Bryant Park Bees Are Making Honey In The Middle Of Midtown

NEW YORK, NY — Bryant Park is buzzing – and not just with Midtown office workers seeking some lunchtime sun.

Nestled in the north west corner of the tiny park between blocks of skyscrapers, two hives have become home for 80,000 honey bees, feeding on the pollen produced by the greenspace's flowers and producing aout 80 eight-ounce bottles of honey every season.

And park-goers barely know they're there.

Program Coordinator Owen Harrang — an employee at the Bryant Park Corporation who had the idea of bringing beehives to Bryant Park after prior experience working with them at a sustainable farm in Seattle, Washington — is the main overseer of the operation.

"We really like to surprise people with the different amenities and kind of expand people's idea of what's possible in the Public Park. So I thought it would be cool to bring bees to one of our garden beds," said Harrang.

Harrang had the idea, but he knew he needed Andrew Coté's help to make it happen. Coté is the founder and head of the New York City Bee Keepers Association and is one of the leading experts on urban beekeeping.

When Harrang reached out to Coté with his idea of bringing the hives to Bryant Park, the longtime beekeeper told him he'd been "waiting for the call for a couple of years."

Coté helped install the two hives in 2017 and has done so every summer since. "They get installed in the Spring — we did it in late April this year. You start with 10,000 bees, and those numbers grow over the summer to 80,000-100,000 by the end of the season," said Harrang.

The relationship between bee and human has not always been a great one, but it's one that Harrang says has worked out surprisingly well in Bryant Park.

"We have signs that say please don't disturb the bees, and overall we've had zero problems with someone walking into the hives or messing with them at all. I think there's an element of self preservation in people's minds."

Harang was quick to mention that for those parkgoers who do express skepticism and worry about the idea of tens of thousands of bees living so close, it generally takes only a little education to show the insects mean no harm.

"I'm thinking specifically during our beekeeping classes, where people are surprised to find out that we have beehives in Bryant Park, but they'll come over and he'll (Coté) show the bees to them and they'll realize that they don't want to hurt them, or don't even care about them," Harrang said.

The bees are only around in the summer months. Their numbers shrink drastically towards August as the weather cools and the pollen levels on the surrounding flowers falter.

The lack of pollen can cause the bees to lose some of their civility later in the season: they start swarming around the local carts and vendors in the park who have sweet things on sale.

"We had to remove them in August last year, so we're actually going to do that again this year. Ideally they would be all year round fixtures, but they're great park guests up until basically August...They become basically feisty park guests then," Harrang said.

Bryant Park is now in its third year with the beehives, and they've seen their monthly beekeeping classes go from only five people in 2017 to more than 80 in their most recent session.

"Honeybees are super important to the eco system, and they are the reason that we all have all this variety of food. So learning about how beehives work and how we use them as a society are really, really important."

Produced honey is sold on the Bryant Park website, though it sells out fast.

Watch the bees here on a live feed of the hives: