A Buzz Around Eastport Farmland

On a brisk October morning, John Witzenbocker was not donned in his typical beekeeping protective gear. His mask, hat, suit and gloves were left at home. Mr. Witzenbocker explained that the bees are docile now, as they are getting ready for the winter months.Unlike many other insects, bees don’t hibernate when it gets cold. Instead, they crowd tightly together by the thousands inside their hive and pulse at a fast rate to produce a great deal of heat. Outside the hive, bees are slow moving. During the winter, they feast on the fruits of their labor that they produce throughout the summer—honey.

“Bees have a purpose,” Mr. Witzenbocker said. “They are always coming and going, and they know what they want to do. And as a beekeeper, you help them stay true to whatever their course is. It’s a lot like farming. It’s weather dependent, and the crop is different every year. But I like to think it’s making a real difference.”

“Without bees, a lot of your crops would die,” he continued. Due to a lack of sustenance for the bees, worker bees disappear in search of food, the pollination of agricultural crops in the area doesn’t happen, colonies collapse and food production on farmland suffers.

Mr. Witzenbocker said he “tries to do his part” by running his beekeeping operation on farmland smack in the middle of a residential neighborhood in Eastport.

The farmland was owned by the Raynor Dibble family and was long used for agricultural production. The conservation nonprofit Peconic Land Trust bought the property in May 2017 in partnership with Southampton Town, which purchased the development rights. The town has agreed to make these purchases—using the Community Preservation Fund—to protect farmland from being bought up by developers and subdivided into residential properties.

An enhanced easement was placed on the Dibble property to make food production the only activity permissible on 9.1 acres of the farmland. This is the first and only enhanced easement for food production acquired by Southampton Town west of the Shinnecock Canal.

“It’s a great tool to ensure that food production remains on Long Island,” said Kim Quarty, a senior project manager at the land trust.

Last year, the land trust wanted to sell the property to an established farmer, but surprisingly, there were no takers. As a result, portions of the 13.6 acres have been rented out.

Shortly after, Mr. Witzenbocker and his 15 beehives were approved as tenants. A novice, self-taught beekeeper, he started with one hive at the Sag Harbor home of his parents, Nancy and John, six years ago. Now, split between the two operations, he’s at about 30 hives, which he manages on the weekends. During the week, Mr. Witzenbocker works in finance in New York City. He’s been volunteering with the land trust for about seven years as a garden enthusiast and doing odd jobs to help out.

The rest of the land is available to farmers through the land trust’s Farms for the Future Initiative Leasing Program. The initiative has helped start more than 20 agricultural operations on more than 200 acres on the Twin Forks. Facilities are available at the Deborah Light Preserve in Amagansett, which is home to Quail Hill Farm.

“We provide the infrastructure, and teach [startups] about farming, laying fields, irrigation and pest management,” said Dan Heston, the senior manager for agriculture programs. “We give them an opportunity to fail without them having to go out on a limb.”

The land trust’s goal is to link farmers with affordable farmland. A farmer purchasing the land would have been the best-case scenario for the land trust—farmers like the equity that they gain from owning their own land—but Ms. Quarty said the backup plan to lease works just as well.

“The land values on the East End are skyrocketing and continue to do so,” she said. “But for protected farmland, we try to keep it affordable.”

Ms. Quarty said the asking price to purchase farmland is higher than what many food farmers can afford—between $185,000 to $380,000 per acre. The enhanced easements lower the price to its “true agriculture value” for food production, she added.

“We get established and new farmers on our land,” Mr. Heston said. “It’s a five-year program, and after the program we have outlying farmland on this site that they can graduate into.”

The Eastport property will be used as a spot for graduates of the program to move west of the canal once they become more established. The annual rent is approximately $150 per acre. To purchase the land, it's about $25,000 per acre.

“This is actually the first time we have done a real intensive beekeeping operation,” Mr. Heston said. “We are starting to get a lot of requests for bees. Generally, you try not to put as many beehives as close together as they are. You want to spread them out, unless you feed them.”

The farmland actually has two beekeeping operations that began leases with the land trust in the spring—Bonac Bees and Mr. Witzenbocker’s Sag Harbor Honey each have a plot.

Ms. Quarty said there’s a plus side for the land trust to lease the land to beekeepers: It keeps the land flexible for other food crops in the future through leases or acquisition.

“One of the problems with the bees has been the monocropping—planting of just one crop,” Mr. Heston said. “Diversity is a good thing. Farms that plant a whole bunch of crops is better for the bees. Bees need a balanced diet.”

Mr. Heston planted five types of clover earlier this month on the remaining farmable acreage that is not currently being leased. Next year, the bee seed mix will bloom continuously over the course of the summer season through the fall, giving the bees an ongoing source of food. It will also provide a habitat for native pollinators.

“If this planting works right, we can have even more beehives on this small acreage,” Mr. Heston said.

“It’s a win-win for the specific environment that we are in,” Mr. Witzenbocker said. As the steward of the property, the land trust handles the maintenance of the farmland. The land trust is seeking grants for deer fencing and irrigation wells.

All the while, the bees forage in and around Mr. Witzenbocker’s 3 acres of leased land.

Despite the cold, there’s some bee activity. A faint humming sound comes from the white beehive boxes. A few bees fly over to two large vats of water and land on wine corks floating on top to get a drink.

Others touch down on buckwheat sprouting up from the soil. Clover produces a light and sweeter honey compared to the darker buckwheat honey used for baking.

Mr. Witzenbocker is experimenting with Saskatraz bees from the Saskatchewan province in Canada.

“It’s a new breed that has become popular this year,” he said. “They are more used to the cold and ideally handle the winters better, producing a larger honey crop.”

As the bees are gearing up for the first frost expected to come to Eastport in the coming days, Mr. Witzenbocker said he doesn’t go near the honeycombs. The slats in the beehive boxes are firmly encased with honey by this point. That’s the only nourishment the hive will have through the winter.

“Your goal as a beekeeper is to get them through the winter to make the spring more productive,” he said. In January, Mr. Witzenbocker will check up on the bees and, if they’re running low on honey, he will add five pounds of sugar to each beehive. It is not ideal, but it will keep them happy and alive.