Newark Beekeeper Has a Sweet Deal for You

Aaron Daniels stood near two low cabinets tucked away in a corner of the garden at the Greater Newark Conservancy on Prince Street one recent, raw afternoon, explaining the ins and outs of his unique passion -- beekeeping.

“I do like gardens like this. I like nice things to look at when I’m keeping bees,” the 23-year-old Daniels explained.

Those boxes standing amid bunches of flowers contain Daniels’ livelihood, an apiary of seven hives housing tens of thousands of bees yielding dozens of pounds of honey, which the young entrepreneur sells through his company, Jersey Buzz. 

Daniels has recently promoted the business locally during a speech given by West Ward Councilman Ron Rice and at the Ballantine Green Festival this past weekend. His customers include those who use the honey as a home remedy for allergies -- the gooey substance, which is made partly from pollen, serves as a kind of natural inoculation.  

“Right now I’m selling through my Web site. I have some customers from as far away as Louisiana buying right now,” he said. “I’m doing well.” 

The born-and-raised Newarker developed his interest in beekeeping while a student at Central High School, a time when he also worked as an intern at the conservancy.

“I liked the biology part. That really sparked my interest,” he said. “I like the science behind it. And I like the honey.”

It would be a few more years, however, before Daniels decided he was ready to raise a hive of his own, a tricky process that involves protecting his winged charges from hazards like hornets  and the cold. Daniels credits experts, like those he met at the Essex County Beekeepers Society, for motivating him to try his luck at the honey-making game.

“I had to grow into the confidence to do it,” Daniels said. “I figured that out by watching the people who inspired me.”

Daniels said one of his mentors is Joseph Jay, the treasurer of the Essex County Beekeepers, an organization founded in 1926 that Jay said was the oldest of its kind in the state.

Jay also said Daniels is a relative rarity among Essex beekeepers, few of whom tend to come from the county’s large urban areas.

“Probably not too many, maybe five or six,” Jay said. “We may have a couple in Newark, and I know we had a few in Jersey City. There’s not too many in the cities right now, but I expect that’s going to change with the rise of urban gardens.”

Commercial beekeepers can be large operators hired to pollinate vast fields of crops or, like Daniels, harvest the honey manufactured in their hives. When an individual hive gets too crowded, which normally occurs in the summer, it must be “split,” which involves plucking out the queen from amid up to 60,000 other insects.

“The queen runs everything. She’s the largest, and then the drones, then the worker bees,” Daniels said. “She’s normally surrounded by a ‘royal court,’ that’s how you find her, because she can’t do it all herself.”

LIke any businessman, Daniels -- who one day hopes to become the official state apiarist (yes, New Jersey has one )-- seeks to turn a profit. But his bees, which must fly a surprisingly vast distance in order to gather up the raw materials for honey, also provide a service free of charge to city residents.

“Bees go out for up to two miles in order to pollinate the hive, up to 8,700 acres. It’s going to benefit the neighbors in and around where the hives are,” Jay said. “People who have flower gardens or fruit trees will find they’re doing better...The bees are like pollinating machines.”

Those tiny pollinators have also aided the Greater Newark Conservancy’s urban farm on Court Street, which provides fresh produce for city residents.

“The Greater Newark Conservancy gave me help, and I help them in return,” Daniels said. “The bees are feeding people in Newark.”