Beekeeping has long been banned in New York City. Deemed too dangerous for city life, the gentle, sweet honeybee has been lumped in with hyenas, tarantulas, cobras, dingoes(!), and other animals the city doesn't think people living in close proximity to one another should be allowed to keep. It's been a bad rap for the honeybee, and has been tough on urban beekeepers, who have stuck to their hives despite the risk of a $2000 fine if they are caught.

Now, though, New York City is rethinking the ban on honeybees, and may even be about to do the right thing:

On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s board will take up the issue of amending the health code to allow residents to keep hives of Apis mellifera, the common, nonaggressive honeybee. Health department officials said the change was being considered after research showed that the reports of bee stings in the city were minimal and that honeybees did not pose a public health threat.

The officials were also prodded by beekeepers who, in a petition and at a public hearing last month, argued that their hives promoted sustainable agriculture in the city.

A ban, of course, has not deterred many New Yorkers from setting up hives on rooftops and in yards and community gardens, doing it as a hobby, to pollinate their plants or to earn extra income from honey. Although the exact number of beekeepers in the city is unknown, many openly flout the law. They have their own association, hold beekeeping workshops, sell their honey at farmers' markets and tend to their hives as unapologetically as others might jaywalk, blaming their legal predicament on people’s ignorance of bees.

"People fear that if there's a beehive on their rooftop, they'll be stung," said Andrew Cote, president of the New York City Beekeepers Association, which was formed two years ago and has 220 members.

"Honeybees are interested in water, pollen and nectar," he said. "The real danger is the skewed public perception of the danger of honeybees."

I started a hive last year, and it was an amazing experience. Unfortunately, a curious raccoon knocked the hive over very early in the season, killing lots of bees and harming the queen's health so badly that she never became the top-speed egg layer that queen bees have to be if hives are to survive.

A honeybee lives about six weeks. She dies having worked herself to death. The queen is responsible for laying at a rate that ensures that the hive population will grow into the tens of thousands throughout the season--thus producing enough honey for the winter, and, if you are lucky, for you to harvest and eat. A damaged queen, if not recognized early and replaced, guarantees a failed hive. We learned that the hard way last year, replacing the struggling queen too late, and watching our hive dwindle and die out entirely by mid-summer. I can't tell you how sad it was--and I am not someone who likes insects. But I fell in love with those bees, and I was never stung.

This spring, we are trying again. Instead of beginning with package bees (a starter kit of several thousand workers plus queen, delivered through the mail in a buzzing, sticky box that makes for fun conversation with the UPS man), we are going to start with a "nuc colony" from an apiary nearby. A nuc colony amounts to five frames of drawn comb filled with brood, honey, pollen, etc., plus the workers, plus their queen. You place them in your hive deep alongside five more empty frames, and let them go. If all is well, they'll fill up those five frames, and fill up ten more in another deep, and then start making honey especially for you by the end of the summer.

All in all, it's a more secure way to establish a hive, because you aren't asking a very few tired, mailed bees to start from scratch with an unproven queen. You get a small but already successful colony, and all they have to do is adjust to their new surroundings and take off.

We should get the call to come pick up our nuc in a month or so. I've been on the edge of my seat for weeks. This year's nectar is beginning to flow, and on sunny days wild honeybees are already going nuts in the rosemary and heather flowering around the house. I watch them up close, and they buzz around ignoring me, moving from flower to flower, drinking the nectar and filling their little leg pockets with pollen. Then they fly back to their hollow tree--precise location unknown--unload their pollen pockets, regurgitate the nectar, and hand it over to other workers who will make it into honey by doing lots more eating and regurgitating. Then the bees fly back out to keep working the same flowers, until the nectar is gone.

I'm guessing most people don't know honey is processed bee vomit. Does it matter?