{"id":26534,"date":"2020-07-13T23:01:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-13T20:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/even-during-pandemic-beekeeping-remains-an-essential-service\/"},"modified":"2020-07-13T23:01:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T20:01:00","slug":"even-during-pandemic-beekeeping-remains-an-essential-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/even-during-pandemic-beekeeping-remains-an-essential-service\/","title":{"rendered":"#Even during pandemic beekeeping remains an essential service"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Even during pandemic beekeeping remains an essential service<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n WASHINGTON \u2014 \u201cExcuse me, can I ask what you\u2019re doing here?\u201d a resident in a southeast Washington neighborhood asks as Sean Kennedy and Erin Gleeson get out of their truck and scour the streets.<\/p>\n

The sign on their back windshield, \u201cBees Onboard,\u201d gives them away.<\/p>\n

Kennedy, 58, and Gleeson, 36, are beekeepers. They and their colleagues have been deemed essential workers by the District of Columbia government in the middle of a pandemic.<\/p>\n

On this day April, the pair is responding to a phone call about a swarm of honeybees. At first glance it app<\/a>ears as if it might be a bad tip. Kennedy looks down a fence line while Gleeson walks across the street and past a few houses.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s check the alley,\u201d Kennedy says, and quickly they\u2019re back in their truck. The truck moves slowly as they scan fences, trees, and rooflines \u2014 all places where bee swarms might stop.<\/p>\n

As they reach the end of the alley, they find what they were looking for: a dark mass about 2 feet long that most casual observers would walk by without noticing. Upon closer inspection, this brown mass moves with quiet activity, thousands of bees huddling with no nest to protect them.<\/p>\n

Within two hours, this cluster of bees will be collected, driven across town and given a new home on some of the most desirable real estate in the city.<\/p>\n

If a hive is thriving and becomes too large for its own space, the queen will take half the hive and set off to find a new location to start a new hive. If this swarm isn\u2019t collected up by a beekeeper, the new hive can settle into backyards, attics, crawlspaces, office buildings, or high traffic public spaces, creating a nuisance that can alarm some people.<\/p>\n

\u201cBees are not aggressive unless you invade their home or step on them,\u201d Kennedy says. \u201cBut they do put people off. Some people are just innately afraid of things that sting and maybe that\u2019s primal and necessary, but if you have them in your office building or you have them in your tourist spots, they become a problem. So, it\u2019s good to catch them in that middle step when we can just put them somewhere where they are welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the past five years, the D.C. Beekeepers Alliance has responded to calls from residents about bee swarms. These beekeepers call themselves the \u201cSwarm Squad\u201d and will come to all areas of the region to take away unwanted bees and give them a home, with the added benefit of collecting honey.<\/p>\n

Last year the group responded to just 12 calls; this year has been especially busy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had on the first swarm call day of this year, as many calls as we had in all of last year,\u201d says Toni Burnham, the group\u2019s president, who estimates receiving calls so far about 60 to 75 swarms.<\/p>\n

The coronavirus outbreak coincided with the start of warmer weather, when bees naturally begin separating from their hives. When district officials began looking at the possibility of shutting down the city due to the outbreak, Burnham reached out to her contact at the D.C. Department of Energy & Environment.<\/p>\n

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\n Beekeepers Sean Kennedy, left, and Erin Gleeson, right, prepare to capture a swarm of honey bees and relocate them to a bee hive, Friday. <\/p>\n

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\n \"Sean<\/img><\/p>\n
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\n Honeycomb is visible as beekeeper Sean Kennedy works to relocate a swarm of honeybees from a fence line in a neighborhood in Anacostia. <\/p>\n

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\n \"Sean<\/img><\/p>\n
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\n Homeowner Tom Patton, right, watches as beekeepers Sean Kennedy, left, and Erin Gleeson use a thermal camera to search for a swarm of honey bees that has gone into an attic space. <\/p>\n

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\n \"Sean<\/img><\/p>\n
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\n Sean Kennedy, right, watches as fellow beekeeper Erin Gleeson, left, scales the side of a home to look for a swarm of honey bees that has gone into an attic space. <\/p>\n

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\n \"Sean<\/img><\/p>\n
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\n Beekeepers Sean Kennedy, right, and Erin Gleeson, left, pack up a bee box full of honeybees they removed from a fence line in a neighborhood in Anacostia. <\/p>\n

AP\n <\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWhen I saw the lockdown happening and really scary quarantining things, I called up our regulators and said essentially, \u2018If we\u2019re going to catch swarms we need to not be arrested.\u2019 They took care of it, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeekeepers needed to be essential because often the hives that they keep are not on their property,\u201d says Tommy Wells, the department\u2019s director and a former member of the City Council. \u201cSo, they need to be able to travel<\/a> and get to their bee colonies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wells and his team at the agency also are looking at the broader picture and whether there are enough bee colonies in the region. He said if there are colony collapses elsewhere, D.C. bees can be moved where necessary.<\/p>\n

Over the past year, beekeepers in the U.S. lost 43.7% of their honeybee colonies, according to the Bee Informed Partnership.<\/p>\n

Back out on the street, Kennedy and Gleeson collected their swarm in a specially designed white cardboard box. The box hums and vibrates as they load it into the back of their truck next to their bee suits and tools. They make their way across town though light traffic in record time.<\/p>\n

Jacques Pitteloud, the Swiss ambassador to the U.S., opens the gate to the embassy grounds. They exchange pleasantries as Kennedy and Gleeson don their bee suits.<\/p>\n

Pitteloud, wearing a gray sweatshirt with \u201cWashington, D.C\u201d in big block letters across the front, says he was working with the Audubon Society of America to turn parts of the property into a biodiversity reserve when he was approached about beekeeping. \u201cI said, \u2018Of course.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause you know these beautiful gardens that embassies usually have are ecological deserts,\u201d he says. \u201cThey are beautiful to look at, but they do not offer the kind of environment that\u2019s conducive to wildlife.<\/p>\n

Collecting swarms of bees is challenging at any time, even more so during a pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cErin and I are both very careful in our day-to-day personal lives,\u201d says Kennedy. \u201cSo when we work together we don\u2019t worry about having masks on.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds, \u201cBeing around a swarm of bees deters a crowd. You don\u2019t want a lot of people gathering and it sort of creates a dynamic that encourages social<\/a> distancing no matter what\u2019s going on with pandemics in the world. So, it\u2019s a perfect activity to encourage social distancing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with the virus, seeing someone out on the street in a bee suit can cause people to stop and look. \u201cWe do look pretty funny and we are doing some pretty strange things,\u201d says Gleeson.<\/p>\n

\u201cPre-corona, people would have hurried past,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd now they say, \u2018Whoa, what are you doing, can I have a look?\u2019 They stick their heads in the bee box and go, \u2018Oh my God.\u2019 It\u2019s great to be able to show them, \u2019Hey here\u2019s a queen or a drone or a worker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kennedy says beekeeping has helped him combat boredom during the pandemic. \u201cThere were a lot of swarms this year and it gave life for the last few months some purpose,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He calls saving bees \u201ca fairly noble endeavor\u201d that people are enthused about. \u201cIt\u2019s a way in difficult times to make a small difference. It\u2019s probably, in the time of social distancing, the best way I could have spent the past few months.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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If you want to read more Living News<\/a> articles, you can visit our General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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“#Even during pandemic beekeeping remains an essential service” WASHINGTON \u2014 \u201cExcuse me, can I ask what you\u2019re doing here?\u201d a resident in a southeast Washington neighborhood asks as Sean Kennedy and Erin Gleeson get out of their truck and scour the streets. The sign on their back windshield, \u201cBees Onboard,\u201d gives them away. Kennedy, 58,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[38109],"class_list":["post-26534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-even-during-pandemic-beekeeping-remains-an-essential-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}