Ron Breland, 64 years old, is a teacher at the private Rockland Country Day School of Congers, thirteen or so miles out of Manhattan. He set up the hives of his design in the school’s organic garden and teaches apiculture to children from nursery to secondary school. “It’s extraordinary, just using my type of hive and smoking them with sage, I can open a hive without any danger to the kindergarten pupils. The bees raised like that are so much gentler and we practically never have any stings.”