Landis Portraits: A Series About the People Behind the Plants at the Arboretum - Bruce Kearns

Bruce Kearns spends a lot of time just watch­ing his bees going about their busi­ness in and out of the hive. ​“Very cool,” he said. For Bruce, bee­keep­ing has been an enlight­en­ing, hum­bling, and reward­ing experience.

Bruce admit­ted that he ​“stum­bled” onto keep­ing bees while seek­ing to make his life more sus­tain­able. Bee­keep­ing some­how seemed part of a mas­ter plan, along with installing solar pan­els, dri­ving an elec­tric vehi­cle, and rais­ing chick­ens. Bruce said that veg­etable gar­den­ing is his next fron­tier. In the sum­mer of 2019, Anne Frey asked him to work with her in main­tain­ing the Arboretum’s two demon­stra­tion hives and to take over when she relo­cat­ed from the area. Since then, he’s become the Arboretum’s bee­keep­er, inspect­ing hives, ​“super­ing up,” requeen­ing, and per­form­ing a myr­i­ad of oth­er tasks – and har­vest­ing hon­ey too. These efforts make pos­si­ble the sale of Lan­dis’ own hon­ey at both the spring and fall plant sales. 

Bee hives are a ​“nat­ur­al fit” for Lan­dis, Bruce said, since the Arbore­tum is all about nature. He point­ed out that, although a non-native species, hon­ey­bees are essen­tial for com­mer­cial agri­cul­ture in which main­tained bee colonies serve as the pri­ma­ry pol­li­na­tor of crops.

A videogame enthu­si­ast, Bruce described him­self as a ​“sci­en­cy guy.” After serv­ing four years in the US Army, he earned a degree in Com­put­er Sci­ence from SUNY Poly­tech­nic Insti­tute in Uti­ca. He cur­rent­ly lives in Duanes­burg with his wife, Brandy, and two chil­dren, Bran­don, 12, and Blair, 7, and works as a soft­ware engi­neer for an Albany com­pa­ny. It’s no sur­prise that the sci­ence of bee­keep­ing appealed to him as a ​“cit­i­zen scientist.”

Bruce hopes that the hives at the Arbore­tum raise aware­ness and an appre­ci­a­tion of the huge impact that these small insects have on the ecosys­tem. Bee­keep­ing, he said, is not for every­one. It demands an invest­ment of both time and mon­ey, and keep­ing bees healthy can some­times be a frus­trat­ing task. He not­ed that most back­yard bee­keep­ers give up after three years. But he insist­ed that, for him, the invest­ment has paid div­i­dends many times over. ​“Once invest­ed, I am invest­ed,” he said. And bees, he quipped, are vast­ly more inter­est­ing than chick­ens. ​“There is always some­thing to learn,” sea­son to sea­son, year after year: a con­stant chal­lenge to prob­lem solv­ing. Besides, he said, he enjoys just ​“hang­ing with fel­low beekeepers.”

Bruce has begun to explore the Arbore­tum beyond the bee yard. He’s tak­en his fam­i­ly to vis­it the site of the Great Oak and plans to hike the trails with them. He’s been impressed by the diver­si­ty of the plant­i­ngs at Lan­dis and by the envi­ron­men­tal knowl­edge of direc­tor Fred Breglia. He’s look­ing for­ward to meet­ing oth­er mem­bers of the Lan­dis community.

Vis­i­tors to the Arbore­tum might spot a white jack­et­ed, veiled per­son, smok­er in hand, con­cen­tra­tion focused on one of the hives in the bee yard down the hill from the Green­house. He’s doing his part, help­ing the bees do their part in keep­ing the bal­ance in nature.