honeybees and other local insects such as crickets, butterflies and dragonflies who are also noticeably not in full attendance, was not honeybee mites, but was probably the fire breathing dragon Malathion (even the NYC Mayor's Chem-Bio Handbook described Malathion as a toxic nerve gas related to one used by the Nazis in WWII). Now its danger has been openly realized and “scientists are stating that Malathion (even at low levels) is in fact, a harmful chemical” at many levels from wildlife to humans (see, e.g., http://www.chem-tox.com/malathion/research/ ). The open Malathion sprayings that recently took place across City Island and the vicinity (lets not forget we are surrounded by conservation areas) in an attempt to curtail the spread of West Nile virus to humans though mosquito’s, may have been a valiant effort to protect humans, but seems to have had a devastating effect on many species other than mosquitoes. For example, even the absence of major mosquito predators such as dragonflies has given rise to a 15-fold increase in mosquito levels due to their absence in New York (comment by Dr. Warren Bell, Past president of Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment; who also said that “Malathion is dangerous and isn't very effective for long-term mosquito control”). My wife Nancy, who was pregnant at the time, was certainly worried after she read about the use of this pesticide and the implication for its role in birth defects (see website above for details). Sure, these beneficial species will likely bounce back in a non-naturally selected resistant form, and the spraying of a major pesticide may well have been justified. However, in the future it may be more environmentally appropriate and savvy for all concerned, to have used a less globally destructive method of mosquito control. Maybe we can even move beyond the Malathion follow-ups Anvil and Naled to more natural approaches in this organic phase of our countries history. Lets ship in hordes of indigenous dragonflies, praying mantis and other mosquito feeders.

Anyway, I crossed my fingers and hoped that the dragon was gone and that it was time to partially repopulate the City Island honeybee population and help reinvigorate that part of the ecological equation. Step one: I honeybee-educated the (semi-concerned) people living all around the coming apiary to understand the environmental role of honeybees and that unlike wasps (yellow jackets) they do not care about your summer picnic food or fruit juices and will not be dropping on by to bother you. In fact, all they care about are your flowers and the pollen and nectar they can harvest. Leave them alone and they will leave you in peace; they are too busy working to waste their precious time on such an onerous life-threatening job as having to battle you. You must admit though, many people complain that “the bees are bothering me” while they’re really talking about the pesky yellow guys who will hunt you down, especially if you have the audacity to swat them. Beekeepers do not like wasps, even thought they have their own role to play in nature. They are opportunistic scavengers and can decimate a weak hive. They can also sting you many times over and survive while a honeybee lady dies when she stings to protect her colony,  so its always a necessary last resort. Step 2: I placed six yellow jacket catchers all around the yard; simple bottles filled with fruit juice that like lobster catcher traps uses the “can’t find the exit” method to terminate them by drowning in the juice they love. As proof of Step 1, no honeybees were ever seen there but lots of wasps and biting flies. Step 3: Set up the hives and have me and our 15-month old daughter Hannah, who was sat on my lap, seen by neighbors to be admiring hundreds of the Italian ladies flying in and out from the hive entrance in the summer sun. That was indeed a sign of safety. Step 4: Harvest the honey and leave more than enough for them to survive the winter. Distribute samples of City Island Gold to all understanding neighbors and friends and put some on sale around selected island stores.

I will be working with the Kindergarten teacher at City Island School and have kids experience and be inspired by the wonder of a bee colony. We were thinking of having me go to the classroom and give an illustrated lesson of a honeybees life, then (with parents permission) we would go on a field trip to see (through a mosquito and bee proof net tent) the inside of a hive as I open it up and show them how the bees were working inside. Anybody who would like to experience this wonder is more than welcome to come by. Finally, as a service to the City Island community and beyond, like any beekeeper I would be willing to offer my services as a swarm catcher; just make sure they’re honeybees. Also, if anyone has the desire to learn how to keep bees and set up a colony or two I will be pleased to serve as a mentor.

I also catch swarms.