Backyard beekeeping in Germantown.

“Bee, bee, bee. . . bee!” 18 month old Isaac recently learned the word and seemed to have forgotten all others.   With his jungle gym located next to his father’s hives in a large Germantown backyard, Isaac showed a fanatic fascination and no fear as we opened the hives for a look.  Philly is in fact full of young bee-obsessed beekeepers.  Our recent urban beekeeping survey and tour revealed that the majority of Philly’s two dozen or so beekeepers started within the last five years.   Their attitudes, knowledge and beekeeping set ups are as diverse as the city itself.

In many ways, honey bees are the perfect urban livestock.  They can be kept in small spaces- even on rooftops.  They are quiet and unaggressive (most “bee” stings are actually perpetrated by bumblebees and hornets).  They require relatively minimal time and financial investment: an average of four hours a month and a few hundred dollars to get started.  Above all, they produce wonderful, abundant honey, which is a much healthier sweetener than the highly refined sugar products now ubiquitous in processed food and on grocery store shelves.  Eating unfiltered, raw honey from your immediate locale is also widely thought to help with seasonal allergies.  Furthermore, when stored in air-tight containers, honey has a shelf life of a few thousand years.  Because of the preponderance of male trees and other common city plantings, urban honey is generally considered to be of high quality.  Beekeepers at Mill Creek and Greensgrow Farms will tell you that their home grown honey often sells out within weeks of harvesting.  With the adaptability of beekeeping, Philadelphia could easily fulfill all of its own demand for honey.

Rooftop beekeeping in Center City.

Honey bees provide other useful products as well.  The wax used for comb construction can be harvested along with the honey and has countless uses ranging from candlemaking and cosmetics to batik and moustache wax.  After the honey is harvested from the comb it can be placed in a nylon stocking or fine mesh bag, and boiled very briefly to remove impurities, such as dirt and larval casings. The impurities remain in the stocking, which can then be removed, and the wax solidifies on top of the water as it cools. The wax can be melted again and poured into molds to make candles, or combined with other ingredients to make soap.  Having a surplus of honey around can also provide an easy avenue into the art of home-brewing; honey wine (a.k.a. mead) is a very simple and delicious alcoholic beverage easily tackled by folks new to the craft.  Propolis, an anti-microbial substance the bees use to seal and sterilize their hives, has a long history of being used medicinally in the treatment of colds, flu, sore throats, and aching teeth.

Observation hive inside an apartment.

Many beekeepers also profess its therapeutic value as a hobby.  This seems to result from the calm both required and induced by working with a living hive.  Honey bees are a social insect whose complicated collective behavior belies the relatively simple biology of a single bee.  Because the queen bee is in most cases singularly responsible for reproduction, one may almost regard a bee colony as a single organism whose many distinct bodies perform highly specialized tasks for the good of the whole.  Worker bees perform a wide variety of roles at different phases of their 8 week lifespan: cell cleaning, larvae nursing, drone and queen feeding, wax production, honeycomb building, pollen packing, propilizing, mortuary service, temperature regulation, water carrying, guarding, soldiering, and foraging.  This division of labor is unlike any other outside of Homo sapiens and results in the peculiar fascination they hold for us.  Who can resist a glimpse into this society in miniature that a glassed-walled observation hive provides?

Bees are also essential pollinators for gardens, farms, and orchards.  Other than wind-pollinated corn, the vast majority of our vegetable, fruit, and nut crops are highly dependent on bees for pollination.  The commercial beekeeping industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that actually makes the vast majority of its money from pollination services rather than honey.  Commercial beekeepers truck their hives across the country following crop pollination seasons, often traveling from New York to Texas to California in a single year.  In recent years, these “rental” hives have been devastated by Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a phenomenon in which a hive’s worker bees suddenly disappear en masse.  While there is still no clear consensus as to the ultimate cause of CCD, most of the suspected factors relate to the stresses of migratory commercial beekeeping: exposure to pesticides, transmission of insect diseases and varroa mites,  and malnutrition resulting from monocultural food sources.  Whatever the cause, home scale beekeepers have been almost entirely unaffected and there have been no reports of CCD within the Philadelphia beekeeping community.   Considering the vital role bees play in pollination, relocalization of beekeeping may be vital to the future of our food production.

HOW TO JOIN PHILLY’S BEEKEEPING REVOLUTION:

Bees at West Philly's Mill Creek Farm.

1.  Find a location.  Philadelphians are currently beekeeping in backyards; on rooftops; and at community gardens, urban farms, public gardens, and schools.   In the case of a backyard or roof, there are a couple strategies to employ if you’re worried about what your neighbors will think.  It’s not too difficult to hide a hive; bees are quiet and often do their foraging up to two miles from their home.  Folks in NYC have even disguised their rooftop hives by painting them to look like chimneys!  The other option is to get your neighbors on board by sharing the honey harvest and allaying their fears about stinging.

2. Find a mentor.  Although a lot can be learned from books, beekeeping is a skill that’s best developed with guidance from an experienced teacher.  If you don’t happen to know any beekeepers, you can connect by taking classes or attending meetings of Beekeeping Associations.  Last year, the Philadelphia Beekeeper’s Guild (www.phillybeekeepers.org) was founded and now boasts dozens of members and well-attended monthly meetings featuring prominent guest speakers expounding on a wide variety of beekeeping subjects.  Neighboring Montgomery County (www.montgomerycountybeekeepers.com) and Chester County (www.chescobees.org) both have long-established groups.

3.  Acquire equipment, supplies, and bees.  To build the most common Langstroth style hive, you will need:
●6-8 hive bodies or supers (stacked boxes that contain the hive)
●9-10 frames per hive body (rectangles of wood that hold the honeycomb)
●Wax foundations (pre-made hexagonal framework to get the bees started)
●Bottom board and outer cover (to protect the hive from the elements)

Micah's rustic top bar hive.

All this can be mail ordered from vendors like the Walter T. Kelley Company (www.kelleybees.com) or acquired from local beekeeping groups for around $250.  Assembling your hive will take several days of work.  Alternatively, a more rustic top bar hive (an older form still commonly used in the tropics) can be built for as little as $7.

To get into your hives, you will want to spend another $50 or so on the following supplies:
●Smoker (burns leaves or pine needles to mask alarm pheromones and suppress stinging)
●Hive tool (a useful implement for opening hive bodies and moving frames)
●Bee veil (a mosquito net works just fine to protect the face)

A starter colony of bees including a queen will cost around $100.

4.  Inspect your hive regularly.  After lightly smoking the entrance, open the hive and closely examine each frame for the following:
● Adequate room for the rearing of brood and the storage of food (nectar, pollen, honey) as the season progresses and the hive increases in size.  Add frames and hive bodies as necessary.
● Enough nectar and pollen coming into the hive throughout the season and going into winter.   It is sometimes necessary to supplement their food supply with sugar.
● Health of the laying queen and signs of hive diseases or pests that may require intervention on the part of the beekeeper.
● Signs that the hive may be preparing to swarm.  Bees instinctively like to swarm- it’s how they perpetuate the species.  If not pre-empted by the keeper, a large number of bees will leave with the queen to start a new hive.
A hive inspection typically takes 15-30 minutes and should be conducted weekly during the spring when risk of swarming is highest.  This is of particular importance in the city.  As much as everyone loves bees (even if they don’t know it yet), having a swarm of thousands hanging from a telephone pole in front of your house might make some people a bit nervous.  As the season progresses inspections need not happen as frequently.

Examining a healthy bee frame.

5.  Extract your honey and beeswax.   The simplest method of harvesting honey from the hive is to cut out sections of comb and eat it!  If you want liquid honey, you can cut out the comb, crush it, and strain it to separate the wax from the honey.  The most common means of harvesting honey, both commercially and by hobbyist beekeepers, is an electric or hand crank extractor.  A thin layer of beeswax cappings is cut from the surface of a full frame and then multiple frames are placed in the extractor, which is spun rapidly to remove the honey. This method allows the beekeeper to harvest honey without crushing the comb, which can be made into other products  or returned to the hive for re-use by the bees.  Extraction is often done twice a year and usually involves a full day’s work.  An extractor typically costs from $350 to $800, but can often be shared or borrowed from beekeeping groups.

RECOMMENDED READING: The Backyard Beekeeper, Kim Flottum and Natural Beekeeping, Ross Conrad.

MORE INFO: www.beesource.com, www.bushfarms.com, www.biobees.com, www.anarchyapiaries.org

When most people think of insects, they think of mosquitoes that bite, bees that sting, and a host of annoying bugs that munch leaves and plants.  Truth is, there are vastly more beneficial insects than pests in the garden.  In fact, we’d all quickly starve without the pollination they provide for nearly all of our food crops.  Insects are indeed essential to a healthy garden ecology.

Ladybug larvae with its aphid dinner!

Problems with pest insects generally result from a lack of ecological balance.  A healthy garden may have some aphids and other pests, but it will also have a wide variety of predatory and parasitic insects to keep their populations under control.  Attracting these beneficial insects to your garden is the easiest and safest way to keep pest damage to a minimum.

So who are some of these garden allies?
LACEWINGS: One of the best predatory insects, these little guys flutter around the garden on delicate green wings at dusk.  Their larvae are known as ‘aphid lions’, but lacewings also attack thrips, caterpillars, mites, and more!  COMPANION PLANTS: Dill, goldenrod, dandelions.

LADYBUGS: There’s a reason these spotted beetles are considered lucky, as their presence helps protect your garden from bothersome pests.  Their larvae look like tiny alligators and voraciously consume aphids, mealy bugs, scales, and spider mites.  COMPANION PLANTS: Yarrow, sunflowers, mint.

BRACONID WASPS: These tiny wasps don’t sting, but gruesomely parasitize everything from gypsy moths to cabbageworms to cornborers.  After laying eggs inside their prey, their young eat their victims alive from the inside out.  How’s that for revenge against your enemies?  COMPANION PLANTS: Fennel, coriander, queen anne’s lace.

Mason bees provide essential pollination services.

MASON BEES: Just one of many types of native bees that are essential for pollination of fruits, nuts, and vegetables.  Unlike honey bees, they are solitary and don’t form hives- they also don’t sting!  Making a mason bee home is a fun project for kids and is great for the garden.  COMPANION PLANTS: Clover, hyssop, beebalm.

DADDY LONG LEGS: Eight legs good!  Like the spiders they are closely related to, these useful fellows feed almost exclusively on all kinds of insects.  COMPANION PLANTS: Comfrey, yarrow, nettle.

How do I attract and keep them in my garden?
1.  Avoid spraying chemicals.  Insecticides are generally indiscriminate, killing good and bad bugs alike.  In the long run this will only make your problems worse.  The pests will quickly return and, in the absence of predators, their populations will explode and devastate your garden.  By the time your natural insect allies return, the damage will be done.

Beneficials will stick around for a garden with something blooming in all seasons.

2. Feed your insect friends with beautiful flowers.  Besides eating pest insects, many beneficials also feed on pollen at different stages of their life cycle.  Attract them by planting a wide variety of annual and perennial flowers.  Keep them in the garden by making sure you have something blooming in all seasons.  Plants with clusters of tiny flowers (the umbel and aster families in particular) are often the best for bringing in beneficials.
3. Provide a home for your new garden allies.  Ideally you want them to stay in your garden year round as a permanent garrison of pest protection.  Dense vegetation, fallen leaves, mulch, and rock piles all provide good shelter for beneficials to live and reproduce.  If possible, leave your end-of-season garden clean up until Spring to allow your insect friends to overwinter.  Pre-industrial farms always had hedgerows, wild spaces in between fields that provided habitat for a balanced ecology.  You can apply the same principle in any sized yard or garden.  Consider leaving one corner of a larger property to grow wild at nature’s whim.  In smaller gardens, the approach can be as simple as interplanting some flowers with your veggies.

The large leaves of comfrey provide excellent habitat for many beneficials.

4. Create a watering hole.  Although many beneficials meet their moisture needs from drinking nectar, others need a water source to stay hydrated or to reproduce.  This can be accomplished with something as simple as a birdbath or as ambitious as a greywater processing pond.

Learn more: The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control, Ellis & Bradley; Gaia’s Garden, Toby Hemenway.

So you’ve been enjoying those orange, yellow, purple, green, striped, two-toned, cherry, plum, pear-shaped and downright unusual tomatoes from the farmer’s market.  Then you get your hands on a seed catalog and the names call to you: Black from Tula, Golden Sunray, Aunt Ruby’s German Green.  So how hard is it to grow these heirloom vegetables yourself?

Heirloom tomatoes of many stripes and colors. . .

First you need a place to grow that has abundant sunlight, rich soil, and easy access to water.  Backyard, front yard, community garden, containers on the patio, deck, rooftop, or window box.  Then you need a good seed catalog with a wide selection to get your heirloom juices flowing.  Try Seed Savers Exchange (seedsavers.org), Seeds of Change (seedsofchange.com), or Johnny’s Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com).  Many of the seeds you get can be directly sown in the soil.  Others, including tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, basil, and most cabbage family crops, are best given a head start before transplanting into the garden.  For those of us without access to a greenhouse or coldframe, this can be accomplished cheaply and easily with a homemade egg carton seed tray.

Egg carton seed tray ready for assembly.

SUPPLIES YOU WILL NEED:
Heirloom seeds
Egg carton
Scissors
Potting soil
Pennies or pebbles
Pen or sewing needle
Plastic wrap
Watering can or spray bottle

1. Consult your seedpack, catalog, or garden book to calculate when you need to get your seeds started.  For warm season crops like tomatoes, this is 6-8 weeks prior to planting out.  In Philly, this means seeding in late March to plant out in mid May.  Penn State Cooperative Extension’s Philadelphia planting calendar is a useful guide.
2. Separate the top and bottom half of your egg carton with scissors.  Put a few pennies or small pebbles in the top half of the carton to create space for drainage.  If you’re using a paper egg carton, you’ll want to lay down some plastic wrap as a liner first.
3. Use a needle or pen tip to poke several drainage holes into each cell of the egg carton bottom.  Then place the egg carton bottom into the top and fill each cell with potting soil up to the dividers.
4. Wet the potting soil prior to planting.  The soil should be damp, not saturated.
5. Plant two or three seeds per cell.  Check your seed pack for proper depth- a general rule of thumb is twice the diameter of the seed.
6. Cover your seed tray with plastic wrap to keep the moisture in.  Place the seed tray somewhere out of direct sunlight and near a heat source.  A soil temperature of at least 75 degrees is ideal for germination.
7. Remove the plastic wrap after the seedlings emerge, usually within a week.  Now you need to move the tray to your brightest window.  If you don’t have a sunny window, you’re going to need grow lights.
8. Water whenever your soil begins to dry, being careful not to over-saturate.  A misting spray bottle works especially well.  After a few days of growth, use scissors to snip out all but the largest seedling in each cell.
9. Using a spoon and great care, transplant your seedlings to a larger container after two or three weeks.  If you don’t have any 4” pots on hand, soda bottles can be cut off as a good substitute (remember the drainage holes!).  Water the seedlings immediately after transplanting and keep them out of the sunlight for a couple days until they readjust.
10. Harden off your transplants starting about a week before your target planting date.  Bring them outside for a couple hours a day to get them acclimated and then increase this time over the course of the week.  For warm season crops, avoid temperatures under 50 degrees.

Egg carton seed tray after seeding.

Now you’re ready to heirloom your garden and your kitchen!   If you missed your seed start date this year, you can still get a pretty good selection of heirloom transplants from Greensgrow Farm (greensgrow.org) in Kensington.  But remember, the only way to wow your neighbors with your own unique collection of Green Zebra tomatoes, Tequila Sunrise peppers, and Striped Toga eggplants is to start them yourself!

On February 7, over 80 enthusiastic farmers and eaters packed a workshop called Small Space Community Food Production in State College.  Lisa Mosca and Sharat Samashekara of Philly Green- a division of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society- energized the crowd about the possibilities of sustainable agriculture in an urban environment.  In the crowd were some of the 120 folks, according to the official count, from Philly and the Southeastern Pennsylvania region that trekked to State college for the Pennsylbania Association for Sustainable Agriculture’s (PASA) Farming for the Future conference.  They came from urban farms, farmers markets, and blogs to learn, network and, of course, eat some great local food.

“Our city is proving to be a big player in sustainable agriculture and we should be proud of that,” says Jennie Love of local food blog straightfromthefarm.com.  Indeed, Philadelphia’s urban farms have increased exponentially in the last five years, as illustrated in the timeline below.

City youth participate at Mill Creek Farm in West Philly.

PASA (www.pasafarming.org) is a member-based, sustainable farming organization that works to improve the economic prosperity, environmental soundness, and social propriety of our agricultural system.  PASA connects farmers with consumers through initiatives like Buy Fresh Buy Local (www.buylocalpa.org) and Good Food Neighborhood.  Its annual Farming for the Future Conference, now on its 18th year, is widely considered the most significant on the East coast and one of the three most important in the country.  Philadelphians would be pleased to recognize so many faces from the tables of our farmer’s markets, like Gina Humphreys of Urban Girls Produce and Tom Culton of Culton Organics.  Over 2000 people attended this year’s conference , including a record 700 first time participants.  Lauren Smith, PASA’s Conference Coordinator, was “especially encouraged to see so many young farmers at the conference”.   Given that the median age of farmers in the United States now exceeds 60 years, this is a very good sign for the future of food production in our country.

PASA participants check out a mansion of a chicken coop.

Keynote speaker Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved- a critique of industrial food production- opened the conference with an engaging and impassioned plea that “food sovereignty” be restored as a fundamental right of all people.  The conference featured meals cooked from food grown by member farmers, an agricultural job fair, and an awards ceremony honoring the accomplishments of sustainable farmers.  The Sustainable Tradeshow filled the halls with almost 80 exhibitors showcasing everything from large-scale farm equipment to individual farmers selling their cheeses.  Seventy five workshops were offered on subjects such as “Holistic High Density Planned Grazing”, “Bugs & Bunnies: How to Outwit them in the Backyard Garden” and “Solar Electric Systems 201: Basics and Beyond”.  The wide variety of topics appealed to a diverse audience, including  organic farmers, backyard gardeners, farmers market managers, locavores, and environmental activists.  David Siller of Weavers Way Farm summed it up: “It’s really the only time all year when farmers can get together and inspire each other.”

Philly's urban farm movement started with Greensgrow in 1997.

PHILADELPHIA URBAN FARM TIMELINE

1997- Greensgrow Farm
2000- University City HS Garden (UNI)
2004-6 Somerton Tanks Farm
2005- Teens 4 Good Farm
2006- Mill Creek Farm
2007- Weaver’s Way Farm
2007- Wyck Home Farm
2007- Flatrock Farm
2007- Philadelphia Orchard Project
2008- MLK HS Farm (w/Weaver’s Way)
2008- Grumblethorpe Farm

NOTE: This is not necessarily a complete list as there are numerous individuals and smaller groups in Philadelphia that are also growing food for sale or trade.  A variety of other organizations support urban farming without actually growing food themselves.