DAVID GRAVES, a regular vendor of honeys and jams at ...

David Graves, a regular vendor of honeys and jams at New York City's greenmarkets, sits in a taxicab cruising up Amsterdam Avenue, surveying Manhattan's cityscape with the eye of a farmer. "The season is coming along nicely," says Graves, pointing out a spindly tree with downy white blossoms. "The Bradford pear's already in bloom." Graves, who hails from the small Berkshire town of Becket, MA, appreciates New York City's tree-lined blocks not for their beauty, but for the appearance of blossoms that indicate a good season for the honeybees that he keeps on rooftops throughout the city. These honeybees are responsible for making Graves' best-known product, "New York City Rooftop Honey."

"New York City is a perfect place for raising honey," explains Graves. "It's warmer here than in the Berkshires, and there are no black bears, no predators." Since 1997, Graves has been installing hives on rooftops that run the gamut of New York City neighborhoods, from a hotel roof in Union Square, to the top of Amy Ruth's Restaurant in Harlem (they use Graves' honey for their Spicy Honey Chicken), to JFK High School in the Bronx. The flavor of the honey is contingent on the flowers from which the bees extract their nectar. Although Graves can't be sure of where the bees feed, he suspects that the floral and slightly minty taste of early-summer honey comes from the Linden trees found on the Lower East Side, and that the whitish, bland, first-of-the-season spring honey could be a product of the short-lived bloom of the Siberian elm.

On a recent Sunday morning, Graves climbs up a flimsy ladder that leads to the rooftop of an Upper West Side brownstone, where he keeps a hive in a wooden box the size of a record crate. This in turn is composed of three smaller boxes (called "supers") stacked on top of one another. The bees inhabit the bottom super, make honey in the middle, and the top super, the shallowest, is for the surplus honey that is harvested and then sold. Lifting the top super, Graves exposes rows of "frames," flat panels that are filled with dark amber honeycomb and covered with buzzing bees. He presses a metal spatula against the comb, which responds with an ooze of tawny honey. Depending on the weather, each hive produces 80 to 140 pounds of honey a year; the people who allow Graves to keep bees on their roofs get a percentage of the honey as payment.

Like the people who live here, New York City honeybees work unconventionally long hours. "Down here, maybe because of the lights, when I get here early in the morning the bees are already up bringing in pollen," remarks Graves. He notes-not without pleasure-that city honeybees work from six in the morning until eight at night; their Berkshire counterparts don't get started until around nine. "By five it's quitting time," says Graves.

Standing on the rooftop, Graves regards his bees and laughs. "I have millions of employees that I don't have to pay a nickel to." After a thoughtful pause he adds, "I'm probably the biggest employer in the city."

Union Square Greenmarket, Union Sq. N. (betw. B'way & 4th Ave.), Monday, Wednesday, Saturday

West 77th Street Greenmarket, 77th St. (Columbus Ave.), Sunday, 1-800-5-Berrys