Bee-coming Buzzworthy: The Hives and Highs of Mica Marder

Insects on the East End of Long Island come alive with the arrival of spring, embracing the warmer temperatures and longer daylight hours. With the awakening of nature, various insect species engage in a range of activities during this season that keeps our ecosystems thriving. One of those activities includes pollination, which ensures a crucial step in the procreation of flowering plants. Pollinator insects include thousands of species of bees, flies, moths, butterflies, beetles, and many other insects.

European honeybees, or Apis mellifera, are the most well-known celebrity pollinators, often taking credit for work done by a larger sector of pollinator insects and a wide array of underappreciated native bees. In short, crediting the European honeybee or apis mellifera to be the sole reason we have fruits and vegetables is like crediting chickens for being the only bird species in the world. The European honeybees are a variety of bees domesticated and kept mostly by hobbyist beekeepers. There’s nothing wrong with caring for honeybees and cultivating honey, but beekeepers must provide the honeybees more space to grow in spring. The hive will continue to grow in population into mid-summer. During this time, they need to be managed and given the proper additional space in the hive by the beekeeper. If not given adequate space, the workers will use all the honeycomb to store nectar and pollen, making it difficult for the queen to lay eggs. The workers sense this and give their special cells to lay queen eggs to create a predecessor queen or many. When this happens, the hive sends out its scouts to look for a suitable location to move. The scouts come back with good news: They found a suitable site not too far away. The hive then masses and proceeds to fly, leaving behind about 40 percent of the old hive and the new queen cells.

That’s when Mica Marder’s cell phone starts to buzz. Mica, a local landscaper from the Marder’s landscaping family, has become the go-to for bee removal and relocation.

European Honeybees looking for hot Hamptons real estate, move into domestic settings — soffits, chimneys, walls, decks, attics, AC ducts, and under your children’s beds while sleeping. Mica’s job is to relocate them humanely.

Mica approaches each bee infestation job with science, art, and a little destruction. He smiles when he says that homeowners have different reactions when they see him cut a hole in part of their house. At a client’s house in Montauk, with a keen eye and precision. Mica breaks through the side of the house where the bees presumably had built their hive. He smiles, confirming he guessed correctly. Mica uses a smoker to disorient the bees by interrupting their communication signals and triggering a defensive response, encouraging them to consume honey and become less aggressive. He loads dead leaves, lights them on fire, and begins to pump smoke into the infested part of the house.

Mica delicately and with compassion pulls out intricate hexagonal cells made of beeswax, known as “honeycomb,” in which they raise their young, store food reserves like honey and pollen, and carry out various activities essential to the functioning of the colony. Piece by piece, he disassembles the hive and then reassembles it in a wooden hive box.

The most critical part of successfully relocating a hive is identifying the queen bee, capturing, and transporting it, as she is solely responsible for giving birth to the future workforce population of the colony. Without the queen, the colony will fail, as a worker bee will only live six weeks and they depend on the queen to lay eggs to keep new workers being born.

Once extracted and placed in a hive box, the beehive has been successfully removed and is ready to be transported to its new home. The hive must be moved at least 3 miles away, or the bees will return to the last location.

During the removal and relocation process, Mica educates whomever is around and willing to listen. At this moment, you can see Mica’s passion and enthusiasm.

Honeybees, as a domesticated and nonnative insect, presence can present an opportunity for farmers but can negatively affect native insects and ecosystems.

Honeybees are vital for farming, agriculture, and hobbyists. They are generalist foragers and can visit a wide range of flowering species, helping to ensure their fruiting yield. We as humans feel a deep connection as we have worked with the honeybees for thousands of years; they are deep in our psyche and should be respected. They have also been wonderful charismatic ambassadors to educate people on the importance of insects.

However, there can also be potential negative impacts. Over the past 20 years, honeybees have begun competing with native bees and other pollinators for limited resources, such as nectar and pollen. This competition puts pressure on native pollinators, potentially affecting their population sizes and diversity. The problem with using honeybees to pollinate large tracks of monoculture agriculture is that most conventional farmers use many different pesticides, and in doing so, they kill many native pollinators. However, using honeybees for pollination is very convenient as they can be loaded up in tractor-trailers and returned after pollinating the crop. Unfortunately, somebody can spray them with pesticides and insecticides while working. Another risk is they may carry diseases and parasites that can be transmitted to native bees, potentially impacting their health and survival.

Balancing the presence and impact of honeybees with the protection of native insect populations is a complex challenge, requiring careful monitoring, habitat preservation, responsible beekeeping practices, and responsible land management practices. Maintaining healthy ecosystems, in short, means acting responsibly in your ecosystem in your backyard as native bees, honeybees, pollinators, and many beneficial insects are living and sharing the ecosystem you are creating on your property. Not only are insects affected by the harsh chemicals put down the food chain, so are songbirds, small mammals, and eventually, it makes its way to you and your family.

According to the DEC, Suffolk County uses more pesticides than any other county in New York State, and the United States is the largest pesticide-consuming country in the world. Mica suggests that we all think again and consider the impact of the prevalent use of pesticides and insecticides, especially in this area.