The buzz on honeybees

The cute part was the kids running around with fake antennae on their heads and yellow and black striped vests with wings on the back.

The serious part was the discourse on how hives work and what's new with colony collapse disorder.

For the eating part, visitors could sample the differences among Roxborough honey, Manayunk honey, West Philly honey, and Blue Bell honey.

There was a drinking part, too. Mead, anyone?

There were honeybees. And wannabees.

For five years, the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild has thrown an annual fest to celebrate bees and educate the community about the peril they're in.

Saturday, the event landed at Germantown's Wyck historic house, garden, and farm, a 2.5-acre oasis of green that just happens to have 15 hives. Come May, what is said to be the oldest rose garden in America still in its original plan bursts into flower.

So who's to blame Wyck program manager Bob McKee for his unabashed bias: "Raw Germantown honey is the best."

The guild formed in 2009, three years after Pennsylvania's Dave Hackenberg realized that of the 3,000 honeybee hives he'd trucked to Florida to pollinate oranges, only about 800 were left. The rest? Gone. Presumed dead.

Other beekeepers were reporting similar losses.

Scientists dubbed it colony collapse disorder, or CCD, and have searched for a cause ever since.

Mites and pathogens have been implicated. Oddly enough for a species behind the term "busy as a bee," overwork and stress also may have a role.

Environmental groups have focused on a group of pesticides, neonicotinoids, and are urging that their use be limited. Thus, the T-shirt on one festivalgoer: "Pesticides suck."

Other research is pursuing whether native bees could bolster the work of the managed hives. But these European imports are still the mainstay of American agriculture.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that we owe one in three bites of food to the pollination services of honeybees.

Suzanne Matlock, president of the guild, said that as she learned of the plight of the honeybee, she decided to try one small contribution: keeping bees herself.

Documentaries showed "these miraculous creatures . . . could build perfect hexagons out of wax," she said.

She now manages 12 hives in various parts of the city, including her front yard in Mount Airy. (She checked first with her neighbors, and she sweetens the deal with honey for them.)

Guild members are a diverse crew. Tyriq Peterson, 18, and Mured Brundage, 15, got started at the charter school they attend, Boys' Latin of Philadelphia. For Peterson, it was a logical outgrowth of his cats, lizards, and the 60 plants in his bedroom.

Brundage started more casually, then got hooked. "It's more than just honey," he said. "It shows you that you worked so hard with this hive, and you got something out of it."

Philadelphia is so abuzz with beekeeping that Washington author Alison Gillespie devoted an entire chapter to the city in Hives in the City: Keeping Honeybees Alive in an Urban World. She spoke at the fest, noting the modern hive was developed here in the 1800s.

Also on deck was Philadelphia novelist Jon McGoran, whose latest eco-thriller, Deadout, is about - you guessed it - a mysterious plague killing bees.

But enough with the gloom and doom, the folks over at the mead tent would surely say. They were having too much fun sampling the brews of Colony Meadery, "the Lehigh Valley's First Urban Winery." In the heart of Allentown, they combine honey, water, and yeast - plus other ingredients, as needed - and wait for another miracle of nature. Alcohol.

Cofounder and mead-maker Mark Manning - his shirt said "get buzzed" - used to home-brew beer, but wanted something different. His mead became so popular, he launched a business in late 2013.

Matlock said she expected 2,500 people at the three-day fest, which began Friday with a "honey happy hour" at the Wagner Free Institute of Science.

Today, the fest moves to Bartram's Garden, 54th Street and Lindbergh Boulevard. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., there will be hive demonstrations, a cooking contest, a children's bee parade, and more.