OUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BOROUGH OF KINGS
COURIER LIFE, DECEMBER 11-17, 2020 25
A nice buzz
BY BEN VERDE
This Greenpoint artist is generating
lots of buzz.
Sculptor Noah Loesberg has turned
his tenement rooftop into an urban apiary,
where he has nurtured bee hives
for four years, and recently started
hawking his honey at the McGolrick
Park farmers market.
Loesberg’s interest in bees was
fi rst piqued 15 years ago when he made
a sculpture based off the basic structure
of a beehive. He considered getting
into beekeeping for a decade until
he fi nally committed in 2016 and dove
headfi rst into the world of urban beekeeping.
After researching the best methods,
he set up shop on the roof of his Greenpoint
apartment building after getting
the okay from his landlord, who he
said took no issue with the idea. Working
on the rooftop has presented challenges
of its own, though, due to being
accessible only by ladder.
“Mostly it’s schlepping,” Loesberg
said. “The hardest point is when you’re
harvesting honey, a box of honey, you
might be carrying a rectangular box
that’s 40 pounds, and it’s on your one
arm while you’re going down a ladder.”
Spurred by a slowdown in freelance
gigs due to the pandemic, Loesberg
has begun selling his harvest on
Sundays at McGolrick Park during
the farmers market, where he plans on
selling until his September stash sells
out. In previous years, he sold through
word-of-mouth and at the Greenpointers
holiday market.
For Loesberg, getting into beekeeping
was a natural progression after
working for years on sculptures that
require methodical, process oriented
thinking in the same way caring for a
beehive does.
“You need to react to stimuli in the
moment, you also have a view for the
whole year of bees,” he said. “Whatever
manipulation you have to do you
may be limiting your options further
down the road. This is part of the attraction,
it’s a very complicated intellectual
system, as well as physically
stimulating.”
How a Greenpoint beekeeper tends
to his rooft op hive of honey-makers
BUZZ FEED: (Above) Sculptor Noah Loesberg at work with a friend on his Greenpoint rooftop.
(Top) Some winged Greenpoint residents. Noah Loesberg