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Authors: Cal Orey

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BOOK: The Healing Powers of Honey
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Honey can help exfoliate, soften, and make your skin and hair look softer.
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Honey masks, wraps, manicures, pedicures, baths, and much more are offered at health spas in America and around the world.
You don't have to go to a spa to enjoy the honey spa beauty treatments, because they can be done in the comfort of your home.
CHAPTER 14
The Busy Bee Workers
We're all busy little bees, full of stings, making honey day and night, aren't we, honey?
—Bette Davis
1
 
 
 
 
 
As a graduate student commuting from my mountain hideaway to the hustle-bustle of the city, I was on the go, always working, much like a worker bee. I attended back-to-back classes from 10:00
A.M.
to 9:00
P.M.
One overcast morning arriving on campus I craved a healthy breakfast. On a shoestring budget I splurged like a queen bee and treated myself to an off-the-beaten-path bistro across the street from campus.
The ambiance with lush green plants, incense, and music in this bistro filled with liberal arts students made me feel at home—part of a colony. I ordered a bowl of plain yogurt—not the processed kind with added sugar—and fresh fruit. The café workers mixed honey on top of the sweet breakfast treat. I paired this delicious bowl of goodness with a cup of herbal tea and honey and was in honey heaven. Today I still favor plain yogurt with pure honey and prefer to eat it amid my own houseplants or outdoors on the deck surrounded by towering pine trees and birds. And I dish out thanks to hardworking honey bees and their human keepers for the goodness of honey.
MEET THE BEES AND THEIR KEEPERS
There are three players in the honey world of human honey producers: hobbyists, part-time beekeepers, and commercial beekeepers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has estimated that there are between 139,000 and 212,000 beekeepers in the United States.
Hobbyists/Part-Time Beekeepers:
The majority, 95 percent, are hobbyists with fewer than 25 hives, and about 4 percent are part-timers who keep from 25 to 299 hives. Together, hobbyists and part-timers account for about 50 percent of bee colonies and about 40 percent of honey produced. The number of U.S. bee colonies producing honey in 2008 was 2.3 million (based on beekeepers who manage five or more colonies).
Commercial Beekeepers:
Meet the dedicated keepers with 300 or more colonies. There are about 1,600 commercial beekeeping operations in the United States, which produce about 60 percent of the nation's honey. These folks migrate their colonies during the year to provide pollination services to farmers and to reap rewards of nectar.
(
Source:
National Honey Board.)
THE WORKERS
The top five honey-producing states are North Dakota, South Dakota, Florida, Minnesota, and California—my home state, which makes me feel even more connected to the honey bees and their people. I want to share their unique tales. To me, each of the companies I contacted is exceptional, whether it be for their originality, presentation, reputation, quality, service, or all five traits.
Bee-Pure Honey
Honey History:
The Bee-Pure Honey tale is not unusual. Simply put, it was the love of beekeeping in Wisconsin, which began as a hobby, that blossomed into a thriving business.
 
Healing Powers:
The quality products straight from the hive are minimally processed to preserve the real honey flavor. “We add no sugar, water, fructose, or any other junk to our honey,” says Thomas Gandia, owner and chief bee wrangler.
My Fave Honeys:
I adore a spiced honey in an attractive hex jar. It contains whole spices such as cinnamon and clove. I put it in a cup of hot low-fat organic milk. And in my study sits a file cabinet of some honey treats, such as Bee-Pure honeycomb. As I sit here in my worker bee mode, nibbling on a piece of the U.S. Grade A honeycomb is a strange experience. The sweetness is sublime. I'm getting flashback images of Seth, and I feel like I must look like he did while eating sweets during his morphing phase in the film
The Fly.
Dutchman's Gold
Honey History:
Like Bee-Pure Honey, this company began with bees. As the story is told, Dutchman's Gold began with a swarmed hive back in 1981. Over time the Van Alten family and company grew to establish 1,500 hives spread on nearby farms in southern Ontario—a province I visited during my honey bee–like traveling adventures.
 
Healing Powers:
Natural honey products are what Dutchman's Gold is all about. We're talking raw, fresh, and unpasteurized honey varietals and honey blends. Also, Dutchman is privy to using beehive products for therapeutic healing and disease prevention. This honey company offers royal jelly, bee propolis, and bee pollen as well as buckwheat honey. From fields of Manitoba buckwheat the bees bring Dutchman Gold—and you—a unique honey. It's dark, rich, and full of antioxidants.
 
My Fave Honeys:
Stocked in my pantry sits Dutchman's products. I love Summer Blossom Honey—it has a mild flavor. It's the wildflower honey that charmed me with its amber color and taste of autumn. The signature cinnamon honey is one honey blend that will be gone before
The Healing Powers of Honey
is completed.
Honey Ridge Farms
Honey History:
This is another story about a family business. Located in Brush Prairie, Washington, back in 2004 Honey Ridge Farms was founded. Its mission included providing high-quality specialty gourmet honeys and honey-based specialty foods. “We're part of a long line of beekeepers; in fact, our son is a fifth-generation beekeeper who works alongside his grandfather tending hives,” says Leeane Goetz, president.
 
Healing Powers:
It's the quality of Honey Ridge Farm's honeys, being all natural and offering a variety of single–floral source artisan honeys from the western United States, as well as other all-natural honey-based gourmet foods. The artisan honeys are USA Grade A honey and minimally processed and unfiltered.
Because of their dedication to the apiculture industry and their partnership with local beekeepers, Honey Ridge Farms donates a portion of their profits from their Balsamic Honey Vinegar to help fund research to promote bee colony health.
 
My Fave Honeys:
Honey Ridge Farms' first artisan honey produced was wild blackberry from Washington and Oregon. As a short-time resident of Eugene and Portland and a lover of blackberries, I made this the first honey of the multiple jars I opened. I laced it over a store-bought cheesecake and topped it with sliced almonds. Another favorite food of mine is pumpkin, so their pumpkin blossom honey had me at first sight. I used it baking custard and muffins. It's a keeper.
Laney Honey
Honey History:
Moving east to America's Heartland, meet Dave Laney, the founder of Laney Honey, a premium honey company. Back in the seventies, honey was a hobby for Dave, much like other honey entrepreneurs. Twelve years later, his passion turned into a business. Rather than mix in all of their honeys together under one label, they separate their honeys by floral source. That way, Laney Honey is able to offer many varieties of honey. Hives of bees are placed in choice fields of a particular flower in bloom, such as blueberry or clover blossoms.
 
Healing Powers:
Laney honey is unpasteurized, unfiltered, and minimally processed. This is the way to preserve the distinctive flavors, trace minerals, vitamins, and pollen grains found in honey.
 
My Fave Honeys:
Most of their honeys are from the midwestern United States. I did open the jar of orange blossom (from Florida) and used it in a coconut custard pie that I baked. The blueberry is pleasing, sweet, and light. I put a teaspoon on a few scoops of plain Greek yogurt. It was a taste that transcended me from Lake Tahoe to a honey field.
Savannah Bee Company
Honey History:
Traveling from the Midwest to the South, I found this unique company, established since 2002. Savannah Bee Company is a thriving company located in Savannah, Georgia. Their mission is to go beyond the call of duty, like a bee colony, to produce the finest, most natural honey products. The Savannah Bee Company has become internationally known for its artisanal varietals, blended raw honeys, and unique body products.
The operation today looks different than when Ted made honey in the kitchen or garage and spent his time lugging hives all over the South in an old pickup. But the passion for bees and commitment to creating the highest-quality products haven't changed a bit. “I just love it,” he says. “I can't imagine doing anything else.”
These days, the Savannah Bee Company's wide array of extraordinary honey products are sold around the globe, including Australia, Canada, Dubai, and Japan. They also sell their honey products through fine stores such as Dean & Deluca, Whole Foods, Neiman Marcus, Crate and Barrel, and others.
 
Healing Powers:
Ted will tell it like it is. “We spin single varietals out of the comb and into the bottle without blending or processing them.” He adds that all of their honeys are hand harvested at the peak of the blooming season to ensure purity, KSA certified, and 100 percent honey.
 
My Fave Honeys:
Here I found a unique company with a gold mine of golden nectar from the honey bee. The gourmet honeys, much like gourmet chocolates, are edgy in presentation, originality, and taste.
Saving the Bees of Tasmania
Enter the world of the Tasmanian Honey Company, which began in 1978, created by Julian Wolfhagen, a native-born Taswegian. Son of a fine wool grazier from the Central Midlands town Ross, Julian grew up close to nature and developed a passion for the environment and the natural world. As a child he would go into the bush with men from the farm to hunt for wild hives and, once autumn arrived, assist them with harvesting the wild honey. He became a beekeeper as a result of saving the bees made homeless by the harvesting operations.
The second, more serious phase of Julian's interest in bees came later. Tasmania was in the grip of a hydroindustrialist mentality, where the loggers of the Tasmanian rain forests were run by the government and wreaked havoc on environmentalism. Julian felt that there had to be a better way for the future of Tasmania and its people and honey bees.
A reacquaintance with bees and honey via a good bottle of mead on a snowy winter's night spent with family and friends in a mountain hut changed the lives of Julian and honey bees. It planted an inspirational seed in the bee man's mind. His idea was to save the bees. And he did just that with the Tasmanian Honey Company, which provides healing honeys around the world.
A CALIFORNIA BEEKEEPER'S BITTERSWEET MEMORIES
Not only did I have the pleasure of speaking with Julian (and tasting his honeys), but another bee guru also moved me with his expertise. Joe Traynor is a former beekeeper who kept around 400 colonies in the 1970s. His words of hard work, like the honey bee workers, produce vivid images of what it's like to be a beekeeper and work hard to pay the rent....
I come back to orange honey occasionally, and it never fails to remind me, not of idyllic hours spent with a gentle breeze wafting through fragrant orange blossoms and the musical hum of millions of happy bees accompanied by a Mozart concerto playing on the truck stereo, but of lifting 100 pound boxes of honey in 100 degree weather in coveralls soaked with sweat while scores of angry bees registered their objection to my intrusion by inflicting numerous stings on any exposed bit of skin or pinning wet coveralls to flesh, of long nights driving a truckload of bees, then sleeping, or trying to sleep, in the cab of the truck until the bees could be unloaded at daylight, the angry buzz of unseen bees echoing in my ears as they crawled up pant legs and down collars.
OUT IN THE HONEY BEE FIELD ONE SWEET DAY
I didn't get to visit Tasmania or even go to Bakersfield. I passed on visiting honey shops state by state, across America, as one individual suggested I do. Nor did I fly, from bee farm to bee farm, around the world to meet beekeepers and their honey bees. Still, I did go out into the field like a forager bee and was treated to a decadent and soothing honey Jacuzzi bath, and then it was my day to meet Italian and Russian honey bees face-to-face....
By 10:00
A.M.
, both Seth and Simon, my Brittanys, are dropped off at my vet's kennel for the day while I and my sibling Bruce set out on our way to Reno for a day of honey delights. My brother Bruce and I are driving from South Lake Tahoe. There aren't any beekeepers around the lake, probably due to the snow. I don't think the high altitude bothers honey bees.
First stop: Siena Hotel. I recall that in my thirties this was where I stayed, when it was just a modest but quaint two-story motel. These days, the Mediterranean-style hotel is a high-rise, where I stayed next to the Truckee River. More memories are buzzing in my mind as I recall the decadent chocolate bath when I was writing
The Healing Powers of Chocolate.
I sense this will be another sweet experience.
Siena Hotel Spa
One hour later: Spa director Jamie Bell is waiting for us—and we wait in a comfortable relaxation room. Sipping hot herbal tea with Knott's Berry Farm honey while Jamie draws a honey bath is nice. Once again, I am greeted by an oversized bear claw Jacuzzi-style bathtub full of bubbling water (140 jets!).
This time, however, Bella Luccè Manuka Honey is my treat. The lights are dim. The water waits. I enjoy for 20 minutes. Images of Cleopatra came to mind. The Queen of the Nile is claimed to have savored her milk-and-honey baths—and this experience made it clear to me why this is a treat for royalty. This time around it was special but like a sequel, from Chocolate Heaven to Honeyland.
Thirty minutes later: I step out of the tub, get dressed, and am surprised. It's amazing. My skin feels soft. We're talking s-o-f-t. As I wait for my brother to enjoy his honey bath, I am thinking,
I have a new, improved skin—arms, tummy, and legs.
I am awestruck how manuka and orange blossom honeys can affect the skin as much as they do. Next stop to the honey bees is minutes away....
Hidden Valley Honey
Like two disoriented honey bees, we get lost in rural Reno. It is windy. My sinuses are pesky, complete with a headache and sniffles. At last, we arrive at beekeeper Chris Foster's home, away from the feel of the city, and I feel a calm of country. The atmosphere takes me back to San Jose when I was a kid and fruit trees and prune orchards were still plentiful, not concrete, like in today's fast-paced Silicon Valley.
I am greeted by one nature-friendly man who is a former director of molecular biology at a small firm, where he sat behind a desk looking at DNA sequences on a computer screen. Nowadays, the scientist gone beekeeper and his wife, Karen, are busy living and working with their prized possessions: honey bees. In the house, I am greeted by a German wirehair, a sporting dog that puts me at ease. Everywhere I look there are reminders that I'm visiting a beekeeper. Bee books, fresh fruit, and jars of honey are all over. Chris tells me that his alfalfa from the Nevadan high desert area produces a thick honey that doesn't spoil.
The beekeeper on a mission to expand his 60 colonies to more than 200 explains to me that he usually extracts honey twice a year: “The early honey that is extracted toward the end of June is lighter in color and often tastes distinctly different from the darker fall crop that is harvested before September.” He adds that during the extraction process a beekeeper has the option of separating light frames of honey from darker honey and then extracting them separately. Fascinated by the bee-to-honey process, I cannot help but be distracted by the living room window. Outdoors I see a large backyard with bees swarming freely around supers (the white boxes bees live in). A constant movement and buzzing outside in the one-acre backyard has grabbed my attention.
I see bees flying hither and thither. I thought they'd be all tucked away in a hive. Funny, though, the dog isn't bothered by the insects—and neither am I. Chris insists honey bees are gentle creatures. I believe him. I'm beginning to sense that this day is not going to be a chilling
Killer Bees!
or
Swarmed
sci-fi film sequel. Instead, I'm feeling a sense of calm like Lily Owens, a character who finds solace in the world of beekeeping in the film
The Secret Life of Bees.
The night before, I watched the movie
Outbreak
(Kevin Spacey's protective gear tears and he's infected with a deadly virus). So, I figure,
Why wear a bee veil? A bee could crawl up my jeans and sting me if it wanted to do it.
I think,
I didn't wear flowery perfume or bright colors like a flower. They'll ignore me.
My brother passes on going outside. (He doesn't like scary movies or honey bees.)
I follow Chris outside. I walk amid the bees. I have entered Beeworld. I secretly wish that I, too, could nurture workers and drones—and queens. That's when he asked me to come face-to-face with his 25 new queens . . . but hey, I think,
I am doing fine. No stings yet. Why push the envelope?
I do not peek inside the containers of buzzing honey bees.
Back inside the house, we chat about local beekeepers, some who rescue swarms and others who sell their bee products as Chris does at the farmer's market. I am given taper candles, lip balm, and a jar of fresh local honey—with promise for helping my sinuses and allergies. Chris tells me that a lot of the honey he sells at the farmer's market is to people who buy the alfalfa honey to stave off symptoms of allergies. I am hopeful that his local honey may give me sinus relief. I want to believe the honey bees that didn't sting me will be my saviors.
Bruce and I pick up the Brittanys, and by six o clock we are back home in South Lake Tahoe. When I walk up to the doorstep I see a big cardboard box with the label “Magnolia Honey.” I feel like a bee that is entering her hive. Outside my kitchen window I admire the splash of yellow wildflowers and it makes me think of Italy and wildflower honey. And like a persevering worker bee I found the perfect wildflower honey recipe to take me abroad.
Wildflower Honey-Lace Tiramisu
3 cups seasonal berries
(reserve ½ cup for
garnish at end)
¼ cup of sugar in the raw
(brown demerara sugar)
cup high butterfat
whipping cream
¾ cup superfine sugar
3 ounces Italian mascar-
pone cheese
¾ cup sugar in the raw for
for mascarpone cheese
mixture
2 cups extra strong
espresso, cooled
½ cup coffee liquor like
Tia Maria
2 Madagascar vanilla beans
½ cup wildflower honey
1 package of ladyfingers or
sponge cake
A few sprigs of fresh
spearmint
¾ cup sugar in the raw or
brown cane sugar for the
berries
In a large bowl stir seasonal berries in the brown demerara sugar. Reserve ½ cup berries for the end. Let the berries mixed with sugar sit at room temperature. Meanwhile, in a mixer whip the whipping cream and ¾ cup of superfine sugar until stiff peaks start to form, taste for sweetness, set aside and keep cool. Take another bowl, combine mascarpone cheese, superfine sugar, 1 cup espresso, ¼ cup coffee liquor and the vanilla beans (scraped well, then chopped). Fold the cheese mixture into seasonal berries. Mix them well but be careful not to break up the berries, using a wooden spoon. Then, fold in the whipped cream to the bowl containing the berries, cheese, espresso and coffee liquor mixture.
Warm the wildflower honey in a double broiler until it reaches a thin consistency. Make layers in the English trifle dish (made of heavy glass) with wet ingredients followed by the dry ingredients; a layer of ladyfinger or sponge cake covering the top of each layer of wet ingredients, honey, then a layer of dry. Repeat. Each layer should look wet. Pour remaining 1 cup of espresso over Trifle bowl with remaining ¼ cup coffee liquor. Drizzle wildflower honey on top. Garnish with spearmint springs. Top with the reserved ½ cup of sugared seasonal fruits. Put in fridge for a few hours to enhance flavors. Serves 6–8.
(
Source:
Warren M. Bobrow, Food Journalist.)
Now that you know how busy the honey bees and their people are, it's time to understand that nothing is 100 percent perfect—not even honey. There is a downside to bees and you should know about it.
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