The Berks Barrister Summer 2017 - 14

w w w.BERKSBAR.org

Beyond the Bench:

Bucci's Bees
By Ana T. López Vives

t's Sunday morning and I am awakened by the sound of my cellphone alerting me
I have a text message. The Honorable Judge James M. Bucci is letting me know the
weather is perfect for beekeeping. In Berks County there are approximately 120
registered beekeepers and Judge Bucci is one of them. I grab my camera and head out
the door. I only live 15 minutes away from him.
As I pull into his driveway, I see the Plum Creek Apiary sign to my left and his
house on the right. The Judge is waiting for me at his workshop at the far end of the
driveway. He is wearing a Panama hat, plaid red shirt, and khaki shorts. He waves at me
with a fistful of wood shavings he then stuffs into a smoker that he is holding in his right
hand. He happily greets me as I get out of the car. He says he is excited that I was able
to make it as he hands me a jar of honey adorned with a label that reads "Bucci's Bees." I
inspect the golden liquid while he proudly lets me know he just harvested it last week.
"It's black locust honey," he says. Realizing that I have no idea what he is talking
about, he explains to me that his bees mostly feed from black locust trees that are nearby
his apiary. "Second best honey in the United States," he says. A few days later, when we
meet in his chambers, he explains to me that black locust and orange blossom honey are
considered the two best honeys in the United States. I have 5 jars of his honey sitting on
my kitchen counter; I can vouch for its sweetness.
He finishes stuffing his smoker as we talk about how he started beekeeping. "I was
in 8th or 9th grade when my dad had a little orchard, and he had the idea that we would
get honeybees and that it was my responsibility to take care of them," he reminisced. He
kept bees most of his junior year and into high school, but other things ("Girls," he says
laughing) took priority in his life. He tells me about the observation hive he built for a
school science project. "I still have my 9th grade science project, my observation hive. It's
in my basement somewhere," he says.
Bucci didn't keep any bees during college or law school. It wasn't until the 1990s
that he went back to beekeeping, but he lost all his bees later that decade due to the
varroa mites. Five years ago, in a moment of introspection, he decided to give beekeeping
one more shot. This time for good. "I started thinking about it again," he says. "And I
still had all my old equipment, so I decided to start again."
These bees, Bucci's Bees, are part of a growing colony he has been diligently tending
to. They survived the hard winter and made it to the summer harvest. These bees are
special. "I have 15 hives now," he tells me. Those 15 hives have already provided him with
100 pounds of honey this year and he expects to get another 50 out of them.
As we move towards the other side of his workshop, where the hives are, I can
hear the buzzing of thousands of tiny little workers busily working under the command
of their queen. Bucci loves his queens, and he tells me how he's found himself a new
passion in raising them. "My plans for the future, I want to develop my queen rearing.
This year, for the first year, I'm raising my queens and so far I have successfully raised
four, and just this morning I started another queen frame," he says.
Queen rearing is no easy task, but Bucci is not one to be easily intimidated. He has
studied the process and developed his own technique that he hopes will produce strong
queen bees that will lead productive hives. He applies himself to beekeeping with the
same sense of duty he carries when he dons a judge's robe. "As a judge, a primary skill
is observing people," he says. "Observing witnesses, litigants, observing demeanor and
14 | Berks Barrister

http://www.berksbar.org/

The Berks Barrister Summer 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Berks Barrister Summer 2017