Your Friends & Neighbors

To Bee Or Not To Bee

Ridgewood’s “Beeman” says beekeeping is a honey of a pursuit.

Frank Mortimer keeps bees. Known as the Beeman, the 56-yearold Ridgewood resident and former vice president of the New Jersey State Beekeepers Association is a certified master beekeeper. Besides managing hives in Ridgewood, HoHo-Kus and Upper Saddle River, he shares the buzz about bees every chance he gets—bee it before a community group, in a seminar at The New York Botanical Garden or as an adjunct professor for Cornell University’s Master Beekeeping Program. Mortimer has even written a book, Bee People and the Bugs They Love (Kensington Publishing, March 2021).

What drew you to beekeeping?

When I was a kid, I thought it would be cool to keep bees, though I didn’t know anyone who did. Once I got into beekeeping, I found it meditative and an enjoyable craft. In my book, I refer to beekeeping as forced Zen, because you have to be present to get the job done.

What have you learned from keeping bees?

What amazes me is how honeybees act as a single organism, with each bee doing a specific job for the greater good. When you’re holding a frame of bees in your hands, there can be 4,000 to 5,000 bees on it, and they’re all doing their assigned jobs and not caring that you’re there. (A beehive is like a filing cabinet, and a frame is like a file folder you would find in one of its drawers.) Bees communicate with what’s called the waggle dance. It’s a figure 8; when the bee is positioned in the direction of a food source, she waggles her body.

Are bees dangerous?

If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you. The only reason they sting is to defend their homes or their lives.

What can you tell us about the bee’s lifestyle?

Bees never sleep; they work 24 hours a day inside a hive. At its peak, a hive can have 60,000 bees, and there are three kinds of bees in the hive. All worker bees are female; they live only six weeks because they literally work themselves to death. The queen’s job is to lay eggs, up to 2,000 a day. Her life expectancy is two to four years. Drone bees are male bees. They too have only one job: to mate with the queen.

Besides maintaining hives, you devote time to telling the bees’ story. Why?

As a master beekeeper, it’s my responsibility to educate the public on the importance of honeybees. They pollinate some of the best-tasting foods—from apples to blueberries to almonds—and the plants and flowers in our yards. The more people understand the role bees play, the more accepting they will be of having them around.

What’s the current state of the honeybee?

In a recent year, one-third of the bee colonies in the U.S. died. The No. 1 thing killing bees worldwide is a parasitic mite called varroa destructor, which feeds on a baby bee’s larvae. Is there hope? Yes. First, beekeepers should monitor and treat for mites. Second, there’s ongoing research on developing a vaccine or other medication to control the mites.

What is the typical yield from your hives?

Recently, it’s been more than 100 pounds of honey per hive, and that’s after leaving 80 to 100 pounds per hive for the bees. I usually have around 15 hives. It’s important to leave the honey first for the bees; they need 80 pounds to make it through the winter. I sell my excess honey, and I also use the wax from the hives to make lip balm, hand cream and 100-percent beeswax candles.

Ever imagine yourself retiring?

No. I’ve met multiple people well into their 90s who are still keeping bees. As long as I can walk out to my hives, I plan on being a beekeeper.