- D.J. Haverkamp inspects a bee hive. Photo by Colleen Wilson
The bees swarmed around the hives on a recent warm afternoon seemingly unbothered by D.J. Haverkamp. And equally unfazed was Haverkamp as he walked around holding a silver tin can puffing with a burnt brushwood aroma as he examined the file cabinet-like boxes that house the honey-makers.
“When they”™re disturbed, there”™s certain bees that will emit a chemical from their bodies. It”™s called pheromone, and that chemical will alarm the other bees and cause them to become aggressive, ward off the attacker,” Haverkamp said. “If we put some smoke in the air, it makes it hard for the other bees to be able to smell or sense that alarm pheromone.”
The whole concept of the stainless steel smoker, he said while checking on his hives at the Greenburgh Nature Center, is “helping the bees to stay a little calmer, not become agitated.”
And there is no question that the honeybee species has been more than a little agitated in recent years.
Around 2007 is when colony collapse disorder became something of a household phrase. The name was coined to be affiliated with the unusual and virtually no-explanation phenomenon of disappearing honeybees in the U.S. The Apiary Inspectors of America reported that from October 2009 to April 2010 honeybee colony losses were around 33 percent. During the same time, 28 percent of beekeepers reported that 44 percent of their colonies collapsed without a trace of dead bees.
As scientists have struggled to understand what could have caused this syndrome, others in Westchester County and beyond have taken the matter into their own backyards.
Haverkamp got the idea for a part-time business called Bedford Bee Honeybee Service in 2006 after agreeing to help friends take care of their honeybees.
“If they pay me to take care of their bees and help them with the beekeeping then maybe somebody else would want to do that, too,” Haverkamp said. And as he started to hatch a small business plan is when the news about colony collapse disorder had hit the news.
It was then that Haverkamp said he knew there was a market for people interested in taking part in a honeybee renaissance, of sorts, but who did not have the expertise or time to actually do it themselves.
That summer in 2007 is when Haverkamp, who is originally from Kansas and is employed full time in private estate work in Greenwich, had his first eight customers and set up hives on those clients”™ properties. Word eventually got around and the client list continued to increase. Today, Haverkamp has 30 customers and about 60 hives, which he said is a manageable amount for what is still a part-time job.
“But what I found was a little bit overwhelming for me. I”™d go to check on the bees at somebody”™s house ”” I can check my colony pretty quick and be in and out ”” but people would want to stop and talk and chat” about the honeybees and what their status was, he said. “So what would normally take me 15 minutes was taking an hour.”
Instead of having to educate clients individually every visit, Haverkamp decided to start a beekeeping school.
The idea for a beekeeping class was in 2008 to 2009, around the time the economy was crashing, but this worked in Haverkamp”™s favor when he visited the John Jay Homestead site in Katonah as a possible site for his school.
“The state government was looking for ways to save money every way it could, and so there were a bunch of these state museums that were on the chopping block,” he said.
To his surprise, they said yes.
“It was a real win-win because they now can use that as they write grants. They justify the purpose for the park and we have a great, little place and it”™s very convenient for people to get to,” he said.
Haverkamp”™s beekeeping school also became popular and he now teaches a curriculum during bee season from April to October at two locations; this year at the Greenburgh Nature Center and at John Jay Homestead.
And the regional beekeeping business doesn”™t stop there.
Leslie Huston operates Bee-Commerce, a Weston-based beekeepers supply store.
“We mostly provide for the smaller, sidelined beekeepers and hobbyists,” she said, “folks who have a few hives on their own property to pollinate their own gardens, neighborhood gardens and just for the joy of beekeeping.”
Bee-Commerce sells supplies for established and new beekeepers alike. Huston and her team help people get started with their first hives and help those new to the hobby with information and guidance.
But other clients, she said, are customers that use the bees for agricultural pollination.
Dennis Remsburger owns Remsburger Honey & Maple based in Pleasant Valley in Dutchess County.
While part of the business is selling honey, beeswax candles, skincare products and other household items, Remsburger gets up early in the morning or heads out late at night to set up hives at farms in the region.
“We have around a dozen different farms ranging from a few acres to a few thousand of acres,” he said, and the bees are used to pollinate everything from apricots to plums.
The arrangement is more commonly known as a pollination contract, which is a written document outlining the number of colonies used to pollinate and where to place the hives and for what crops.
Remsburger said he tried contracts years ago, but they were unenforceable.
“They”™re only as good as the paper they”™re written on,” so instead “what we prefer is a good relationship with our farmers, our growers and a handshake” with an agreed-upon price beforehand, he said.
Remsburger maintains more than 300 hives and most contain anywhere from 15 to 20 colonies.
Rather than being called a beekeeper, Remsburger said he refers to himself as a honeybee steward.
“You learn very quickly that you”™re not keeping the bees” and limiting those duties, but instead the key is to “learn what the bees need and then take care of them in that sense,” he said.
