# I'm Fixing a Hole Where the Rain Gets In....and Keeps My Bees From Wandering........



## sakhoney

that's really neat


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## Cloverdale

Like the Beatles quote, and of course the hives.... How long have you had your hives up there?


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## deknow

I managed bees there for 2 years before. For no reason that had to do with the job I was doing, the last 2 years they hired another company to manage the hives.

I am happy to be back, it is a really nice spot, and the people I work with are wonderful.


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## deknow

I should also say that this is all the work of the executive chef for the hotel...he is passionate about the bees...the main restaurant in the hotel is called 'Miel', and it was designed to the chef's specs for a honey themed restaurant. Didier painted all the hives and they look beautiful. It is a pleasure to work with someone that makes sure I have what I need to do whatever needs doing properly.

In the fall there is a special honey themed dinner with all courses involving honey from the hotel. We bring an observation hive down from bees on the roof (one year the hive was full of ripening goldenrod nectar...the entire cavernous resturant smelled like sweet delicious sweat socks...I was a little surprised that no one thought it smelled bad even though it makes my mouth water), and I give a little slide show talking about the bees.

For those somewhat familiar with Boston, the hotel is right on the Rose Kennedy Greenway Park...it used to be a dark (under a raised highway), smelly (fish and rotting vegetables), and downright ugly part of the city....the Big Dig cost a fortune (burying the highyway and building the park over it), but it has turned this neighborhood into an amazing place.

One of the focuses of the slideshow I give is photos of pollinators in the Greenway park (I do a market in the park on Saturdays, and I try to get someone to watch my tent while I run around and take photos of insects on flowers). 

I know why I see honeybees in the park...there are probably at least 30 hives on hotel roofs (maybe more) along the park and within a quarter mile of it.

What blows my mind (and I try to share it with my photos), is the number and diversity of _other_ pollinators in the garden. The parks department does an outstanding job with the landscaping (very labor and replacement intensive, very well done, and organically managed) so there are lots of flowers...but no one _brought_ the sweat bees, the wasps, the butterflys, the bumble bees. It really is a 'Field of Dreams'....all they did was build it and plant some flowers....

"If you build it, they will come"


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## deknow

Here is a photo around to the front of the hotel and along the Greenway park from the 20th floor.









...and this is (on an overcast cloudy day) the front of the hotel from the sidewalk.









It is a formidable building in a neighborhood with some incredible architecture.


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## deknow

This is a gallery of honeybees on flowers in the Greenway park:
https://picasaweb.google.com/101364646174445675116/5908290799925653841?authuser=0&feat=directlink

This is a gallery of bringing the camera progressively closer to a large sign advertising for trolly tours in the city....I noticed that I could see the hives on the roof (this was from 2012):
https://picasaweb.google.com/101364...authkey=Gv1sRgCOyqv4G_w-62sAE&feat=directlink

This is a gallery of honeybees in a garden outside South Church, just down the street from the Lenox Hotel, where I also manage bees:
https://picasaweb.google.com/101364...authkey=Gv1sRgCP_KwvLZgcCYmAE&feat=directlink

...and if you still want to look at more pictures, there are a lot in this gallery...
https://picasaweb.google.com/101364646174445675116/Gomislideshow?authuser=0&feat=directlink


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## Tenbears

Boston I quite a hike from Worchester isn't it. I turned down a job at Raythion because I thought Leominster was to far of a drive!


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## Zombee

Very cool. Thanks for sharing this.


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## deknow

Tenbears said:


> Boston I quite a hike from Worchester isn't it. I turned down a job at Raythion because I thought Leominster was to far of a drive!


We live in Leominster. I'm in Boston regularly for markets and deliveries, and I generally stay overnight on Sunday nights (I do markets Sat and Sun...very long days) at the Lenox (which is a real luxury by _any_ standards)...which wakes me up in Boston on Mondays so I can manage the bees there, at the Intercontinental, and in the Fenway Victory Garden (a few years ago the BOD of the garden society board offered a plot for a teaching apiary...I'm going to teach queenrearing there this summer...about equidistant from Fenway Park, the Museum of Fine Arts, and Symphony Hall....7 acres and 500 garden plots....and a community of people that care about and support what I love to do). I walk everywhere (I cut through the public garden and the common...eat in chinatown at midnight, go hear my friends play music at clubs and not have to drive home anywhere) and my parking is good until 5 on Mondays....if I'm done early enough, I check hives in my friends yard in Dracut on the way home, and we have a bbq.

Both hotels have gone out of their way in different ways to make this all ecological (it saves me at least one round trip drive to Boston a week), and convenient for me for me to do whatever needs to be done...I work with the best people I can imagine, and everything has somehow come together so that the overhead, hassle, and the commute (and parking!!!) disappear and managing bees in the city isn't any more of a hassle than managing the hives on my 3rd floor porch that are 20 feet from the foot of my bed (I like keeping my cell starter close by  ) I've certainly never appreciated Boston as much as I am now.

In addition, this all allows me to do regular programming at the teaching apiary, and separate from the hotels, the beekeepers in Boston are wonderful, and have been supportive in their own ways that make doing things that require preparation, work, and resources for me to make happen in the teaching apiary also a pleasure and not feel like a burden or expense. We've also been meeting in the Lenox Hotel bar on Sunday nights for informal bee chats (it is a very nice bar). 

I think I've been doing some kind of teaching in Boston since 2008 or so, and I've had bees in Boston I think for at least the last 5 years...this is the first year that I've been able to setup my whole schedule so that it is efficient....and suddenly Sunday night/Monday is the highlight of my week, and right now (including a few nucs with cells in them), I'm managing 19 colonies all in walking distance...I park on Sunday night and don't think about my car until I'm ready to leave the city, or it's 5pm....and I can drive right up to all locations to move equipment almost any time.

The only thing that really keeps me up at night is that the hives attract bears to the hotel roofs....that might be a problem (and I'll need to setup electric fences).

When we moved from Somerville to Leominster around 2000 it seemed very far from town....but I like to drive, I have a diesel that gets 45+mpg fully loaded up for market (at least until VW 'fixes' their 'mistake'), and I'm not a big drinker so I just don't drink anything if I have to drive home from town. The other thing is that almost all my driving isn't driving at rush hour, so it really isn't bad.


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## deknow

I posted this photo before...but it is now on the National Geographic 'Proof' website (their photo based website)...and some of Mario's work from this project is in the June Magazine...Mario Wezel is a photographer I met in the Victory Garden when I was doing a program...I could see from a distance by the way he held his camera that he was a real photographer so I went over to talk with him...he had won the 69th International Collegiate Photo Prize, which gave him an internship at National Geographic. He is a fantastic photographer and a wonderful guy. He took some standard photos of the bees, but when I told him the Lenox sign was lit up red at night, he wanted to come back after dark. I'm usually on the other end of the camera, but he was playing with the light and wanted to experiment...we were up there for like 2 hours while I walked around in a bee suit in the dark 

http://proof.nationalgeographic.com...-photographer-grows-his-craft-on-urban-farms/









I liked modeling so much that I have a swimsuit calendar coming out soon.


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## Cloverdale

You have the most interesting life, especially with your bees. I am not familiar with Boston; my family hails from Gloucester. How about a "bee" themed swimsuit calendar, modest, of course!


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## deknow

Well, at least at the moment my beekeeping in Boston is both interesting and rewarding, 'my life' is probably like most peoples...a mixed bag that allows me to appreciate and be thankful for how lucky I am.


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## Cloverdale

My motto exactly.


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## Tenbears

Way cool doknow! Glad it all comes together for you. I lived on N Main St in Leominster when I was there for 5 years on recruiting duty. I married a girl from Ashburnham, and thought very seriously about staying when I mustered out. Back in the early 70s. At times I wish I had!


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