! Alert

Due to a planned New York Harbor closure and planned street closures in Lower Manhattan, Governors Island will close at 3PM on Friday, July 4, 2025. More info.

Due to a planned New York Harbor closure and planned street closures in Lower Manhattan, Governors Island will close at 3PM on Friday, July 4, 2025. More info.

Blog

Don’t Wor­ry. Bee Happy.

Jul 16, 2010 2:42 pm

Ital­ian Bees come to Gov­er­nors Island

 

The Added Val­ue Farm on Gov­er­nors Island now has 45,000 new work­ers (in bee-speak, that is both ​“work­ers” and ​“drones” and the all-impor­tant queen bees.) In three hives, the hon­ey bees will like­ly triple in num­ber by Sum­mer’s end. Their job will be to pol­li­nate the flow­er­ing plants of the farm, and the Island, increas­ing the crop yield by up to 60%. [cap­tion id=”” align=“aligncenter” width=“200” caption=“Bee Domi­ciles at Added Val­ue Farm”][/​caption] Keep­ing hon­ey bees in New York City was made legal ear­li­er this year, mark­ing an impor­tant step in increas­ing the num­bers of these impor­tant ​“farm­ers.” There are over 200 species of bees in the NY area, though bee num­bers have been drop­ping nation­wide. Our new Ital­ian Bees will like­ly remain on the Island as their pol­li­na­tion range is fair­ly small. The bees will pro­duce hon­ey which will be on sale at the Added Val­ue Farm stand lat­er in the sum­mer. And they will win­ter on the Island, ready to get back to work next year. The bees’ keep­er, Cerise Mayo, will come to the Island to feed the bees a yum­my sug­ary mix for a lit­tle bit while they get them­selves set­tled in. Soon, though, they’ll do their own work and make their own meals of the delight­ful flow­ers and trees of the Island. [cap­tion id=“attachment_3594” align=“aligncenter” width=“200” caption=“Cerise Mayo, Bee­keep­er, help­ing the new Island ten­ants move in.”][/​caption] Hon­ey bees are very docile so our new res­i­dents should not cause any con­cern to visitors.
Sign up for Our Newsletter