The Bees Do All The Work
How Hobby Beekeeping Shapes the Hudson Valley
Next to a 4-foot-tall glass case teeming with hundreds of bees, a piece of honeycomb sits packaged for sale. The directions read, “open mouth and insert comb.” It’s surely not the traditional way to consume honey, but it is the most direct. The work of hundreds of honeybees is best appreciated when served alone, without a steaming cup of tea or a slice of toast to mask the flavor. The work of hundreds of honeybees is also essential to the famed agriculture of the Hudson Valley, and fuels the passion of many local beekeepers.
At the Rhinebeck Farmers’ Market, Ray Tousey, owner of Tousey Farms in Germantown, NY, sells honey produced by bees from his nearly one hundred beehives. His stand is surrounded by produce from farms throughout the area, and each apple, cherry, and squash is a direct result of a few million of his bees. “See all the vendors here? Each one of them has my bees on their farms. What you see on their tables is also what’s in these jars. It’s kind of a big circle,” he said. But the integral role of bees in this “big circle” is being threatened, and there’s a lot at stake. Without bees, Tousey’s honey jars, along with the farms of the Hudson Valley, would likely be empty.
Bees are responsible for 80% of the insect pollination of plants, which means they help produce nearly one third of the food consumed by a typical U.S. citizen. The Hudson Valley is known for its agriculture, with 620 farms in Dutchess County alone. Every fruit, vegetable, and flower requires pollinators to survive, making bees essential to one of New York’s largest industries. But bee populations are declining, and it’s a direct result of excessive pesticide use, invasive mites, crippling diseases and inadequate food sources. If bee populations continue to drop, the impact on the food supply—specifically from local farms like those pollinated by Tousey’s bees—would be staggering.
Karen Sabath, Master Beekeeper at the sustainable Rainbeau Ridge farm in Bedford Hills, NY, believes that efforts to slow bee colony collapse are essential to preserving the environmental resources we depend upon. The bee population is deteriorating rapidly, and “if the bee population is under pressure, then pollination will be under pressure, and then our food supply will be under pressure,” she said. Decreasing pesticide use and planting pollinator-friendly forage are the most well-known ways to save the bees. But hobby beekeeping, although slightly more unconventional, is a method that’s a bit more personal and often more enjoyable.
Hobby beekeeping, especially when done ethically and sustainably, provides a net positive for bee populations. At the very least, beekeeping contributes pollinators to the ecosystem and starts conversations about bee colony collapse. “It’s a platform I try to speak about as much as possible, and I think that a huge impact of people becoming involved in beekeeping is that it spreads,” Sabath said. “It’s the multiplier effect. You give someone a jar of honey, and you give them some really serious liquid gold, and now they pay attention.”
Bees are one of the most essential components of healthy and successful agriculture, and hobby beekeeping can only benefit the population. To Dr. Richard Grinnell, a professor of English at Marist College and hobby beekeeper, beekeeping is about more than just the honey. “It would be cheaper to buy honey, so I’ve got to have another reason for doing it. I like the idea of contributing to the bee population, and I feel like I’m contributing to the environment by doing it,” he said.
Contributing to the success of the Hudson Valley’s agriculture is enough reason to support local beekeepers, but the benefits of beekeeping go beyond the enjoyment of honey. “You know what, there’s some cachet in being a beekeeper. It’s something you can talk about at parties,” Grinnell said. “I would also recommend it because it can be very calming. And it wouldn’t seem so, because you open the hive and you’ve got all these insects. But you learn to move slowly and do everything really deliberately. It can be very zen to work with bees. Plus, you’re doing good for the world.”
The agriculture of the Hudson Valley can’t survive without bees, and hobby beekeepers can help keep bee populations thriving even if environmental degradation and pesticide use continues. For many beekeepers, the agricultural and environmental benefits are large motivators to take up the hobby, but often their passion is rooted in the bees themselves. For Sabath, beekeeping has become part of her identity. “I love talking about bees. I love that when people see me they’re like, “How are the bees?” It’s what I’m associated with now. [They’re] this incredible superorganism, they have this infrastructure and all the bees are interdependent...and I’m just fascinated that it works,” she said.
The National Honey Board is an industry-funded group dedicated to cultivating a fascination with nature’s chief pollinators through the promotion of ethical and sustainable honey production, as well as proper commercial and hobby hive management. To raise awareness for bee health and the beekeeping profession, the organization named September “National Honey Month.” September, or the typical end to honey-producing season, is the ideal time to get involved with local beekeeping—whether it’s through supporting local beekeepers or starting your own hives.
Fall is the ideal time to start preparing an at-home beekeeping operation, getting started can be as simple as ordering a swarm or two or bees in the mail. “You have to have the woodenware [hive] to put them into, but they come in packages that have about two to three pounds of bees and a queen. You can shake them and feel them buzzing,” Grinnell said.
Sabath’s organization, the Hudson Valley Natural Beekeepers, is a collective of around 50 of the area’s local beekeepers working to promote hobby beekeeping. “We share best practices, resources both physical and educational, and we try to encourage people to do the best they can to support pollinators. But before somebody gets [their own hives], I think it’s really important to get educated on it,” Sabath said. “We strongly encourage people to gain experience and even take classes if they can.”
Although seemingly a small part of the complex Hudson Valley ecosystem, a bee’s role in the “big circle” of agriculture is unequivocally essential. Starting conversations around pesticide use and environmental degradation is one way to mitigate bee disappearance. But keeping a hive or two, as many professional beekeepers and hobbyists do, is another more personal way to preserve the renowned agriculture of the Hudson Valley.
Lined with dozens of jars of honey, Tousey’s stand at the Rhinebeck Farmers’ Market is a visual representation of the area’s agricultural prowess. Made from the nectar of hundreds of plants in the area, the quality of the resulting honey could easily be attributed to the passion of the beekeeper. But Tousey would argue that beekeepers, professional or otherwise, aren’t the ones who deserve the praise. “I just collect the honey. From the apple trees to the smallest dandelions under the apple trees, it’s the bees that do all the work.”