by Jessie Koester  September/October 2008

Kurt Reynertson and his family are fairly new to Halcott, a town of approximately 280 households (80 full-time), in Greene County, a sleepy, sloping countryside ringed by three mountains, Halcott, Bearpen, and Vly, all part of the Catskill High Peaks. Even in a town this small, there’s a pride of place and of people—as there should be—evident at the annual fair taking place at the old grange hall on Main Street. This year, besides the usual baked goods, flea market, and games for kids, there’s a beehive observation booth manned by Reynertson. His neighbors—some of whom go back several generations in this valley, some newer transplants and weekenders from the city—flit about him to meet the new resident beekeeper.

Reynertson is a botanist and an artist as well as a beekeeper, although he claims there’s not much to that; bees keep themselves for the most part, in “a perfect example of cooperative living,” he says. It’s one of the reasons he’s so taken with them.

He first learned about bees from his father, who kept hives on a farm in Wisconsin. So he already had an affinity for them when, nearly 10 years ago, he was studying for a Ph.D. in plant science at CUNY and inherited his colleague’s beehives in the greenhouse lab. But bee knowledge is local, he says. Colonies are unique. Tending to bees in the Catskills is a learning experience, where the weather, terrain, flora and fauna are vastly different from a rooftop greenhouse in the Bronx, or even a farm in Wisconsin.

He admits he likes to just sit in the field and watch them work. “They’re fascinating,” he says, “like watching a fish tank.” It’s his job as beekeeper to “know” them, observing them closely both for disease, which could wipe out the hives, and for overcrowding during the summer months when they’re building up their populations. In the late summer he extracts the honey, which he shares with family and friends. The bees, however, are “oblivious to his existence,” something he jokes about with other beekeeping friends.

I’ve been curious about bees ever since reading about colony-collapse disorder—the mysterious worldwide scourge on bee colonies that is leaving hives abruptly empty and beekeepers confounded—so I was excited to make Reynertson’s acquaintance and to meet his bees. And while colony collapse disorder is serious and there are many other threats to their existence (mites and the like), Reynertson is pleased to see not only his own hives thriving, but also, surprisingly, many feral bees and wasps in the fields of Halcott. Bumblebees, which reportedly aren’t faring well in other parts of the country, seem to be doing fine here.

It’s good news to hear they’re thriving. By contrast, the town of Halcott is so small it doesn’t even have a post office, a gas station, or a grocery store. In fact, there’s nothing commercial but a handmade sign for Pure Honey Sold Here hanging off the front of a worn brown house on the main thoroughfare. The sign remains but the stand is closed for business, as its proprietor recently turned 80 and retired his hives. The only town-y building at all is the old grange hall, and that’s where everything happens: meetings, concerts, plays, elections, even weddings—and, of course, the annual Halcott Fair. It’s a wonder that anyone thrives here. But they do. And more and more people like the Reynertsons move in, and life goes on.

The two nondescript, white wooden box hives sitting in Kurt Reynertson’s open field of thigh-high goldenrod buzz inside and out with an energy reminiscent of midtown Manhattan at lunchtime. It seems odd to watch them working frenetically both in the field and within their cramped vertical frames while all about us, save a few working farms, there are nothing but wide-open vistas. In this setting, the bees’ unfettered energy and communal workaholic pursuit seem to me both Sisyphean and hopeful—even joyous.

The bees even dance. Scout bees come back to the hive moving in a way that tells the others exactly where to forage. The other worker bees follow the dance, find their food, and return to the hive repeating the same exact dance routine. They form a collective. Female worker bees take turns working each of the many jobs: hive chores, searching out and collecting food, feeding the larvae, and capping the cells. Male drones take turns mating with the queen. The queen lays the eggs, and life goes on. How lovely, when one’s common goal on a warm summer day is to flit about the flowers, grasses and trees, gathering nectar to make honey, to propagate your population, to please your queen.

As I take my leave, the fair is in full swing. People are eating barbecue. Later there will be music and dancing inside the grange, which has recently been refurbished by the town’s beautification board, whose members themselves work like tireless bees. (It is indeed a beautiful renovation.) Reynertson is still swarmed by neighbors asking him about the hives and the honey. There’s just something about those bees; they’re compelling. Maybe it’s that what comes naturally to them—working together toward a common goal for a common good, and taking care of each other—are customs that come naturally to us, too. We get it. But in the human world, we struggle with it—it’s just not as easy for us as foraging through the flowers.