Valley Hospital Minds Its Own Beeswax

Have you heard the latest buzz around Valley Hospital?

The hospital’s Robert & Audrey Luckow Pavilion in Paramus is now playing host to between 8,000 and 12,000 honeybees in two hives on the roof. By August, the number of bees is expected to climb to between 50,000 and 70,000.

Honey produced by the hives, which were purchased by the hospital and delivered to their new home in early May, will be harvested and used in meals for residents. When ready, it will also be sold in jars. The first harvest is expected to yield 100 pounds of honey. 

The purchase of the fuzzy pollinators comes as part of Valley’s ongoing attempts to green up its act. 

“We’re trying to be as sustainable as possible, and that includes using local food,” said Dawn Cascio, Valley’s dining director. “What could be more local than producing our own honey?”

Honey is used in many recipes. It can be added to sauces, lavished on desserts, or brushed on meats like a glaze. 

Valley hired Bee Bold Apiaries – a bee management group – to install and maintain the hives. 

Up on the roof, Bee Bold beekeepers Joseph Lelinho and Eric Hanan stand calmly amidst a buzzing cloud of bees around the hive. Lelinho uses the smoke of burning pine needles to calm the bees, quieting their buzz and making them sluggish. He opens the hive and draws out a board lined with wax cells, in which the nectar of flowers is aging into honey. 

Honeybees, Lelinho says, are peaceful - they get a bad rap by association with their more pugnacious brethren, such as yellow jackets or hornets. Stinging is fatal to the bee, and is only used as a last resort in defense of their home.

“They won’t sting you unless you’re messing with their hive, poking it or looking down into it,” Lelinho said. “Out in the field they’re working, not protecting anything, so they’re not going to sting.”

In other words, residents needn’t worry about their new neighbors. 

He added that before stinging, honeybees will “give you a little bump” to chase you away, as a warning.

The bees will pollinate flowers and trees in a two-mile radius around the building - 87,000 acres, according to Lelinho. Wild honeybee populations have declined precipitously in New Jersey and the country in recent years, owing to what has been termed "Colony Collapse Disorder." Though still imperfectly understood, it has been linked to a combination of factors including parasitic mites, fungal infections, and especially the use of a type of pesticide call neonicotinoids. 

Proper beekeeping can help to sustain a hive in the face of CCD, Lelino said, preserving the vital role that honeybees play in natural ecosystems and agriculture.

As he speaks, an enormous, buzzing cloud - over a hundred feet across and at least twice as tall - rises up over the side of the rooftop and sweeps over those gathered around the hive.

“These aren’t our bees,” says Eric Hanan, calmly. 

Lelinho explains that they’re a wild hive, on their way to a new home.

“This is a rare sight, believe me,” Lelinho says, grinning in the thick of the bees. “Very rare.”

“You don’t see many bees in the wild these days,” adds Hanan, a little sadly.