“Aïe! Je me suis piquée!”

Good news: Today I found out that I’m not deathly allergic to honeybee venom.

Bad news: Today I got my very first bee sting.

On Thursday afternoon, I met Thierry, the beekeeper in charge of the pedagogical beehives at le Parc Georges Brassens. The public park is always abuzz with activity—with humans and bees alike—and is conveniently located, a mere fifteen-minute walk from my apartment. On my way to meet the beekeepers, I made my very first visit to one of the three patisseries on my block, and picked up my very first Parisian pain au chocolat, which we call a “chocolate croissant” in English. Bon appétit!

The operation run by the four-person team ran like a smooth machine.
Their teamwork reminded me of the division of labor within the hive itself.
Who says that beekeeping doesn't involve philosophy?

As a person who’s unaccustomed to seeing beehives and vineyards in my neighborhood park, le Parc Georges Brassens was a revelation to me. Twenty beehives and a small building, surrounded by a fence: since its establishment in 1986, the Societe Centrale d’Apiculture estimates that about eighty thousand children have learned about the secret lives of bees through this rucher ecole, the “hive school” run by the SCA. The honey from all of these hives was harvested today, in the third of most likely four harvests this year. These bees are prolific honey producers; elsewhere in the city, the bees only create enough honey for one harvest. Because the SCA hives are located on public property, the Paris city government does not allow the honey to be sold, at any time other than at the annual Fête du Miel, the Honey Festival, which takes place in the park every September. (I’ll just miss it!) The vineyards are harvested each year at the same Fête, though I am told that the Paris wine isn’t very good—it’s just fun to have.

The camera decided to focus on my glove rather than the bee, but you can still see the ball of pollen on her back leg.
This is how bees transport pollen from the flowers to the hive, where they eat it and feed it to the baby bees.

When I left, I was presented with a jar of complimentary honey—the seventh such jar I’ve garnered from this project so far. Sweet success! “Honey” really is just a category: the range of radically different tastes, smells, and consistencies of nature’s condiment is really incredible.  On Wednesday, I met a retired couple who have kept bees on the balcony of their Paris apartment for over two decades. I bought three different types of honey from them, along with a bottle of Hydromel, the world’s most delicious alcoholic beverage: honey mead. The most distinctive honey I bought is made from the pissenlis (dandelion) nectar, and it smells absolutely repulsive; the sweet, mellow taste is therefore quite a welcome surprise to the palette.

le Jardin des Plantes
Luckily, this shot was taken an hour before the surprise afternoon rainstorm.
(Luckily again, my New Zealand training has conditioned me to always carry a raincoat.)

Today, Friday, I met Theirry again for a look at the rucher (apiary) at the Jardin des Plantes (The Paris version of our Arboretum, for all my fellow Angelenos out there). We joined a small team of student naturalists to open up the seven hives, which are overseen and funded by the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle (to translate into English, just switch around the words a bit). As in le Parc Georges Brassens, the honey from these hives may not be sold, and is instead gifted to Museum VIPs.

This is one of two such "Bee Hotels" in the Jardin des Plantes. Complete with various types of habitats for the wild bees which require different habitats, it is designed specifically for les abeilles sauvages. (Fun language note: sauvage in French means "wild," not "savage.")
Bravo for the Jardin: non-domesticated pollinators like wild bees are actually ecologically more important than their domesticated sisters, the honeybees.

After a few hours wandering the b-e-a-utiful grounds of the Jardin des Plantes, during which I felt like a very cool American (not a very common feeling in Paris, but apparently young French people think L.A. is a very fashionable place to be from), I wandered over to another world-class garden, the Jardin du Luxembourg. 

The rucher ecole at the Jardin du Luxembourg

Three hives, each with the trademark hexagonal toit on top ("roof" in French, dunno what it is in English)
Apparently my default language for bee-related thoughts is French.
Am I fluent? Yes, just so long as we're talking about bees...

The grounds of this particulargarden is home to the Senat building, a bandstand or two, an enormous jungle gym that was tempting even for me, lots of walking paths shaded by tall trees, and another of the SCA’s rucher ecoles, this one for adults. This particular “hive school” was started in the mid-1800s, evidence that urban beekeeping’s current popularity is not a new phenomenon in Paris; it is a revival of a centuries-old tradition.

And now I bid you adieu with this lesson, taken from the bees:
Just dive right in!
(No, they're not dead- they're eating the honey out of the frames we've removed from the hive.
They know we're taking it away from them!)