'It's a lot like having a flock of sheep, except there are 50,000 sheep instead of 100, the sheep are the size of a marble, or tinier, and they're completely wild.' Inside the thriving hive of beekeepers in San Francisco.
When people asked Kevin McKean what he was going to do during retirement, he always said the same thing:"I'm going to have pigs and bees." The pigs didn't work out — it's not easy to raise hogs in San Francisco — but the bees became his life.
"People always think that you can't keep bees in The City, but I think it's actually a lot easier," said Taylor Capozziello, president of the SFBA. The SF apiary community is quite large, she explained, which can surprise you."You end up figuring out that people in a few blocks' radius are beekeepers as well."
Joining a local beekeeping guild like the SFBA can offset some of the initial costs with gear discounts, and having new members join an organization incentivizes responsible husbandry, noted Capozziello."You are there to guide, make suggestions and try to influence what the bees do. But ultimately the bees will do whatever they're going to do, as we discover again and again every day. They make crazy choices.
"Every new beekeeper goes through the agony of losing their first colony," said McKean."We've joked in the club about needing to offer grief counseling. It's almost like losing a pet — they're not going to curl up with you and watch TV, but people have an emotional bond with bees." But not all pollinators have the benefit of a shepherd. There are 1500 species of native bees in California, 81 of which live in the Bay Area. Most live alone, which reduces some of the dangers of disease or pest transmission, but the impact of pesticides is often lethal. Capozziello said that as stewards of bees, it is the SFBA's imperative to help all of them — which means planting a wide variety of native plants and creating places for the native bees to hide.
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