Rye Town Park Director Russ Gold wears many hats. He oversees daily operations, participates in beach cleanups, and books park events. He’s even a certified lifeguard.
But there’s one hat that Gold never envisioned wearing — that of beekeeper.
Yet several times from spring to fall, Gold dons a wide-brimmed veiled topper, along with a protective suit. He and Friends of Rye Town Park board member Chris Meier tend to 50,000 honey bees whose home is a stack of bee boxes on the peninsula that juts into the duck pond at Rye Town Park.
Gold’s idea to bring bees to Rye Town Park took root in 2020. He was inspired by the Friend’s ongoing efforts to bring more native, pollinator-friendly plants, shrubs, and flowers into the park. Pollinator-friendly plants attract pollinators like bees, butterflies, and birds that fertilize the plants, which in turn, enable them to produce fruits, seeds, and young plants.
Bees, plants, and humans, have a mutually beneficial relationship. Pollinator-friendly plants provide bees with sustenance, and a third of the world’s food production depends on them — both honey bees and wild native bees, including those that are endangered.
With the enthusiastic support of Diana Page, the Friend’s board president, and the promise of funding from the group, Gold set out to learn what he could about beekeeping. “I didn’t really know what I got myself into,” he said, “because I didn’t know the first thing about it.”
He discovered that, historically, the art of beekeeping has been a tradition passed down from one generation to the next. In search of a knowledgeable guide, Gold was surprised to find that there are a fair number of backyard beekeepers in Rye.
Amy Kesavan is one of them. For a long time, Kesavan has shared her master gardening skills and sustainability knowledge with the community, and Gold proceeded to shadow her and learn the ABCs of beekeeping.
With a year of learning under his belt, he felt confident enough to bring bees to Rye Town Park. “You come to realize that physically, it’s not hard once you get over the nervousness of being around all these buzzing little critters,” said Gold.
In the spring of 2021, with Kesavan’s help, he installed two wooden bee boxes on the grassy spit of land on the west side of the duck pond. Nestled among the plants and trees, the hives consist of a stack of boxes with interior frames — two brood boxes, where the queen lays eggs, and super boxes (short for superstructure) for storing honey. With the hives now fit for a queen, it was time to fill them with bees.
Gold still gets wide-eyed as he recalls the experience of picking up and transporting three pounds of bees — or 15,000 of them — in screened boxes back to Rye. “We drove to some place in Connecticut and picked up our bees,” Gold said. “Then we put them in the back of the car and all the way home, you hear ‘bzzzz.’”
Back at the hive, Gold’s next challenge was to suit up in protective gear, release the cage door and introduce thousands of buzzing bees to their new home. He was relieved at how smoothly the process went. “You literally open up the top of the cage and just turn it over and kind of gently shake them,” said Gold. “They just go straight in.”
The last and most crucial step was transferring the queen bee, who traveled in a separate smaller cage, into the hive. The queen cage is secured with a plug made of sugar, and that cage has to be positioned to give the other bees access to the plug. “The bees will eat through the sugar plug and release the queen into the hive,” said Gold.
Initially, the bees are fed sugar water, because there aren’t enough flowers to pro- vide adequate nectar and pollen to sustain them. They need that sweet fuel because, for the first month and a half, they are busy ensuring that the hive’s population grows. If all goes well, the queen will lay up to 1,500 eggs each day. “By the time they start making honey,” said Gold, “there are probably between 40,000 and 50,000 per hive.”
Every two to three weeks, Gold and Meier perform what they call “hive checks.” Using a bee smoker to calm the bees, they open up the boxes and gently pull out the larva and honeycomb-laden frames. They search for the queen to make sure she’s thriving. “There’s a certain dance that the queen does, a certain way that she moves that helps you find it,” said Meier.
They also inspect the hive for signs of disease and overcrowding. “If they have no more room to keep doing what they’re doing, they’ll swarm and go somewhere else,” Gold said.
To prevent that, they add super boxes for the growing colony to expand into.
Through these hive checks, the Gold and Meier beekeeping team have gotten to know their buzzing charges intimately. The bees make their objections known when they’ve had enough poking, prodding, and inspecting. “All of a sudden they just all start to swarm, you get this cacophony and you know it’s time to go,” said Gold.
In the fall, harvesting the honey is an all-hands-on-deck operation. Gold and Meier remove each frame to scrape open the honeycombs with a special rake. Then the honey is strained into a bucket. The hives yield about eight gallons, enough to fill 128 eight-ounce jars. It’s available for sale at park events and Gold’s office off the porch of the tower building across from Rye Town Park’s pavilion.
The $20 price tag for a jar of this liquid gold supports the Friends of Rye Town Park’s mission to improve and beautify the park.
“There are so many spectacular things about the park, and I think it gets better every year,” said Meier. “The bees add to it.”
These powerful pollinators are providing far-reaching benefits. They are helping pollinator plants and pollinators thrive, and ensuring that our natural landscape and ecosystem are sustained. They also are providing access to delicious local honey.
Gold and Meier tend to the bees and harvest their honey voluntarily. They say that enriching the park while being up close and personal with nature is priceless. They use words like “fascinating” and “the awe of the whole thing” when reflecting on their time with their buzzing friends.
For them, it’s a sweet deal. “The biggest reward is having an unlimited supply of honey,” Gold said. “I get paid in honey.”