Honeybee Consultant

Ray Lackey, 1260 Walnut Ave. Bohemia NY 11716-2176
Phone: (631)567-1936 email:lackeyray@tianca.com

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I have been keeping honeybees for over 25 years on Long Island. My grandfather had bees when I was a kid in Pennsylvania but I left them alone. We had over 5 acres of strawberries and they were at the end of the field. When I moved to Long Island and started a garden and small fruit orchard, I found that people in the area killed everything with a point on the end so that pollinators were scarce. I started with one hive ordered from Sears and delivered by the Post office. Well, almost. I got a call from the local office saying that the bees had arrived but some of them were on the outside of the package, would I please pick them up? The postman didn't want them in his truck?????

I received a Master Beekeeper Certification from Eastern Apiculture Society at Ohio State University in 1995. I‘ve served four non-consecutive terms as president of the Long Island Beekeepers Association. I regularly speak in schools, scouts, nature centers, and adult groups on pollination, beekeeping, and pesticides. I also build, install, and maintain observation hives at nature centers and have written a booklet on Observation hive maintenance for schools, museums, and nature centers.

When I was in high school, my science teacher advised me to list all of the things I was interested in doing, sort them into groups according to area of interest, sort the groups relative to interest level, and then pick my profession from the second group. His reasoning was "That way you will always enjoy coming home at night." (I guess he recognized the early symptoms of a work-a-holic.)I did that. I enjoy my work, "having fun, getting paid for it" as I put on my class reunion survey, but I definitely have outside interests. My profession is electronic engineering but my hobbies have included gardening, tropical fish, and honeybees. Small farm animals are an interest but job related travel requirements preclude things requiring daily care. (My wife is a "city" girl. Great looking!! Very nice! Keeping "bugs" has been enough of a strain on her.)