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11/01/2017 08:30 AMTo bee or not to bee is indeed the question Chris Morano and his friend Toby Doyle asked themselves in 2015: whether they should take the beekeeping course at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in Hamden.
“It was an idea; we were looking for something to do,” Chris says.
They signed up and now Chris and Doyle, both attorneys, will talk about their adventures in beekeeping at the annual meeting of the Chester Land Trust on Thursday, Nov. 9 at 6:30 p.m. at the Chester Meeting House.
Chris has spoken about bee keeping before, but he is better known for being interviewed about one of the most famous Connecticut murder cases in the last 50 years: the 1975 murder of 15 year-old Martha Moxley in Greenwich. Michael Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy, was convicted of the crime some 27 years later in 2002. Chris, who was Connecticut’s chief state attorney at the time of Skakel’s conviction, was part of the prosecution team. Since the original decision, members of Skakel’s extended family have continued to fight the conviction.
In 2013, after serving 10 years in prison, Skakel was granted a new trial on the grounds that his former attorney had not adequately represented him. Subsequently, however, the Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated the conviction. Still, Skakel’s attorneys are contesting that verdict and he remains free on bond.
“The case just won’t go away,” says Chris who remembers on one occasion a team from a television program rented space in Block Island, where Chris was vacationing, to interview him for four hours.
He says when he was involved with the Skakel trial the prosecutors looked to another famous criminal trial, that of O.J. Simpson, with a particular goal in mind.
“We looked at the O.J. trial for what not to do,” he recalls.
Chris was also Chief State’s Attorney when serial killer Michael Ross, who murdered eight women, was executed in 2005. It is the last execution to have taken place in Connecticut. The death penalty in the state was abolished in 2012.
Chris remembers being one of the officials involved in the final moments of the case. As chief state’s attorney, he was asked if there were any legal reasons that Ross could not be put to death.
“I had to say ‘No,’” he recalls. “It was an extremely sobering moment.”
What makes Chris most proud of his time as chief state’s attorney are not the news-making cases, but the ones that nobody knows about.
“Seeking justice for the victims and justice dealt to those accused of crimes. It’s just as satisfying to see a mother receive justice,” he says.
Chris decided not to submit his name for a full term as state’s attorney, an appointive position, and instead left state government in 2006 after more than 20 years to join a large law firm in Hartford. A year later, he opened his own practice in Essex.
“I appreciate having a practice here; no more battling with the legislature, no more overseeing what is going on there,” he says, sitting in the conference room of his office on the second floor of the Essex Post Office Building.
His office walls display photos and mementos of his legal career. Underneath an assemblage of photos relating to the Moxley case is a plaque with a genuine Louisville Slugger baseball bat attached. It is a Home Run Award from the National District Attorney’s Association for prosecutorial tenacity and professionalism.
A graduate of Valley Regional High School, the University of Connecticut, and New England School of Law, Chris came to Essex from Greenwich, a community his father had represented in both houses of the state legislature. (The former Mianus River Bridge in Greenwich is now named after him, the Michael L. Morano Bridge.)
Chris met Doyle at Pettipaug Yacht Club & Sailing Academy when he was in 7th grade, though he didn’t moved to Essex until he was in 10th grade.
Boating is still a big part of his life, and he owns what amounts to his own small navy, starting with a 41-foot yawl down and progressing downward through several smaller boats to a 15-footer as well as what he calls “miscellaneous craft.” He explains his passion quoting the classic lines from Kenneth Grahame’s classic novel, Wind in the Willows: “There’s nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.”
About Those Bees
When Chris and Doyle started their beekeeping project, they bought protective suits, proper equipment and, of course, the bees at some $100 for a three-pound package that contained about 10,000 bees. Their first year they bought a hand-cranked spinner to extract the honey. They thought it would be authentic and fun. After about an hour, Chris recalls, their opinion changed. By the next year they had bought an electric-powered spinner.
Life in a bee colony, Chris says, can be a struggle particularly for male bees, the drones. They mate with queen bees, though not the queen from their own hive. After mating, as the weather turns colder, there is not enough food in the hive to keep the drones alive. Female bees force the drones out of the hive or kill them outright by stinging as winter approaches. During winter all the bees remaining in the hive form a tight ball and flex muscles to create heat. According to Chris, it can register as much as 90 degrees at the center of the ball.
Queen bee sounds like an important position, but Chris says within the hive it is the collective rule of the female bees that determines what happens. They communicate with each other by releasing pheromones, chemical substances that produce different kinds of behavior. If a queen bee is not laying enough eggs, Chris says, the females in the hive will kill her and prepare a cell to produce a new queen.
Bee keeping has its rewards, but that is not the end of the story. Chris eats his own honey, a spoonful everyday; he also uses it as a sweetener in tea and coffee.
But with pleasure comes pain—”Stings come with the turf,” he says.
And he always tells would-be beekeepers to make sure they are not allergic to those painful pricks. Though he is not, Chris still has a supply of anti-inflammatory injection pens, which control serious reactions to stings.
Chris has some advice to minimize stings.
“Since I started this I’ve learned some things,” he says. “If a bee lands on you, if you swipe at it and try to slap it, it will become aggressive. If you just stay still, it should be okay.”
Chester Land Trust Annual Meeting
Featuring a Bee Keeping talk by Chris Morano and Toby Doyle on Thursday, Nov. 9 at 6:30 p.m., Chester Meeting House.