NEW YORK—One of the six beehives that arrived on the roof of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Saturday came from a lifelong beekeeper who just retired to Otter Creek, Pa.
“He couldn’t sleep for weeks knowing that I was coming out to buy all his bees, because he’s going to miss them,” said Andrew Coté, resident beekeeper at Waldorf-Astoria. “He’s retiring at 70.”
Coté and three members of the New York City Beekeepers Association picked up 100 hives from James Powell, the lifelong beekeeper, and drove them in two trucks 500 miles into the city. They were then dispersed—1 on top of Bridge Cafe, 2 on top of York Prep, 4 to the Lower East Side, 10 in Brooklyn, and some of the others to Westchester.
One went to the roof of the Waldorf-Astoria. The hive, fully mature, has about 50,000 bees. Five other new hives came from packages and currently have about 12,000 bees each. With a queen in each hive laying 2,000 eggs a day, Coté expects the 110,000 bees to increase in number.
