Bee Man

On Friday night we struck up a conversation with a bee keeper in Trader Joes.  Here is what we learned from him:

• bee health is pretty complicated these days.  The parasites and bacteria that attack bees is now global.  He said that back in the early days of bee keeping there was only one bacteria you had to worry about, and it was easy to eradicate it.
• he has to follow the bees to figure out what kind of flowers they are pollinating, then he can dub his honey as clover or orange, etc.  Sometimes it is as easy as using a pair of binoculars.
• almond flowers tend to make bitter honey and there is no market for almond honey.  If any gets in with his regular honey, he has to dump it.
• bears.  They aren’t really after the honey.  They want the larvae. He has eaten the larvae and he says it tastes like honey sweetened pine nuts – good in other words.

on the way to work