A weeklong, citywide festival celebrating the honeybee, Honey Week 2014 merges the educational, the entertaining, and the downright delicious.
From beekeeping classes to honey-themed dinners, apiary tours to honey tastings, cooking classes to kids' workshops, the festival flits from neighborhood to neighborhood from September 8-14, drawing deep from apicultural traditions and New York City's cultural traditions alike. The week culminates in the fourth annual daylong Honey Fest at Rockaway Boardwalk on Saturday, September 13, a free, family-friendly extravaganza featuring art, food, music, kids’ arts and crafts, the Bee Marketplace, and, of course, honey galore.
As honeybee populations decline worldwide, the very survival of our food production system is threatened. The canaris in our agricultural coal mine, Apis mellifera have so much to teach us about ecosystem survival and resilience. Their incredible hierarchy, astounding insdutriousness, and the exquisite crops they produced have been revered by humans since ancient times. We must act now to educate ourselves about this critical species and honor the inspiring contributions they make to the health of our struggling planet.
A portion of the proceeds from select events will be donated to City Growers' Honeybee Education Program for NYC youth. City Growers is a nonprofit educational organization based at Brooklyn Grange, a rooftop farm in New York City. The organization’s mission is to coordinate and facilitate school and camp visits that engage young New Yorkers in educational tours and workshops on the farm and in the classroom. Since 2013, City Growers has offered NYC's only hands-on honeybee education program for K–12 youth, allowing young urbanites to appreciate and learn about these critical creatures firsthand.