Neighbor Seeks Future Beekeepers

“Beekeeping connects you to seasons, really lets you see what’s going on in the environment,” said neighbor Todd Scott, who, for this reason and more, keeps bees at six hives around the neighborhood. Living in an apartment building with no backyard, he found this unique solution for his hobby, and has been going from hive to hive with a handtruck of equipement to look after his bees. But last month Todd became a father, and now he’s got to find new homes for the bees.

“With six hives, no car, and a lot of equipment, it becomes a lot of work at peak times in spring and fall,” he explained. “It’s taking up my weekends, when now I just want to spend time with the new baby.”

For anyone interested in buying one of Todd’s hives, he notes that the time commitment is not that much when it’s just one hive, in just one location. “It wouldn’t interrupt the flow of your weekends that much, you can do it at your leisure,” he said. “If I had a house, I would keep the bees.”

Todd will guide buyers through the beekpeeing process, and by the end of the year he says you could end up with about 40-80 pounds of honey. To get that much honey, you need a lot of bees—one bee only produces about 1/10th of a teaspoon of the sweet stuff in its entire lifetime. While most folks are wary of so many bees, Todd says there’s nothing to be worried about.

“Bees are misunderstood,” Todd said. “Honey bees are docile and don’t go after you. They’re industrious little creatures–they only have one thing on their mind, and that’s whatever their busybee task is for the day.”

He notes that people are particularly freaked out by swarms, but he’s got a crazy story that proves there’s really nothing to worry about.

“One time I was doing a job, and I was with a bunch of guys wakling along a train track,” he said. “I look up, and there’s a 25-foot-wide cloud of bees coming right down the tracks. I’m telling guys not to freak out, they’re harmless. Eveyone crouched down as the bees approached, dropped down to the ground, but I just walked right through them. The bees took no notice of me.”

Bees are not aggressive, just defensive, he says, and the only thing they defend is their hive. Beekeepers employ different tactics to deal with that defensivess when they approach their hives, from blowing disorienting smoke to spritzing water to weigh down their wings. But not Todd.

“I don’t do any of that, I just put on bee suit and move really slowly,” he said. “But I recommend people find out what works best for them.”

If you’ve got the desire, space, and commitment to find out what works best for you as a beekeeper, contact Todd for more info at 917-841-7776.