This weekend kids and parents were invited to experience the life of bees at Wave Hill’s Honey Weekend. Families tasted fresh, local honey, made beeswax candles and left with a little more knowledge about everyone’s favorite pollinators.

“The families come here, you know, with a very fresh attitude, which means we’re going to have fun,” Martha Barrero, organizer of the Family Art Project Be a Bee/Sea una abeja, said.

“The idea is to show them the ... cycle of [how] the bee works,” she said. “We are showing them that cycle in a very, very simple way.”

Kids sporting their new “custom bee costumes,” were encouraged to climb into a cardboard honeycomb, and jump into the worker bee’s life.
Eight-year-old Zoey Pomeranz has been coming to this event for more than five years.

“I like bees. They’re important. Without bees, there’d be no plants, because they pollinate the flowers and the trees, too. And I love honey,” she said.

This March, a law was passed that made keeping honeybees legal in the five boroughs, allowing the public to experience the importance and fun of keeping the insects.

“I think they’ve had bad press until now.” said Wave Hill beekeeper, Charles Day, who has a passion for educating the public about the beauty and harmony bees represent. “I think it’s important that people realize that not everything that buzzes is a bee,” he added.

In fact, honeybees are passive and helpful and spend most of their time working to make honey, rather than stinging people, he said.

And bees have more to offer than just their delicious, golden honey. Along with the food they produce, they make beeswax, which can be used for polish, candy coating and lotions. This weekend, the moldable stuff was used to make custom beeswax candles. For the price of materials, curious visitors made pillars, tapers, and votives candles, all in about fifteen minutes.

“What’s really amazing is seeing how, using all the same materials, there’s such a variety in the final product people are creating,” candle-making teacher Cathy Deutsch said.

“It’s a very educational environment, where parents can interact with kids and kids can interact with parents,” Ms. Barrero said.