Special Message and Archive Special - Darren Mays, NYPD Beekeeper (359)

359 - Special Message and Archive Special - Darren Mays, NYPD Beekeeper

Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Hey everybody, welcome to the show. We have a special episode for you today or this week. We're going to split it in half. The first part is a special project that Becky and I are working on. The second half is our interview with Beekeeper Darren Mays from back in 2022. First things first, Becky, this is fun. This is a little bit off kilter, a little bit different than what we usually do.

Becky: This is exciting. We have a secret that not many people know the secret.

Jeff: No one--

Becky: We're about to share it with a few people here. I think at least a few people are going to hear us talk about this now. This feels good.

Jeff: It's a secret that's about a year old now, isn't it?

Becky: Yes. It's a year old since you and I made a very, very serious commitment which is starting to sound a little funny. [laughter]

Jeff: Yes. Now people are really sitting on the edge of their seats. [laughs]

Becky: Hey, we're going to get more listeners. Okay, keep listening. Keep listening. Because our commitments was about putting, I would say pen to paper, but both of us are using computers. We got a really interesting-- it was an email request, wasn't it?

Jeff: It was. It came in originally via email. At first it was one of those, you think, "Oh, this is just one of those. I have bee suits I can make for you any quantity." It turned out to be real.

Becky: It turned out to be real. It was such an honor because neither of us had had any plans or intentions, but we were invited to write a beginner beekeeping book from a very, very respected publisher because we did our homework. We looked at books that they have been publishing, and we did some investigating because neither of us-- this wasn't on our bucket list, was it?

Jeff: No, actually it was not. It's an exciting opportunity to put together a book that coincides with our experiences with the podcast. This really leads up to what we're going to ask our listeners today, is their help in contributing to the book, because the name of the book is basically is called Beekeeping Today: A Beginner'sGuide to Beekeeping. We're looking for some specific items from our listeners to go into the book.

Becky: We are. I'm just going to take us back a step because even before the podcast, even before you started this podcast. You have been teaching people how to keep bees and mentoring them and helping them, and I've been doing the same. It really is at the sum of our efforts over the years. We'd really like telling people what to do in the bee yard.

[laughter]

No, but it's all the more special, because like you said, it has to do with the work that we also do on the podcast. We recognize that you're out there listening and we know that the listeners can help us put this book together. Don't worry, we're not going to ask you to write anything.

[laughter]

Jeff: Oh, we should have done that.

Becky: I know. What were we thinking? That next time. We're not going to ask you to write anything, but we do want to include listeners in the book. The very best way that Jeff and I thought we could do this, sorry to interrupt you, was to ask you for help with some of the photos.

Jeff: Yes. We're thinking it would be a wonderful experience, a wonderful book for all of our listeners and for our future listeners to include photos that were submitted from you. We're looking for a variety of photos from your bee yard, your specific bees, your experiences. Instead of just saying, "Hey, send us your bee pictures," because [laughter] you know how that would end up. They would just be a lot of bees.

Becky: We wouldn't get the book done. [laughs]

Jeff: That's right. We'd gone through all these bee photos is on our website. We've set up a specific page with requests for photos or photo requests. If you go out to our website to the top of the line, there's menu, it says, "Additional Resources." The very last item under Additional Resources, you'll see Beekeeping Today: The book. You click on that link, you go to that page, and there'll be a list of photo needs. That photo needs link, or those photo needs will change, I won't say daily, but they will change relatively quickly as we go through the book and we identify with the publisher photos that we need to fill out and illustrate what we've written.

Becky: I think we have two for sure to start with, actually probably a third too. We're now looking for pictures of you hiving either a nuc or a package. We all know that hopefully you get your camera out on hiving day and you've taken a couple of good pictures, but we really want to show readers the joy of hiving a nuc, hiving a package. If you could share those with us. Do they have to be good quality or are my pictures okay, Jeff?

Jeff: No, we're looking for high quality photos.

Becky: Okay. [laughter]

Jeff: Sorry, Becky. No, we are looking for high quality photos, and so that we want the subject of the photo to be well displayed and the horizons level where appropriate, as appropriate. We want a good color. We just want to make it-- It's for nice books, so we want the photos to represent the quality of the beekeepers and also the quality of the book. Yes. Look, find your best photos and don't send us 300 of them, but send us your very best, the best of the best. That way, we can put it in our log for those books or for those specific needs, and working with the publisher will make the final choice of which photos will go into the final book.

Becky: If we are able to select your photo, then we'll obviously need to get a photo release. We will give you photo credit, but we can't pay you. Did I say that too softly? [laughter] I wish we could pay everybody for their photos, but we're kind of not there. You're going to be well famous because your picture will be in a book.

Jeff: A very, very nice beginning beekeeping book. Thank you for listening to this a little bit. This really is a commercial for upcoming book from Becky and me, but it's also something that we can work on as a community with the community photos of our listeners. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you everybody for giving us this time to talk to you.

Becky: Yes, thank you.

Jeff: Coming up is an episode recorded with Darren Mays. He is a retired New York City policeman, who was the New York City policeman as a beekeeper. He went on all the swarm calls everywhere from any of the boroughs to Times Square. It's a fascinating story, a good man, and good beekeeper. Stay tuned for that right after these words from our sponsors.

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Jeff: Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Sitting across the virtual Zoom Beekeeping Today Podcast table is none other than Darren Mays, [chuckles] the retired beekeeper for the New York Police Department. Welcome, Darren, to Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Darren: Thank you. Thanks for having me as a guest.

Jeff: It's our pleasure. I'm so excited about having you here. I couldn't even get it out of my mouth. Now we're started. I can settle down.

Darren Mays: All right.

Kim Flottum: Nice to meet you, Darren.

Darren: Likewise, Mr. Flottum.

Kim: I would guess that you have a lot of interesting stories to tell from most people who don't live in New York City. Let me go back to the beginning. How did you get to be the beekeeper for the New York Police Department? How did you get into bees?

Darren: I'll start with how I got into bees. I guess what I would say it found me. I have a friend, Rich, who lives in Massachusetts, and he's from England. When he moved here several years ago to the United States, he was the type of guy who wanted to start every hobby that he could think of. He wanted to be a weightlifter. He wanted to be a blacksmith. He tried everything, but every hobby he tried only lasted maybe two weeks.

One day my wife came home and said, "Darren, guess what Rich is doing now?" She's laughing. I knew it was something funny. I was like, "Tell me. What is he doing now?" She was like, "He's taking beekeeping classes." We both bursted out laughing because I thought it was the funniest thing, like, who take beekeeping classes? Bees, they just sting people. Why would you want to do that? I immediately called him. He said, "Yes, Darren, you heard. I'm taking beekeeping classes to raise honeybees, so you're going to make fun of me, right?"

I said, "You're right. I'm making fun of you. Why would you do that? You understand bees sting." He said, "Well, they produce honey." I said, "I never like honey anyways, so I don't think I would like bees." I realized that once he harvested some honey and shared it with me, it tasted totally different from what I had growing up because I never had the real stuff. Parents used to buy little plastic bottles of honey, and I guess I thought that was real.

Moving forward was one weekend I went to his house. Before I could get out of the car, he came to the door, ushered me in his backyard, and was like, "Darren, come look at my bees. You want to see my bees?" I was like, "Rich, I don't want to see your bees. I don't want to get stung. I'm not interested." I didn't want to make him feel bad about his newfound hobby, so I went out there and supported him, and I stood maybe 50 yards away while he's standing right next to the hive like, "Darren, could you see what these bees are doing? They're going out, they're coming back, and they're bringing in pollen. They got these cool pollen sacs on their legs."

"50 yards away, Rich. I can see what they're doing. I can see the pollen sacs on them." He was like, "No. You got to come closer, really. Take a look at it. It's cool." You see where I'm standing, I'm not getting stung. I said, "Maybe because they know you better than me." I moved maybe another 20 yards closer, then I seen the be flying back and forth from the entrance, but still couldn't see the pollen sacs, but I told him I could. He was like, "You're lying. Just come closer. If you get stung, then you don't have to worry about it no more."

I moved closer, I got within 5 feet, and I noticed it. Like an airport, I see all these bees coming and going, coming and going. I saw the pollen sacs on their legs. Before I knew it, I was on one knee with one arm resting on his hive for an hour and didn't realize I was outside for an hour until I heard some laughing coming from his kitchen window. I looked up; he wasn't near his hive no more. He left, went inside the house. Now, his wife, himself, and my wife are looking at me laughing because I was fixated on these bees.

Once I was fixated and I heard them laughing, I jumped up embarrassingly like, "Oh no, they caught me having a good time watching bees." They said, "Oh, you're interested in this. You like this, right?" I nonchalantly said, "No, it's not my thing. I want nothing to do with them." He harvested honey later on and I tasted it, and I was like, "Man, these bees really make this stuff." I said, "Okay, that's cool," but I thought nothing else of it. My wife bought me a kit for Christmas containing a starter kit with the hive, the suit, the veil, and everything.

I knew nothing. I knew nothing about bees or where to go. She said, "I signed you up to join an association, a club where you can join." I did a research. I found a guy who sell packages of bees in the spring. He lives 20 minutes away from us. I got everything set up. I got through some books. You could also watch some YouTube videos. I joined an association. She bought it that Christmas. That January, I went to my first meeting. I was the youngest guy there. Everyone there was happy to show me and teach me everything I knew. That's how I got hooked on it.

Jeff: Wow.

Kim: That's not an uncommon story for a lot of people. It's, "I want nothing to do with it," until you see what's going on, and then you can't stop me. I like hearing that story from lots of people because it's refreshing, and at the same time it's really common.

Jeff: To have the immediate support from the family, that's novel, and that's fantastic.

Darren: Usually, the women or the wife want nothing to do with them because their fear of getting stung and everything, but she pushed it on me, and here we are.

Kim: How long ago did that happen?

Darren: This was that spring of 2008 when I visited his hive. Christmas of 2008 is when she got me the gear and stuff for Christmas. 2009 is when I joined the association and got my first bees.

Kim: The first year you had one package? You've got one package?

Darren: I had one package.

Kim: How much honey did your package make that year?

Darren: That first year, I think I may have gotten close to 40, 50 pounds.

Kim: That's a nice harvest, first-year package.

Darren: That was one good year.

Kim: I guess so. Now you're a beekeeper, and you're also a policeman in New York City at the same time, correct?

Darren: Yes.

Kim: I'm not even sure how to ask this. What were you doing as a policeman? What was your role, your assignment?

Darren: I was a regular patrolman, a policeman, where I answered domestic jobs, I answered-- what do you call it? Any 911 calls, whether it'd be domestic, police accidents. It could be what we call EDPs, emotionally disturbed people, or someone didn't take their medication, they're a little off their rockets, we had to respond to jobs like that, or if we had to sit on hospital prisoners or whatever it took to answer 911 calls.

Kim: Never a dull day, right?

Darren: Oh, everything changes every day. It's the most exciting job in the world.

Jeff: It would be like the standard TV or movie vernacular; you were in the black and white, right?

Darren: Yes.

Jeff: For someone who doesn't live in New York City and only knows it through the TV, you would be that guy.

Kim: Almost real life.

Jeff: Yes. Wow.

Kim: Now you're a beekeeper and you're a policeman, and somewhere in there you became the person that they were calling when they had trouble. Well, let me go back a half a step. What is the legal ramifications of having bees in New York City?

Darren: Beekeeping was legalized in 2010. Prior to 2010, it was illegal to have honeybees, but you had people keeping honeybees, but they didn't find them or anything. It wasn't as much prevalent as it is now because it was legalized in 2010. After 2010, we saw a big fluctuation of swarms happening in New York City.

Kim: Oh, I can't imagine a swarm in New York City. [laughter] That's got to be 10,000 people pointing up at the sky and petrified and waiting for you to get there. Let me go back a half a step. Did the police department come to you because they knew you were a beekeeper?

Darren: No. What happened was they always had one beekeeper, always had one for the department. He retired in 2013, and they needed a replacement for spring of 2014. When he retired, I started beekeeping in 2009 for myself. The guys I worked with knew I was beekeeping. One gentleman, he was getting promoted, and he overheard some of the higher-ranking officers talking at a meeting that they needed a replacement beekeeper because the one that they had retired, and everyone they tried to contact through department records, where they put on their profile what they'd done prior to policing.

They were exterminated, so they didn't want those because they knew they would kill the bees. The gentleman that I worked with, he overheard the two high-ranking officers talking. After they finished talking, he pulled one of them aside and said, "I have somebody who'll be a good fit for you. This guy I work with, he's a beekeeper, and I think he'll be a good fit for you." He got that lieutenant's card, and the lieutenant told him, have Officer Mays call me ASAP at eleven o'clock the next day, which I did. He said, "You know what? You're going to be my guy. I need you."

Jeff: You're recruited

Darren: I was recruited.

Kim: That fast. If you're on duty and you're driving a car?

Darren: Usually, what happened was I worked midnights. I worked overnight. I worked from eleven o'clock till eight o'clock in the morning. When there was a swarm coming over, I was home sleeping. Immediately when they called, you're on call 24/7, wherever or whatever I was doing, I had to get up or stop what I was doing, and I would respond to the city and go. I was responding in my private vehicle because we were not allowed to take out the department cars home. I live an hour and a half north of the city. I would drive my private vehicle in and respond to the location.

Kim: You had all of your gear with you all of the time.

Darren: All the time.

Kim: That makes life a lot simpler. Less complicated anyway.

Jeff: I was thinking that instead of a paddy wagon, you would have a bee wagon.

Darren: [chuckles] That would've been nice, but I didn't get one. The first guy, he had one. They gave him his own personal vehicle.

Jeff: That would've worked out well. You could load up all your gear, have it all set.

Darren: Yes, but I kept it in my car. Luckily, they gave me an easy pass, which made it good. They gave me the gas and everything like that to alleviate the cost.

Kim: You're at home some Tuesday morning, about ten o'clock, 10:30, when someplace in New York City there's a swarm, or I'm going to guess you handled things other than swarms, correct?

Darren: I did. Also, if they had those bald-faced hornet nests, I would remove them as well.

Kim: Mostly swarm season was your busy season.

Darren: It was my busy season for this department.

Kim: Did you ever have to deal with situations where there was a beekeeper who had bees on a roof, on a balcony, or someplace, and they were causing problems to neighbors that you had to intervene in?

Darren: Usually not. We were not allowed to wrangle bees or rescue bees from private property. That's the one thing they didn't allow us to get involved with.

Jeff: The domestic disputes between bee owners and their neighbors that was--

Darren: That was out of our hands. I didn't answer unless another police officer who went-- They would tell them basically if the bees are on their property and they're not bothering you, they're honeybees. Just let them go. Let it be.

Jeff: That's really good. That's quite the position you wouldn't think that a big city department would even have that. It would have that approach to be honeybees. I'm glad to hear that. That's very cool.

Kim: When the swarm came from someplace and landed on something that wasn't private property, it landed on a mailbox, or it landed on a street lamp, or what about a storefront?

Darren: Storefront, we would get it. We had the infamous one that landed on the hot dog stand in Times Square. [laughter] It landed on a hot dog stand. When I was doing it, I found another gentleman to help me. He was a beekeeper as well, and I found him. It was two of us doing it. He got the call that day to remove some bees from a hot dog stand.

Kim: Wow. I'm trying to think of what was the most exciting swarm removal event you were part of.

Darren: Father's Day, I had a swarm in Times Square on a police camera in the middle of Times Square.

Kim: When you say a police camera, you mean that's one that's watching the street?

Darren: Yes.

Jeff: Who reported that? Was that self-reported by the officers monitoring?

Darren: Part of it was by Intel. The Intel office, they say, "Hey, we got a bunch of bees on our camera." There were a few 911 calls made as well.

Jeff: That's fun. I bet you had videos of you cleaning that?

Darren: I did.

Jeff: Did they send you videos of you after brushing the beans off lens?

Darren: Yes, they did. Sure did.

Kim: Did you have access to a vacuum?

Darren: I did. I bought a Colorado Bee Vac a few years prior to when I knew they would need me in the off-season, I bought one.

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Kim: Taking a step back, you're still a beekeeper, and you still got bees back home. How many colonies are you running right now, about?

Darren: A dozen.

Kim: A dozen. That's a good load. That keeps you busy on your off days. How's the honey crop out there this year so far? What is it about, the 20th of May today, or something like that?

Darren: The 19th of May is coming along. We're getting a nectar flow right now, just coming in. The bees are keeping that for themselves was not able to put a honey soup on yet.

Kim: Well, that makes sense. That's good. Is it an average flow better than average?

Darren: It looks better than average.

Kim: Better than average. That always makes the rest of the season look good, one hopes.

Darren: It does.

Kim: Do you have any problems out there with your bees?

Darren: No, no more than a bear occasionally.

Kim: Occasional bear. That's a big problem. [laughter] Do you have them fenced?

Darren: I have them fenced. I have them electro fenced.

Kim: Let me go back to again, some of the exciting swarms that you had. You don't do private property, so basically what you were doing was sweeping swarms off, and you had a police camera swarm. Most of these, I guess, were probably pretty routine, except you were very often probably blocking traffic someplace.

Darren: Yes, traffic or even a sidewalk, and New York City being a heavily populated area, especially Times Square, which they call the Crossroads of America. Everybody, the tourists-- most people there are tourists and they're watching. They're walking and watching what's up in the sky to keep their heads up looking at the tall buildings and not realizing I can be working to remove a swarm. It could be on that police camera. I've even had them in time square on flower pots, recycle bins, and stuff like that. People just walk with their heads up. They'll walk through the caution tape. They just don't understand or see what's going on because they're busy looking in the sky.

Kim: You don't have caution tape all over the place or enough caution tape, maybe I should say to Keep them out of there. You go in and you got a swarm on a mailbox and you've got something that you're going to either vacuum them off or brush them into. Where do the bees go after that?

Darren: I'll bring them home.

Kim: You get to keep the bees?

Darren: I get to keep the bees. That was the first thing I asked when I had to sit down with the brass. I was like, "What happened with the bees?" They said, "Oh, you get to keep the bees. That's part of your reward for saving them."

Kim: That's fair.

Darren: I said, "Okay." Oh, yes.

Kim: Absolutely. Wow. I'll go back to again complaints about bees and and there's a story a bunch of years ago in New York city about bees visiting a candy factory and making candy-- factory that made, I want to say, Red candy for Christmas. The bees were making red honey from-- Do you ever have that kind of an act, where the bees are bothering some business someplace?

Darren: I never had a call at a business, but last year a swarm that I removed, they was in the recycle bin and in the recycle bin, when I opened it up, they were all in and because it was maybe mid July and it's because they was after those solar cans that were in the septical.

Kim: Food and certainly water. I would guess that water is also an issue in the city. You would run into issues where they were at somebody's-- I'm not going to say swimming pool, but somebody's water source someplace that they didn't want them there?

Darren: Yes. They complain all the time about, "Oh, you got these bees there in my water." I was like, "Listen, they just need a drink." Actually one of my neighbors three, four houses away from me, who has the most extravagant backyard and a big array of flowers, he complained one time because he said, "Oh, your honeybees are in my bird bath."

I said, "I can't control where they're going, but as you can see at my house, I do have a water source for them. If they're out foraging and they're going to see water, if they want to stop to your bird bath to get a water, there's nothing I can do about it." He wasn't happy, so to make him happy one of the first thing they tell you, "Give your neighbors some honey." That's the deal.

Jeff: That worked?

Darren: It worked.

Jeff: Yes, good. That's probably what he was just edging for.

Darren: Probably didn't want to be direct, but yes indirectly.

Jeff: No, I can't ask him directly for honey, but I can complain about the bees and the bird feeder.

Kim: There we go. I haven't thought about that.

Jeff: It sounded like you had several calls to Times Square. Did you ever locate the source of where those bees were swarming from?

Darren: I did. The president of New York City Beekeepers Association, he has hives on top of the Bank of America building, which is on 42nd in 6th Avenue, and where I was retrieving the bees were on 42nd or 41st Street or 7th Avenue and Broadway. Right in the vicinity within two city blocks or less.

Jeff: Did he ever say, "Yes, those were probably my--"

Darren: He denied it.

[laughter]

It wasn't like he was at fault or anything. We all understood what--

Kim: Most of the bees in the city are on the roof of a building someplace?

Darren: Yes, believe it or not, they're on a roof and-- Yes, they're on the roof. What I was going to add was a lot of them are on these high rises, like these big buildings that have like 20, 30, 40 stories high.

Kim: They don't have a problem with wind that high?

Darren: I'm sure they do. He admitted that he doesn't get much honey from them but I guess it's a showpiece for corporate. When they have their meetings, they can show they have bees on their rooftops and stuff.

Kim: I keep thinking about the Time Square. Did you keep a map of where you picked up swarms over time and you knew where geographically? I'm never down in that area because there must not be any bees down there because I'm never down in that area. They're all generally around in this several block area.

Darren: I didn't keep a map, but most of Manhattan calls were definitely in Time Square. They have bees spread throughout the city. That guy once again the president of the Bee Keepers Association, he's got them everywhere; in Soho, downtown, midtown, upper east side, lower east side. Everywhere, they're spread out and pretty much every part of Manhattan I recovered bees, but most of the hot spots or the majority was in Times Square.

Kim: There's a rule about that, the most people in the most swarms. [laughter]

Darren: Yes. [laughs]

Kim: One of the things that I read in one of the articles I read about you was that back in 2019, you were-- was elected, appointed or honored by being what they call Cop of The Year?

Darren: Yes. In my command where I worked in the 104 Precinct, which is in Ridgewood Queens, we have five boroughs. We have the Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island, Queens. Did I name them all? Manhattan, Bronx, Staten Island, Queens, and Brooklyn. Those are the five boroughs.

Jeff: You leave work and see how quickly you lose things.

Darren: Yes, very quickly. Yes, I worked in Queens in one of the precinct in Queens and I was elected police of the year in my command.

Kim: Oh, congratulations. That's quite an honor, I would guess, in an organization. I'm guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of 35,000 policemen?

Darren: Yes.

Kim: That's quite an honor. Congratulations for that. What have we missed Darren? What what adventure is the New York--

Jeff: I want to know what his nickname for him was. You had to get a little ribbing.

Darren: They call you the bee man, that's the easy one or-

Kim: Buzz.

Darren: -you had a candy man or what was the other one? Yes, usually candy man, bee man and the honey guy is the honey guy. Then there was people when you go to respond to a swarm, sometimes you call the precinct and have them meet you there and they'd be like, "Who? What? Who are you? A beekeeper? What is that?" They didn't know what it was. I'm telling you out of 35,000 cops, maybe 300 cops know what a beekeeper is.

Kim: Wow.

Jeff: Did you have a the letter B in your badge number?

Darren: [chuckles] I didn't have it. I had that four, three, five, two was my badge number. I had the the cool patches put on my bee veil, and when they saw that, they were blown away.

Jeff: Oh, that is so cool, Darren. I know that's a rough job. I'm sure it could be a rough job many days, but having that to fall back onto and think about, I'm sure really lightened your day and those around you.

Darren: The beekeeping made my days much better. If I got beat up at work, I had a hard day, or just a rough night, I come home the next morning and I'll pop open these hives and I hear that humming. It takes everything away. Just wiped every problem I had away.

Jeff: The aromatherapy the warm beeswax and the smell of the hive and everything.

Darren: Yes, just everything, the sound. The way they work, if we could work like that in unity and harmony, we'd be great.

Kim: That's it. There's a goal.

Jeff: You're absolutely. You say they're looking for a new beekeeper for the police department. Any takers? Are they hopeful for anybody?

Darren: They have one. His name is Robert Travis. He was there when I was getting ready to leave. I was the point guy the primary guy. He was there if I wasn't available then he was in the wings waiting.

Jeff: When you handed over the official smoker of the department, did you have any words of advice for him?

Darren: We we didn't do that.

Kim: You mentioned the five boroughs. Does each borough have a beekeeper?

Darren: No.

Kim: You're it.

Darren: Was that the one beekeeper or if we happen to have two? We're lucky to have two for like three years. Myself and the other gentleman, Mike Laureano, who caught the bees off the hotdog stand in Times Square. Luck to have two of them at one time.

Kim: Just one beekeeper for all of New York City. Whoa. [laughs]

Darren: Yes. It's very few in between.

Kim: Did you ever have a truck turning over or any road accidents?

Darren: Not in New York City with bees coming through there. I've read about plenty of those happening, but I never was fortunate to respond to something like that. Just on Monday, I responded to a prison here, Fishkill, a correctional facility to remove some honeybees that swarmed.

Kim: When you say you were fortunate not to have to deal with a truck accident, you're exactly right. It's not something--

Darren: You dealt with one before, I'm assuming.

Kim: Yes, they can get really exciting. You're now, I'm going to say, unemployed by the police department anywhere, and you're running your own beekeeping business?

Darren: Yes.

Kim: You got a name for that?

Darren: Yes. Amazing Apiaries, where I use part of my last name.

Kim: Very clever.

Jeff: There you go.

Kim: Good. You're selling honey retail out of your house or farm market or--?

Darren: Out of my house and also markets, where we have honey festivals. There's a few around that I'm doing in farmer's market. Not in storage yet.

Kim: You'll get there.

Jeff: What have you learned that you want to share with other beekeepers who are just now considering maybe getting into the farm markets and selling their honey?

Darren: I tell anybody who's a beekeeper, because you get a lot of first year beekeepers who want to put everything in the market and sell. The first thing they come to me, "Oh, can you help me get started?" I tell them, "Join an association. Join a club. Learn the craft. It's not a hobby, it's a craft. Therefore, learn from some old timers, some people who can show you the ropes and show you where to go instead of logging in and watching YouTube videos, and all of a sudden you become a beekeeper. Learn the craft from an older beekeeper who's had time."

Jeff: Wise words. I like that.

Kim: Find a mentor.

Jeff: I do. Find a mentor.

Darren: Good advice. Darren, I think I started to ask you a little bit ago, what haven't we covered that you think is important for folks to know about what you did and what you got out of all of this?

Darren: I got lucky, I would say, because when I got into beekeeping, I never knew the police department had one. When beekeeping became legalized in 2010, that's when they had the big influx of swarms happening. Once I saw it on the news and everything, and then I said, "Wow, they got a beekeeper for this?" I said, "I'd love to do that." I knew I had no shot at it because they had the one who was taking care of everything. When he retired and he was close to retiring, he actually reached out to me because he heard about me from other fellow cops that I was doing it. He was like, "Tell Darren to call me. I could set him up where he could be the next guy because I'm retiring," and him and I are still friends today."

Jeff: That's great. Does he live near you?

Darren: He's in Queens. I'm in Hudson Valley, so we're like an hour and a half apart.

Jeff: That's really cool. I need to ask and please forgive me. I got it. Did you carry a BB gun when you wore your bee suit? I'll cut that out. I'll I edit that.

Darren: No, no, it's cool. Anytime I respond to a swarm, I always have my service weapon on me as well as my hive tool.

Jeff: There you go. Your hive tool.

Darren: The hive tool.

Jeff: That is the most important thing when responding to a swarm call. Darren, it's been fantastic having you on podcasts. It's great meeting other beekeepers from different backgrounds and meeting you and being the NYPD official beekeeper in Manhattan is-- Wow, that's something that's really spectacular. It's an honor to talk to you.

Darren: It's an honor for me to be on your show because, like I tell everyone, beekeeping found me, I didn't find it, and it's been a blessing. That's what made my transition leave or retired from the police department after 20 years much easier. The bees made my transition easier and I'm happy they found me.

Jeff: I think we can leave it at that.

Kim: I think we can. You can't add to that. That's as good as it gets.

Jeff: Thanks, Darren.

Darren: Thank you. I'm glad you guys invited me onto the show, and it's been a pleasure to talk with you, guys.

Kim: Yes, it has. Darren, thank you for visiting with us, and good luck with Amazing Apiaries.

Darren: Appreciate it, Kim. Thanks a lot.

Jeff: Bye-bye.

Darren: Take care, gentlemen.

Jeff: I enjoyed having Darren on the show. I enjoyed laughing. He seemed a typical beekeeper happy with beekeeping and happy with where he is with them. That's fun.

Kim: It was. I say this carefully, he didn't take himself too seriously. He had fun on the beekeeping part of the job and working with the people that he got to work with and the adventures that he had. I think New York was lucky to have him.

Jeff: I absolutely agree. I've been in downtown Manhattan on a hot day and I just can't imagine responding to a swarm call on an afternoon full of people and the noise and the commotion and dealing with a swarm call. That takes a special person and you'd have to have a positive attitude like Darren did. Kudos to him. NYPD lost a good guy there.

Kim: I think they did, but it's good to see that he took that and took it home and now he's running bees and making money and having a good time.

Jeff: Yes, he is. That about wraps it up for this episode of Beekeeping Today. Before we go, be sure to follow us and leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcast or wherever you stream the show. Even better, write a quick review to help other beekeepers discover what you enjoyed. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews tab on the top of any page.

We want to thank Betterbee, our presenting sponsor for their ongoing support of the podcast. We also appreciate our longtime sponsors, Global Patents, Strong Microbials, BeeSmart Designs, and Northern Bee Books for their support in bringing you each week's episode. Most importantly, thank you for listening with us. If you have any questions or feedback, just head over to our website and drop us note. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks again, everybody.

[00:47:30] [END OF AUDIO]