> Speaking of Sherlock. "The Practical Beekeeper" 
> by Michael Bush is one of "Elementery"s' 
> Sherlock Holmes' favorite bee books. 
> As seen on his desk in a recent episode.

This is only because the interiors of that execrable insult to the classic
Sherlockian Canon are filmed at the (decommissioned) Brooklyn Navy Yard,
which also has an apiary with bees that can be borrowed or rented - the
"Brooklyn Grange" bees, kept by the sole remaining member of the "Backwards
Beekeepers NYC" group.  Their hives are famous for not having been moved
from a dock on the East River despite warnings of 10-foot storm surge for
Hurricane Sandy.  Donations were solicited to replace the bees and gear. A
strange thing for a for-profit company to ask for "donations".

The other members wandered off in search of easier paths to
self-aggrandizement and self-actualization than trying to keep bees alive on
good intentions alone, and their Facebook page has not had an update since
June 2013. The one fellow keeps plugging away, as there seems an unending
supply of gullible people willing to "invest" in a rooftop garden that
produces produce for trendy restaurants who can then claim to serve "local"
greens.  And perhaps 2% to 10% of the greens the participating restaurants
serve are from this small source, so it is greenwashing all around.
Tax-loss carry-forward anyone?

Along with the bees, various props are supplied, hence the use of cover of a
self-published book rather than, say "The ABC and XYZ of Beekeeping", "The
Hive and the Honeybee", or "Wisdom of the Hive".  I think that the big queen
bee on the cover was the primary factor in the choice.

I get a half-dozen emails a week assuming that I am involved in the
"Elementary" production, asking why the frames of bees are so sparsely
populated and the observation hives so brain-damaged in their design.  I am
not involved.  I saw the script for the pilot, and declined to participate
at any price.

For the record, Sherlock Holmes retired to Sussex to keep bees, as mentioned
in "The Blanched Soldier", "The Lion's Mane" and "His Final Bow".  He
mentions that he wrote a small book entitled "Practical Handbook of Bee
Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen". But he
never kept bees while working as a detective.  (The whole point of the
character "Holmes" was that he was utterly oblivious to everything except
crime/mysteries, and whatever was playing at the concert halls in London.)

I remember the first year of the Grange's early attempts at farming, on
their first rooftop in Queens, which they have since abandoned.  They were
growing a winter cover crop in a few inches of soil that had been carried up
several flights of stairs in bags by volunteers, and dumped in long mounded
rows.  They were so proud of their buried drip-tape irrigation system, until
I asked how they intended to remove the drip tape before roto-tilling the
cover crop back into the soil, as the roots of the cover crop were growing
around and gripping the tape tightly.  Facepalm.

The BBC series "Sherlock" is massively superior in just about every possible
way to the over-acted US unintentional situation comedy, but the BBC have
scripted in Sherlock deducing incorrectly several times, which is as deeply
disturbing has having Superman bleed from a gunshot wound.  They do get
points for casting Benedict Cumberbatch, as he is the first person to play
Sherlock Holmes who has an even more ridiculous name than "Sherlock Holmes".

The Jeremy Brett PBS series from the 1980s is head and shoulders above all
other attempts, as they presented the original masterpieces without
embellishment or attempts to "update" either the characters, or the period.
Bittorrent them.

All the movies and TV being filmed day and night in the city can become
annoying to those of us who actually live here and want to simply walk or
drive somewhere without being forced to detour several blocks around yet
another tedious cops and robbers chase-screen, and the block-long line ups
of support trucks full of lighting gear and catering, but there are
occasional funny stories  - one poor desperate man unable to feed his family
in this time of great injustice made the error of robbing a store, and
exited straight into the arms of a heavily-armed SWAT team. He surrendered.
They handcuffed him, and then called the real police, as they were extras
for a film shoot that was setting up across the street.

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