Rooftop parties in Brooklyn are nothing new. But on a recent beautiful day in Crown Heights, Jessica McNamara is throwing a special kind of open-air wingding — her seasonal honey-extraction party. And, her VIPs (or VIBs), roughly 50,000 European honeybees, are already all abuzz.
The former criminal defense lawyer is outfitted in long sleeves, jeans, boots and a protective veil as she removes the honeycombed frames from her homemade “top-bar” hive. The bees swarm all around her. “More than once, I’ve literally discovered a bee in my pants,” she says.
The 33-year-old quit her job last year, in part to pursue her dream of beekeeping, joining the city’s growing number of “beeks” — 99 people have registered 261 residential honeybee hives since they were legalized in NYC in 2010. (And now the city’s first-ever Honey Week kicks off on Monday. See page 24 for more info.)
Examining the frames of her hives, McNamara says, “You can only harvest when the wax covering is capped.” She uses a soft-bristle comb to gently swipe off clusters of bees, revealing fully capped honeycombs, and places her bounty in a bucket.
“You want to open every cell so the honey will come out,” says McNamara, now standing downstairs in her cramped kitchen between buckets of honey and a giant metal extractor. She scrapes off the wax caps before placing the frames in the centrifuge of the extractor. “All my honey is raw. I never heat it. It’s much easier to manipulate when you heat it, but you lose a lot of nutrients.” She adds the concentrated nectar to her coffee, tea, green drinks, salads or salad dressings over cheese and crackers, on bacon, on waffles, with peanut butter — you name it.
And so far, none of her neighbors seems to mind the striped squatters buzzing about their roof.
Her friend and upstairs neighbor, Larry Mahl, 31, who works at Yelp, helps crank the extractor, spinning the frames until all the honey whips off and into the tank. “I love bragging about this, saying I helped extract the honey,” says Mahl, who isn’t the only neighbor who likes the bees. Another friend, Alexis Cravetz, 31, recalls living with McNamara when she started beekeeping. “I always knew she was crazy,” she says, before showing appreciation for her friend’s eccentric ways. “New York City local honey is so rare.”
Next, McNamara releases the spigot near the bottom of the extractor for the fresh golden honey to run through a wiremesh filter. “This is my favorite part,” she says. “It’s just so beautiful . . . Commercial honey uses microfilters that are so small they filter out the pollen, which is a good source of protein and nutrients,” she says. “This just removes bee parts.”
Fellow beekeeper David Glick is into the royalty of the hobby.
“Everything hinges on the queen,” he says, standing on a rooftop 13 stories high, tending to his beehives above the hum of Court Street in Downtown Brooklyn. The average bee life span is just six weeks. The queen lays more than a thousand eggs a day, keeping the colony populated.
By day, Glick, 29, works for the mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, analyzing federal and state revenues. But during his off-hours, it’s all about the bees. “As long as you’re not putting your face in their hive, they go about their business — gathering nectar, serving their queen,” he says through his veil, while lighting scraps of burning material inside a metal smoker to help calm the bees down. “When you open up the hive, they get very protective.
“She is in there, but [finding her] would require a lot more work,” says Glick, who began his buzzy hobby in 2009 after taking a three-day introductory course offered by the New York City Beekeepers Association. “I do a very thorough inspection for larvae, which is a sign of the queen,” he says, in addition to monitoring the overall health of the hive.
He inserts a bee-covered frame back into one of the stacked wooden boxes that comprise what is formally known as a Langstroth hive. “They’re pretty chill right now,” he says of his bees. “They’re out gathering. They come out before sunset, and as soon as it’s light out.”
Every couple of weeks, Glick accesses the historic Temple Bar Building roof through the architectural offices of Kiss + Cathcart to check up on his honeybees — which can fluctuate from roughly 40,000 in the colder months to 80,000 to 100,000 in the spring. The firm’s Greg Kiss lets Glick use the rooftop in exchange for a bit of honey to use around the office.
“The bees are a welcome addition — it’s a symbiotic relationship, like you have in nature, like bees and flowers,” says Kiss. “Bees are about the most spectacularly productive parts of nature . . . And it’s a very positive sight to see busy bees. What could be a better example for one’s employees?”
The advantage of having his hives so high up is twofold, according to Glick: You avoid people disturbing the hive, and the bees can travel.
“Bees will go 2 miles in any direction and pollinate whatever’s in the neighborhood,” says Glick, who figures all the honeybees pollinating the flowers near Borough Hall are his.
And, this season, the local beekeepers are expecting a big honey harvest. Earlier this year, Glick reaped more honey than ever before. “I got three full 5-gallon buckets in my spring harvest,” says Glick, who sells his by word of mouth and through the Web (heightshoney.com).
By the end of McNamara’s party, she had bottled 80 pounds of honey. But even though they both are located in Brooklyn, their honey will have distinctly different flavors.
“My honey tastes a little like lavender and citrus,” says Glick. “It’s very floral and effervescent.”
“Honey is like wine, the taste differences can be really dramatic,” says McNamara, who sells most of her honey at various street markets and online (honeybeelocal.com), as well as at next weekend’s Honey Fest on the Rockaway Boardwalk. “My honey is really light, minty, and comes from linden trees. They’re all over Brooklyn,” says McNamara.
Honey Week
Honey Week runs Sept. 8 to 14, in various locations around the city. Festivities begin with the Queen Bee Cocktail Classic, Monday at 8 p.m. at NY Distilling Co. (79 Richardson St., Williamsburg), where local mixologists try to create the best honey-infused drinks. Other events include a cheese-and-honey tasting hosted by a honey “sommelier,” an intro to beekeeping class, open houses hosted by local beekeepers, and the fourth-annual family-friendly Honey Fest, Sept. 13 at Rockaway Beach 97. Go to nychoneyweek.com for details.