Greetings from the Big Apple

[nighthawk]

Greetings,

Happy New Year, everyone.

I'm new to this forum, so I want to say hello.

I'm a second-year beekeeper in Brooklyn, New York.

After a period when beekeeping in the city was outlawed, beekeeping was again made legal last year.  So, my brief life of crime is over!   

I'm sharing two hives with several friends.  It's located on a 3rd floor rooftop and we're surrounded by several large community gardens, parks and even a very large, old cemetery.....all good bee forage areas.  So, we consider ourselves pretty lucky as far as bee food sources go.

I'm looking forward to hearing about the experiences of other beekeepers and hope to learn from everyone. 

I'm still on the learning curve about beekeeping and find all things bee-related totally fascinating.  I suspect that I'll always be learning new things about beekeeping.  It seems that if there are three beekeepers, there are five opinions!  But, that's good!  The more ideas shared, the better, I say. 

Best wishes,

Jess

[BjornBee]

I got 5 opinions just myself... 

Welcome to the forum.

Hope you have fun.

[annette]

Hello Jess

I am originally from Brooklyn. Born and raised in Brighton Beach and now living in sunny northern California. Welcome to the forum and the world of beekeeping.

Those hives you have on the rooftop sound rather exciting to me and I bet you get lots of honey. I have heard similar stories about hives on rooftops in central park that would get 200 lbs of honey from each hive.

I started beekeeping in 2006 with one hive and now have 3. I go up to 4 hives but that's my limit mainly because I am not very strong physically and lifting the heavy boxes is hard on me. I have learned so, so much from this forum and I could not have done it without the forum. I started out beekeeping all by myself and when something would go wrong, I would turn to this forum to sort it all out. I have had many ups and downs with the bees but I continue on.

I have had laying workers, hives without queens, hives that swarmed, hives that got deformed wing virus, hives that got pesticide poisoning, hives that got thrown over by raccoons. But good things that I learned are introducing new queens,  how to do combines of 2 weak hives, how to do cutouts (in an old shed, and an oak tree that fell down) how to catch swarms, how to split strong hives, how to inspect hives, how to work a top bar hive. And this year I had the honor of teaching beekeeping to the 4H club of Placerville.

With all this, I still consider myself a new beekeeper and I still ask many questions, even simple ones, over and over. I truly feel a lot more confident now, than when I started, but sometimes I still feel like I am fumbling along.

Can't wait to hear your experiences with the bees in Brooklyn. What part of Brooklyn??

Sincerely
Annette

[VolunteerK9]

Welcome to the forum.

When your post count is high enough, it would be cool to see some pics of your rooftop apiary.