The majority of Hudson County residents probably do not realize that some of their neighbors are keeping a special kind of gold in their backyards.
Honey cultivated by the New Jersey state insect, the honeybee, is not only produced on farms and in the suburbs, but in urban areas as well.
There are at least three beekeepers, or apiarists, in North Bergen, with various levels of experience.
Gordon Casner, 78, has been beekeeping since he was 7. While the front of his 67th Street house appears normal, a whirl of activity occurs every day in his backyard. He houses nine beehives of his own and two others that belong to his friend Frank Meyer Jr.
Casner said that each of his hives contains around 70,000 honeybees.
There is a queen bee, which mates with a few thousand drones, or fertile male bees, and produces eggs, which are laid into a cell of wax honeycomb. The honeycomb is produced into its octagonal form by worker bees, which are sterile females. When worker bees are young they produce royal jelly, which is fed to larvae. If larvae are only fed royal jelly, that bee will develop into a queen bee. Worker bees leave the hive when they are older and spend the remainder of their lives foraging for pollen.
Modern hives look more like a set of drawers rather than something hanging from a tree. Wooden or plastic boxes filled with individual frames house bees, with a bottom gap that allows them to fly pollen in. Honey is produced from the worker bees’ deposits and its color is determined from they type of pollen collected.
Casner had collected more than 150 pounds of honey from his colony this summer. The honey he and Meyer produce is sold as “Uncle Gordon’s Honey” at Six Corners Café, located at 4301 Belleview Turnpike, and through word of mouth.
He knows a lot about the characteristics of honeybees since he has been observing his for most of his 70 years. He’s not afraid about being stung either.
“If you are afraid, you cannot be a beekeeper, because they know it,” said Casner, who explained that his breed, Italian honey bees, tended to be more docile then most, and would only attack if threatened.
To Cuba
Casner, originally of Englewood, wasn’t always so brazen about bees.
When he was five-years-old the Great Depression made life for his family difficult. His grandfather had just finished working on the Panama Canal as an engineer and decided to move to Cuba. Casner’s father soon moved and was employed to look after a farm.
He did not know any Spanish, so when a few children on the farm motioned for him to open a box, he did not know any better.
“So I went over and lifted [the hive],” said Casner. “They swarmed on me. I ran to the grass and through the trees and I was all swollen up.”
Casner said his playmates were soon in major trouble, but after the experience, his interest in the insect grew.
Bear tales
Casner worked at a paper company before buying his North Bergen home with his wife in 1960. He said he had that job, along with three part-time jobs, before retiring in 1994.
“When I was working [at] Ford Motor Company and they had the [production] line there you stress so much,” said Casner. “When I came home [in the evening] and on the weekend, [beekeeping was] a therapy.”
Casner is also an avid hunter. In 1997 after a hunting trip in New Mexico, he returned to his farm in Hope, N.J. to discover that all of his hives there had been destroyed.
He began to clean up the knocked over beehives when something hit him and he went flying five-feet, which resulted in a broken tooth and lip.
“When I came up it was just getting dark,” said Casner. “I started yelling because I thought it was one of my friends. Finally, when I got up I realized a 250 lb. bear was looking at me and then he started eating the honey, so I chased him away.”
Helping other hives
Casner first met Meyer, 43, three years ago when he discovered that they share the same love of the outdoors.
“I got into it by accident when I’d seen Gordon at his driveway spinning honey [to be bottled],” said Meyer.
Meyer now has 10 hives in Upstate New York, along with the two in Casner’s backyard. He believes that New Jersey needs more beekeepers and even plans to build an indoor hive for next spring.
“It’s a dying art.” – Frank Meyer, Jr.
________
Quinlan’s father, an apiarist, asked him what he wanted for his birthday a few years ago, and his response was a beehive.
He had some trouble in the beginning, but said that after meeting Casner through the New Jersey State Apiarist Tim Schuler he has become more comfortable with bees.
“It’s a dying art,” said Meyer.
NJ bees
According to Schuler, who inspects beehives across the state, in spite of Hudson County being an urban area, there are a few colonies along the Hudson River.
This increase of urban apiarists is partly due to Rutgers University’s “Bee-ginner’s Beekeeping” course, which has taught over 800 people how to keep bees in New Jersey since 2006. The course was instituted when Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) began hitting bee colonies the hardest.
According to the Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium, the mysterious dying off or disappearing of bees has affected colonies throughout the country. Potential causes include radiation from cell phones, environmental changes, malnutrition, and pesticides, but none of these have been proven to be the primary reason.
Schuler said that the increase in beekeepers in New Jersey has helped raise the population of honeybees. According to the New Jersey Department of Agriculture’s website, New Jersey has 10,000 bee colonies valued at $250 each that help pollinate $200 million worth of fruits and vegetables annually.
While honey produced by bee colonies has for the most part been harvested already, this time of the year is essential for next year’s population.
“It’s a critical time of year for beekeepers,” said Schuler. “Honeybees have to get prepared for the winter.”
This preparation includes storing enough honey for the hive to survive, making sure the bees are parasite-free, and insuring there are enough young bees to sustain those that will die through the colder months.
Meyer said he and Casner lose 20 percent of their hives each year.
“Nobody knows why,” said Meyer. “There is so much to learn.”
Getting ready for winter
According to Casner, bees do not have a long life expectancy. While a queen can live from two to five years, 65 to 70 percent of worker bees die every six weeks.
“That’s why the queen produces 2,000 eggs a day,” said Casner.
He explained that to prepare for the winter, Italian honeybees create a light wax cap to seal their honey in. Each of his hives needs around 70 pounds of it to survive through the colder months.
However, honey bees do keep their hive at a constant temperature, said Quinlan.
Bee connotations
Quinlan said that unfortunately when people think of bees, they imagine the dangerous Africanized honey bee or the swarms from horror films of the 1970s.
“[Some people] just don’t understand the biology of the different types of stinging insects,” said Schuler.
For example, if a yellow jacket flies into someone’s soda and stings them on the lip, the person is likely to call it just a “bee.” So when someone hears their neighbor is keeping bees in their backyard, they might imagine it’s a yellow jacket.
Instead of those traits, the honeybee is remarkable because of its ability to create.
“[Honey]bees are always active…they are happiest when they’re working,” said Schuler, who explained that this always amazed him, since many people are the least content in this situation.
Tricia Tirella may be reached at TriciaT@hudsonreporter.com.