What’s The Buzz About?

MARCH/APRIL 2022GARDEN & LANDSCAPECLIMATE
Written By B&NC Magazine

Karen is the B&NC Mag GREEN Editor, and President of the Board of Bedford 2030. 

She’s passionate about sustainability, striving to help the environment so that there will be a viable planet for future generations, and working to contribute to making a positive difference in energy, waste, water and food. To that end, Karen is also CEO of TBM Designs, a company she co-founded in 2015, that develops architectural building materials, such as their InVert™ Self-Shading Window System, that are responsive to their environment. …And Karen is a beekeeper…

I’ve always been fascinated how the range of honey flavors  - earthy, floral, spicy, smoky, woody, and fruity - is as diverse as the flowers that provide food to the honey bees that visit them. That the honey we eat is the excess product of honey bees having visited millions of flowers to collect pollen and nectar, and a hive working round-the-clock in harmony to produce enough honey to keep the hive nourished. But when I started beekeeping about 15 years ago, I was drawn specifically to the beauty of the hive that the bees built for themselves. Seeing the frames for the first time inside the honey bee hives at my sister’s farm, Rainbeau Ridge in Bedford Hills, I was in awe of the perfectly crafted hexagons of the honeycomb. 

I’ve learned that the wax comes from wax glands on the bees themselves (incredible) which only kick into action at certain times in a bee’s life. I quickly began to see the difference between worker bees and drones and was able to recognize the queen. I started to be able to see eggs in the honeycomb cells and find queen cells built by the workers when the hive would need a new queen (amazing). I watched bees fly in and out of the hive and lost all track of time as I was mesmerized by watching for the different colors of pollen coming in on their legs, leaning that they could fly up to five miles to collect pollen and nectar if necessary and still come back to their own hive (phenomenal). The more time I spent observing the hives, the more I became fascinated and the more I wanted to learn about honey bees.

KAREN SABATH

I got certified as a Master Beekeeper at Cornell University, and I serve on the leadership team of the Hudson Valley Natural Beekeepers - a hub for all things beekeeping in the region. I also run Sabath Beekeeping Services, which maintains hives and consults for local residential and commercial customers.

I’m no less fascinated with bees today than when I started 15 years ago, and I’m always learning how to be a better beekeeper. I manage hives in six different places and I have the opportunity to observe how the hives compare across locations. Some spots are just more hospitable for hives than others, and it depends on the combination of what forage is available close to the hives, what chemicals are being used nearby, the temperature range, the wind conditions, the hive’s surroundings and ‘runway’, and the amount of other hives in the area. I learn from the bees themselves (people who know me know that I talk to my hives) and I learn so much from other beekeepers.

Every time I open a hive to do an inspection, my purpose there is to check on the health of the hive…and each time I am met with the delicious smells of the active hive. I take pictures of the bees at work, of beautiful honey comb, of the queen if I’m lucky enough to see her . . . and it just never gets old. Every year I take pictures of the same thing and I still don’t get tired of that. And once in a while I am rewarded with something extraordinary.

Last summer, I was inspecting a hive and I took note of several queen cells in the hive, which meant that the hive had created new queens to replace the one that had left in what’s called a swarm. While I was taking pictures of the fully closed queen cells as I have often done, I saw the tip of one of the cells open up and watched, as I’d never seen before, the hive’s brand new queen walk out into the hive for her very first time. I was breathless.

LIA LA MONICA

It was a warm spring day in May and a perfect day for a hive inspection. Lia did what she had been doing for six years and went out to her hives to look inside each one, checking for the queen and the overall health of her honeybee hives. Satisfied with the hive inspections, Lia turned to leave the area when she saw a huge cluster of bees on one of her apple trees. She knew right away it was a swarm and she was thrilled that they were on a low, very reachable branch.

Knowing she had to act quickly but carefully, Lia sprang into action and assembled a hive box with frames and a bottom board which she placed directly under the branch. She’d been part of catching a swarm before, but this time she was going to do this on her own for the very first time. Determined, Lia shook the branch and watched the amazing cascade of honey bees as they fell as planned into the hive box, thousands of them following each other into what she hoped would be their new home. She knew she had to make sure that the queen was in the hive box or the swarm would leave again and so she waited a short time, watching carefully to see how the bees were behaving. The queen’s pheromone smell is strong and draws the bees to their hive – if the queen was indeed in the hive box, the bees would eventually all join her and start building their new colony in this place. She noticed some of the bees had returned to the apple tree branch and so Lia shook the branch again to do the best she could to keep the hive together. And it worked. The queen and her swarm made a brand new hive and made for a wonderful present – that day was her daughter’s birthday!

A lifelong animal lover, Lia had moved from the big city to New Canaan, with her husband, and immediately began to build her menagerie. She soon had a total of three dogs, then she added chickens, and then came her first beehive. She feels lucky to have connected with a mentor who is a third generation beekeeper from Sarajevo, with years of experience to share. 

This past fall, Lia harvested about 300 pounds of honey from her hives and sold her “Francesca’s Apiary Wildflower Honey” at the New Canaan Farmers Market and at the Bartlett Honey Festival in Stamford, participating for the first time. People compliment her on the honey’s flavor, which she credits to all the neighborhood flowers.

For Lia, though, keeping bees is about much more than the honey. “It is such a great escape from the world,” Lia says reflecting on her hive inspection experiences, “where I am only focusing on the bees and where I feel so calm and relaxed.” She admits that she wasn’t expecting to feel this relaxed and that it caught her off guard. Throughout 2020 in particular, her mind was on all things pandemic and so when she needed to check the hives, she was able to disappear into the world of this beautiful insect, giving her a much needed respite from her very real world concerns.

Lia says, “I really like knowing I’m part of a much bigger community of beekeepers. I’m so lucky that my neighbors have planted pollinator plantings on their properties and people are very aware of the Pollinator Pathway. We are fortunate to have this incredible ecosystem right in our backyard, and as more and more people learn about it, they’ll recognize how important their own behavior is to everything else in nature.”

RALPH SZUR

Ralph loves meeting new beekeepers and helping them learn what to look for in a hive inspection, and how to do things like test for mites, which are a huge threat to the health of a hive. It reminds him of his early forays into beekeeping when he and his wife Beth were standing next to a new hive when they were hiving their first package of bees. Ralph recalls that they were reading Ed Weise's lovely beginner book, The Queen and I, and holding the pages open and reading the instructions, ”...And now it says to shake the bees down into the box and pour them…" while Beth manipulated the bees.

Ralph credits his wife with getting him into beekeeping. They lived in the 4,700 acre Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River starting in 1989 and for a decade, in the 1860 David Webb House across the street from the Trailside Nature Museum. Beth took over a few of the Reservation’s hives and then joined the Connecticut-based “BackYard Beekeepers Association” to expand their knowledge. They learned of a beekeeper who was retiring and, soon afterward, they went with a pick up truck to move four more hives to their home. Unfortunately, they learned a hard lesson – always strap the boxes together very well and seal the entrances shut before moving hives. Indeed, because they didn’t take those steps, they arrived home with four hives full of very discombobulated and angry bees, although the hives ultimately settled into their new apiary, and Ralph and Beth took note for the future.


More than 22 years after getting his first hive, Ralph is generous with his time, as he enjoys teaching other beekeepers, including his grandson, Mickie. His deep knowledge of beekeeping comes out when he talks through a hive inspection with an audience …who hang on his every knowledgeable word. Still fascinated with everything about bees and beekeeping, Ralph remarked, “Bee swarming is one of the most intense and unusual experiences in nature. When you drive up in your driveway and you hear the intense buzzing . . . it doesn’t sound like anything else.” 

Ralph tells about how one time he was in his bee yard working on one hive and then noticed that the next hive was starting to swarm. He acted on pure adrenalin and, grabbing a queen excluder to keep the queen from passing through, he wedged it in front of the hive entrance. Luckily, he did it in time and prevented the queen from getting out, so he temporarily interrupted the swarm process. When the rest of the bees returned to their queen shortly afterward, he was able to open up the hive and split it into three thriving hives, capping an exhilarating experience.

Another time, Ralph channeled his inner MacGyver and quickly made a swarm catcher out of a five-gallon water bucket, which he attached to a light bulb changing rod that was extendable. He was able to get underneath a swarm that was resting in one of his trees, jolt the branch they were attached to, and get the swarm to fall into the bucket. Putting the swarm into an empty hive box, Ralph was able to populate a new hive, another reminder of the joys of beekeeping.

STACY MURPHY 

Stacy is a ‘jill of all trades’. You may know her from her Sweet Pea Farm. Or her chocolate truffles. Or from when she had a bridal salon in New Canaan. Or when she was a volunteer firefighter in New Canaan in the 1980s. These days, when she’s not running her cafe - which is moving from Brookfield to a new location in New Milford as Cafe 1840 - she brings her love of food and flavors to the beekeeping world, traveling to one of five locations where she keeps her bee hives. 

Depending on the time of year, Stacy manages between 25 and 35 hives. She’s been beekeeping since 2010, when she joined the Back Yard Beekeepers Association and started learning from them as a ‘Newbee’. Stacy loves opening up a hive and smelling all of its natural smells. And she can’t get enough of tasting different kinds of honey. Her hives generate wildflower, clover and buckwheat honey, each of which she harvests every year. 

Stacy enjoys taking her honey products to the next level. She offers Bourbon Maple Honey, which she makes by combining local maple syrup with her honey and then aging it in a bourbon barrel, creating amazing flavors without the alcohol. Another popular seller is her CBD honey, using locally extracted CBD, which Stacy infuses into her honey, to produce an alternative pain management product.

Stacy loves the ongoing process of learning about bees and beekeeping. Her newest discovery was that of verbal communication among bees, particularly the queen peeping to signal her leadership of the hive. She’s also very interested in the latest genetic bee breeding, aimed at developing more disease and mite resistance in less aggressive bees. 

Stacy knows she wants to keep beekeeping for a long time and, as for continuous learning, she declares, “Part of the joy of beekeeping is that you never finish!”


ALLAN RATAFIA

Five years ago, Allan started beekeeping in his backyard in Armonk as an extension of his love of nature and gardening. Now he manages eight hives in two locations. He says he never stops learning – from other beekeepers, and even more importantly, from the bees themselves. Starting out, Allan spent a lot of time learning the ins and outs of beekeeping from fellow beekeepers. He took in different opinions about how to best manage beehives, to monitor for pests, and to get the bees to ‘overwinter’ (be healthy enough and with enough food to get through the winter).

Like many beekeepers, those practices are honed from actual experiences year after year as a beekeeper and Allan agrees. “I learned fast from other beekeepers, and then formed my own opinions.” When his hives build up in the spring and get ready to swarm, he often splits them, and moves the new hive to a friend’s house. While that hive is establishing itself and building up its population, the bees are great tenants, pollinating their landlord’s plantings until the hive is strong enough to be moved back to his apiary.

For sure the part that Allan loves the most is, “solving the puzzle of what’s going on in a hive.” If Allan finishes a hive inspection and observes that the hive is dealing with a problem (maybe the loss of a queen or a range of other issues), he often closes up the hive and takes time to review the range of potential actions he can take to help the hive. Many times, he uses his experience to guide his next step. “But if I’m not sure, I will wait and let the bees figure it out for themselves,” Allan concedes. And they most often do that successfully, a lesson he tries to teach the new beekeepers who reach out to him for advice on getting started. “Take your time. Don’t rush through an inspection. Let the bees tell you what’s happening.”

He’s thrilled that so many more people are interested in beekeeping, and is even responsible for his golf club having hives and a Honey Bee Committee. The club only uses approved eco-friendly treatments for the golf course in order to protect the nearby reservoir and the bees, and has committed to planting even more pollinator-friendly plants. The club’s honey bee hives serve to reinforce the club’s commitment to environmental stewardship, and everything about the program is a good model of behavior for the members.

Allan remarks, “I‘m a beekeeper purely for the fun of it! And I’m fascinated with bees! Even the head cover for my driver is honeycomb patterned!” 

The A Bee C’s:

  • Honey bees help pollinate plants that produce fruits and vegetables and animal feed, and the bees collect pollen in the process

  • Honey bees collect nectar from a plant’s ‘nectaries’ that are only there to attract pollinators

  • Swarms happen when a hive is thriving and half the bees leave with the queen to start a new hive, leaving a new queen to repopulate the original hive

  • Honey has healing properties, especially for sore throats and allergies

  • Know your beekeeper and make sure you trust your honey source - tests have shown more than ⅔ of store-bought honey has been adulterated

  • A worker bee makes just 1/10 of a teaspoon of honey in her whole lifetime - don’t waste a drop!


Local Resources:

B&NC Magazine
Previous

oHHo
Next

Zach Allen