Eat the City(14)

Andrew was not the only one on call to corral vagabonds. Anthony “Tony Bees” Planakis, an experienced beekeeper who happens to work for the Building and Maintenance section of the New York Police Department, was often summoned to the scene. When he worked with Andrew, Anthony contributed rigging skills learned in the army, NYPD vans with bucket trucks, and Fire Department tower ladders. Jim Fischer, who runs a separate, rival beekeeping Meetup group in the city, also responded to swarm calls.

Once, a tropical storm ripped off a hollowed-out branch of an enormous tree in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, exposing a honeybee hive. Appeals went out to beekeepers to save tens of thousands of bees. Jim and Andrew arrived with different tactics. Andrew took the aggressive approach, securing the police van and crane. Jim told the New York Times that he tried to abort the operation—which involved hoisting a beekeeper holding a chain saw thirty feet into the air—because high winds after the storm made it unsafe. He left when his advice was not heeded. “There was a lot more testosterone floating around than common sense,” he said. Andrew stayed on to supervise. “I was happy to be a bystander if someone else could handle the situation,” he told the Times. “I only moved ahead with my methods when no one else could manage the job.”

Despite such turf battles, beekeepers have fostered community. Calling each other “beeks” for short, they greet each other saying, “How are you? How are your bees?” After the ban was lifted, they began to gather together at candlelit honey tastings in Brooklyn bars, or to extract honey en masse as a social event. They played Jeoparbee, featuring a host wearing a bee-print tie, and a Vanna White–style Queen Bee, in a Statue of Liberty crown, a black balaclava, and a yellow short-sleeved hoodie with black duct tape stripes, holding a honey dripper as a wand.

Monthly meetings of the New York City Beekeepers Association started routinely drawing more than a hundred people to listen to lectures about beekeeping around the world: In Yemen, a CIA report accused two honey companies of laundering money to Al Qaeda, and beekeeping is so associated with insurgency that if you’re a honey seller, people assume you’ve probably served with the mujahideen in Afghanistan. In Borneo, people climb a tree and cut the hive to squeeze the honey out and then strain it with cloth. In Russia, the Mafia may well control the honey market.

They also discussed colony collapse disorder, in which worker bees disappear, though the queen, and often young bees, remain alive in the hive. Beekeepers in other parts of the country have reported losing almost all of their bees. Colonies can be expanded by dividing existing hives and breeding new queens—but it’s expensive, and the gains barely hold against the losses. The problem mainly seems to affect commercial beekeepers, who move their hives from crop to crop in eighteen-wheelers, exposing bees to new pesticides across whole regions.

The new energy for beekeeping has focused media attention on Andrew. Early in the summer of 2010, producers for a reality TV show start to follow him with cameras. They watch him catch a swarm, lower a beehive from a roof, and conduct routine hive inspections. For one episode, the producers hire an actress to play a distressed woman with bees in her wall on a rented set in a car garage, and Andrew acts out coming to the rescue, four handheld digicams following his every move.

The New York Times, Time magazine, Bon Appétit, NBC, ABC, PBS, CBS, CNN, the BBC, WNYC, and Japanese, Korean, Swedish, and Australian television, among many others, have all featured Andrew. He basks in the attention but brooks little patience for journalists’ dullness. “This is so unique,” says a reporter for the NY1 news channel while interviewing him about rooftop hives. “It’s either unique or it’s not unique, but it’s not so unique,” Andrew retorts. “It’s a very sweet reward,” Andrew supplies a minute later, facing the camera and offering his sparkling grin. “Uh, literally sweet,” says the reporter, smiling nervously as she repeats his double entendre. Andrew rolls his eyes.

He has other opportunities to court celebrity. Andrew appears on The Martha Stewart Show in an episode that also features the chef Mario Batali. Soon Andrew is talking about the role of the queen in the hive. “She mates only once in her life with fifteen to twenty drones in one, some would call it shameful, afternoon,” he says, eyeing the camera and fighting a smile.

“They don’t know how hard it is for us gals,” Martha says, joshing in that prim way of hers. “We have to put up with fifteen drones, my God.”

“Actually, it’s not such a picnic for the drone,” says Andrew, “because he dies in a spectacular way.… After he does his thing, his thing is barbed, and it remains with the queen, and he falls—presumably with mixed emotions—dead to the ground.”

There’s a second’s pause before Martha retorts: “He doesn’t have any feeling.”

“I’m sure it meant something to him,” says Andrew.

Martha scratches her nose and changes the topic: “So, eating local honey, by the way, tell us about that.”

That same fall, Sotheby’s opens its spare, minimalist halls to a charity auction of local vegetables, and also of Andrew—who promises to give the winning bidder a guided rooftop hive tour. In a well-lit gallery, among paintings by Julian Schnabel and Kenny Scharf, Andrew, whose salt-and-pepper hair was trimmed that morning, makes the rounds, carrying a whiskey spiked with scotch. “I’m Lot Number One,” Andrew says by way of introduction to the perfumed and bejeweled tuxedoes and gowns. “I promise I’ll bid for you,” says a blond woman in a sleek black dress, sidling up to him. After the auctioneer introduces Andrew as “hot-tempered and bloody-minded,” the blond woman starts the bidding at $500, but another woman counters. They keep topping each other as the price climbs to $700, $800, $1,000, $1,200. Finally, the auctioneer double-sells Andrew to both of them, raising $2,400, and assuring Andrew he can deliver his tour to the two bidders at once. Twenty-four hundred dollars. In a lucrative season, it is Andrew’s highest hourly rate yet.