Beekeeping Up with the Joneses

Beekeeping seems to have found its sweet-spot in the green-minded hobby world. This toothsome trade is popping up all around us.

 

Kicking things off was "Buzz Worthy," a story in our August 2010 issue about the area’s growing collection of backyard beekeepers, which touted two motivational forces: Colony Collapse Disorder and homemade honey. I was shocked to learn that there may be as many as 100,000 backyard beekeepers in the U.S., including a few in urban areas.

 

Soon after, Storey Publishing put out its own guide to beekeeping, which directs the novice keeper on how to plan and create a hive, keep bees healthy, and harvest honey using methods that simultaneously amp up the garden’s natural processes and save the dwindling bee populations. Dotted with Storey’s usual array of useful illustrations and take-away boxes, Keeping Honey Bees unites author Malcom T. Stanford’s expertise with that of late, local beekeeper Richard E. Bonney who owned Charlemont Apiaries in Charlemont, Mass.

 

Keeping with the trend, the most recent issue of my alma mater’s alumni magazine, Bostonia, highlighted the new Boston University Beekeping Club, which began maintaining hives along the Charles River in the spring of 2009. This comes as no surprise, BU is known for it’s wealth of unique, extracurricular clubs of all themes and sizes (think, People-Watching Club, a tour-guide favorite whilst welcoming incoming freshmen).

 

And to round things off, Vanishing of the Bees, a documentary about the international impact of Colony Collapse Disorder following commercial beekeepers David Hackenberg and Dave Mendes, will be showing at the Triplex in Great Barrington, Mass., on Nov 7. It is followed by a question and answer session with local beekeepers, a honey tasting, and honey market.

 

Talk about buzz.