The Secret Lives of NY City Beekeepers

The New Republic, 3/11/2009

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in mid-February, a small group of New Yorkers—beekeepers, environmentalists, and a handful of honey aficionados—huddled together in an empty SoHo office building for a local honey-tasting session. If this had been Portland or San Francisco, it wouldn't have been a notable event—just a harmless gathering of honey connoisseurs. But in New York, bees are classified under section 161.01 of the health code as "wild animals," and are just as illegal to own in the city as lions, cougars, alligators, or polar bears. So a local honey-tasting event is, in many ways, an act of political defiance…