Show Me the Honey Read online

  If bees didn’t sting, then bears, wasps, skunks, and humans would inevitably steal all their honey. Bees produce a valuable commodity that many of the creatures roaming this planet, including me, want. Somewhere in the constitution of nature, bees were granted the inalienable right to bear arms.

  The fact that bees do sting forces beekeepers to be more observant, more in the moment. I have a distracted focus at best; if I were a schoolboy in these modern times, my report card would no doubt say in bold letters, “Dave has trouble paying attention.” Nowhere is a lack of focus more immediately punished than in the hobby of beekeeping. Each time we go into the hive, 50,000 loaded stingers await us.

  The minute you open a hive—no, even as you approach the hive—you need to be completely aware of what is going on around you. No daydreaming or wandering off in thought. Hurried actions, abrupt movements, or anxious energy can turn a peaceful commune of honey makers into an attacking squadron of angry, venom-spewing kamikaze pilots.

  And just like how the kamikaze pilot missions in the Second World War were suicidal, a bee is in suicidal mode when it stings you. It will die within an hour because the stinger, which lodges in the victim’s skin, tears loose from the bee’s abdomen, taking its guts with it.

  One time I carefully caught a bee who was trespassing in my float home in my leather glove. Before I let it go outside, I examined it under a magnifying glass. I gently held her between my gloved fingers, careful not to squish her delicate frame. To my horror, as I drew the magnifier closer, she buried her little rump into the glove’s thick leather hide. “No, no, don’t do it!” I cried. It was too late. I slowly spread my fingers as she crawled up my thumb dragging a gooey elastic trail of guts. To be more exact, her digestive tract plus muscles and nerves trailed in a gross three-inch string. Yuck. There was nothing I could do; I knew she was headed to honeybee heaven. So I stuck her under a glass on the kitchen counter, gave her some sugar water, dimmed the lights low to comfort her, and played Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in Bee Minor for her. Within an hour, sadly, she died.

  Many bees have sacrificed their lives just to plant a stinger deep into my skin. Bees place protecting the hive ahead of life itself. Admirable? You bet. Especially when you consider how dangerous it is for bees to approach a human. Their loud buzzing makes them easily swattable targets. Before becoming a beekeeper, I batted many an angry bee onto the ground outside, where I firmly planted my foot on its prone little form to crush it. Wasps are even worse.

  Indoors, I had more elaborate ways of killing bugs, including bees. An old-fashioned fly swatter, a novelty battery-powered electrified bright yellow plastic tennis racket, or a simple rolled-up newspaper were my favoured methods of murder. I played judge, jury, and executioner. The bugs were always found guilty. It’s hard to fault anyone for swatting an attacking bee. After all, their stings hurt like hell, and bee stings release pheromones that prompt nearby bees to join in. Get stung by one bee and 100 reinforcements could well be on their way.

  A bee sting may also trigger anaphylactic shock, which can be extremely serious. My girlfriend, Jeannie—a competent, cautious, and caring beekeeper—once had a terrible allergic reaction. Like most beekeepers, she had been stung several times over the years. Those early stings resulted in nothing more than agonizing pain. But after three stings in one day, she had to be rushed to the hospital, where the doctor ordered her to stay overnight.

  It was good the sting occurred while she was tending her own bees, because she was with her sister Suzanne, who is also an experienced beekeeper. Immediately after the piercing venom took hold, Jeannie knew something was seriously wrong. She and Suzanne wasted no time getting in the car to hurry to the hospital. As they embarked on the 10-minute drive, Jeannie’s heart began beating faster, her skin became uncontrollably itchy, and her whole body heated up. Three or four minutes into the trip the symptoms became unbearable. Jeannie spotted a pharmacy, told her sister to stop, and dashed inside. Grabbing a package of Benadryl, she ran to the counter to pay, then downed a tablet. Benadryl blocks the effects of histamine, a substance released by the body if you are allergic to bee stings.

  Back inside the car, Jeannie was in sheer agony as her condition escalated. Pink welts the size of hockey pucks broke out all over her skin. She reported that her heart was beating twice as fast as it should, pounding like never before, and she overheated to the point where Suzanne could feel intense heat radiating off of her sister. As they sped down the street, Jeannie had to rip her shirt off her raw, red, and raised skin. In her crazed state, she hung her naked torso out the passenger window of the speeding car, drawing temporary comfort from the cool breeze.

  Luckily, Suzanne had an extra-large, loose shirt on hand, and Jeannie put it on for the last few minutes of the trip to the emergency ward. When they got there, Jeannie sprinted to the smooth Arborite checkin counter, where she unabashedly lifted up the shirt to place her bare chest and stomach against its cool surface. The emergency doctor arrived to witness a writhing, bright red, overheated woman in intense pain and declared he had never before seen a bee sting inflict such a severe skin reaction.

  After a long, sleepless night, Jeannie was released the next morning. Thank goodness she was back to normal within a few days. When we talk about it now, she repeatedly points out how it all happened so quickly, and I can’t get over how such a minuscule amount of venom from a bee’s stinger can create such massive biological havoc. To this day, she visits an allergist monthly for preventive treatment.

  One of my girls once nailed me in the face. It hurt, but after 15 minutes the soreness went away. I had forgotten the entire incident by the time I went to bed that night. The next day I was due to go to a function in Vancouver with officials from the Beijing Olympic committee. I was aghast when I woke up and couldn’t see properly out of my left eye. I got out of bed and looked in the mirror—my eye was swollen to a narrow slit.

  Is there any antidote for bee stings? Well, sort of. Pharmacies sell pen-like dispensers containing a balm meant to be applied to the skin immediately after a bite. I have found a moderate degree of relief from them. My sister has good things to say about a poultice of baking soda and water. But my favourite nullifier comes from a distant childhood memory and a Greek family that lived down the lane from us when I was about five or six. Mrs. Michelidies told me that if a bee stung me, I should immediately pee on the soil near the hive, then bend over and pick up the pee-soaked mud and apply it to the sting. I talked with my sister Miriam about this one, comparing it to her baking-soda poultice. As I was laughing, Miriam gave me pause when she told me there is science to back up this remedy: urine can effectively treat all stings. When Miriam and Len were at a resort in the tropics, a jellyfish stung her while she was happily snorkelling in the green-blue water. As they returned to shore, fellow snorkellers offered to pee on her arm! Was this an example of well-meaning tourists wanting to help, or some kinky sun-baked weirdos looking for perverse kicks?

  At this point, you may be wondering if my lack of focus impedes my ability to remember to put on a beekeeping suit. Believe it or not, although the bee suit offers some degree of protection, bees can invade the tough, canvas-like material. It is incredible that a bee’s tiny stinger can permeate such thick fabric; maybe they use a pencil sharpener on their stingers, or maybe they carry mini seam rippers. And if you don’t seal your bee suit properly when you put it on, errant bees gain access through the bottom of the leggings or the open ends of the sleeves. Try having an angry bee fly up through your leg into your crotch. It’s almost enough to make me switch hobbies and take up stamp collecting.

  So beekeepers must approach their hives with proper preparation, in a relaxed manner, and with a degree of caution. As I put the bee suit on, I often inhale deeply several times to try to slow my breathing down. I envision the hive as 50,000 happy friends under one roof. If that isn’t a bizarre enough fantasy, I go on to visualize how welcoming they will be when I lift the lid off of their small home
and pay them a visit. The breathing exercises and the role-playing take the edge off what can be a nerve-racking experience. I tend to be less clumsy when I am more relaxed and focused. Without my preparatory ritual, I am inclined to drop tools, knock things over, and generally annoy and stir up the bees. Jeannie, who has far more experience than I do in the hive, is always methodically slow and confident in her approach.

  It’s important to keep in mind that no two hives are the same. Each hive has its own culture and “personality.” Some hives consist of passive, good-natured bees that cooperate in commune-like bliss, while other hives are more like a collection of jail cells with angry inmates ready to violently attack intruders and escape. The time of day should also be taken into consideration when approaching the hive. It is best to open up the hive to make a house call when many of the bees are out foraging for nectar—early afternoon on a warm sunny day. Half the bees won’t even be home, and the ones that are will be so busy storing the harvest and building honeycomb that you will hardly be noticed. Theoretically.

  Considering the potential peril of approaching and entering a beehive, you may be asking, “What is it that beekeepers are actually doing in there?” Well, about half a dozen tasks require “looking under the hood.” We go in to check the development of comb, ensure the queen is alive and producing eggs, and watch for minuscule enemy invaders, such as mites. We lift the inner frames to determine how heavy each one is as an indicator of how much honey has been produced. Sometimes, when the flowers are not making enough nectar, we go in to feed the bees sugar water.

  When I feed my bees, the unique location of the hive on my float home’s back deck allows me to stay safely inside my house and simply push the sliding window over four inches. This gives my hand just enough room to slip a jar of sugar water into the hive. To do this reasonably cautiously, I wear the leather long-sleeved gloves that came with the bee suit and put on the hood. This method works well most of the time, but invariably the occasional bee will fly inside. I found myself relaxing the hard and fast rule I’d had prior to becoming a beekeeper: any bugs inside my place were trespassing and, as such, I had the right to kill them. Bees ceased to be annoying intruders and transformed into something between a carefully tended crop and a herd of beloved pets.

  In life, what you do when no one is watching is what matters the most. One day during a feeding, I happened to leave the window open a bit too wide, and about eight or nine bees flew into my home. I was in harm’s way because I hadn’t bothered to put on my bee suit. It took me 15 minutes to track down each and every girl and gently escort her out the front door. The best way to achieve this was to gingerly caress each wayward bee in my glove, ever so careful not to squish her. I did this task with such a degree of caring that it surprised me. Six months prior, I would have just rolled up a back issue of the Vancouver Sun and chalked it up to self-defence.

  As I released the eighth unharmed bee from my front deck and watched her fly around back to the hive, I thought, “There is hope for me.” The transformation had begun: I was slowly turning into an apiarist.

  The Process of Creating an Almost-Perfect Food

  Created from fields of wildflowers by remarkable flying insects in summertime, sold in pretty jars at farmers’ markets, and consumed blissfully in steaming cups of herbal tea, honey is regarded as the quintessential natural food. While raw honey is technically unprocessed, it does go through quite the process to get to your pantry. And the result is a product that’s almost flawless. In fact, it’s about three-quarters perfect.

  In general, food should taste good, look nice, be easy to serve, and have a decent shelf life. Humans have turned processing foods into a massive industry to try to nail this elusive equation—as evidenced by the popularity of overly processed foods like doughnuts, corn chips, pop, and hot dogs. Honey, however, comes by three of these attributes honestly. Admittedly, it does leave a lot to be desired in one category.

  Honey’s sweet, sunny flavour simply cannot be improved upon. Period. Don’t mess with Mother Nature—no additives or flavour enhancement required. Honey is one of the most delectable foods on earth, dependably sending the brain’s taste receptors into an orgasmic frenzy. I routinely apply honey much too thickly on my toast, I drop spoonfuls into my coffee, and sometimes I just smear it on my fingers and lick it off.

  Translucent and smooth, honey is beautiful to behold. The light orange-yellow liquid glows; it is lazy and slow, like a summer afternoon spent dozing in a lawn chair. Sometimes I hold a jar of it in my hands and lift it up to a window just to bask in its golden magnificence. I have passed the time by turning a newly sealed jar of honey upside down to watch air bubbles slowly and gracefully rise back up to the top of the jar, like a lava lamp.

  When it comes to honey being easy to serve, however, all I can say is that it’s hard to be perfect. Honey scores a zero in this category. I don’t know about you, but no matter how careful I am, it always leaves a sticky mess on the counter, around the jar lid, on coffee cups, and sometimes on my fingers and chest. I’ve tried dispensing it with those old-fashioned wooden dollop sticks (honey dippers); they don’t work. Then there are the bear-shaped plastic squeeze bottles. They had great potential as stickiness-free honey dispensers, and I joyously refilled them with my own Houseboat Honey. Then one morning I reached into my cupboard and wrapped my hand around the bear’s soft plastic belly only to have my fingers slide and stick on a layer of honey that had dripped down its torso.

  While stickiness is one drawback, honey also has a bad habit of changing consistency, based on temperature, moisture in the air, and age. How many times have you bought a nice jar of amber liquid and then left it on your counter for a few months only to discover it has crystallized? I invariably encounter this tragedy at the worst time: in the early morning when I am late for work and dying for some honey on my brown toast. In my semi-slumberous state, I grab the plastic honey bear, twist the bright yellow lid off its noggin, plunge a knife down its throat, and am forced to scrape hard honey crystals from the insides of the bear’s chest. Then I mangle my toast, trying to spread it.

  Honey does, however, get a five-star rating when it comes to longevity. Honey never goes bad. Ever. Not after a month, a year, or even a decade. Some people think honey is no good after it crystallizes. Wrong. Crystallization is honey’s natural process; the sweet taste and exemplary qualities are still there even after it hardens. To transform your crystallized honey back to its original liquid state, all you have to do is put it in a glass jar, submerge it in a pot of water, and heat it up. Please note the glass jar. Don’t do what I did and put the plastic bear bottle into the pot on the hot stove. I melted Pooh’s feet off, and he bled his contents into a toxic mixture of boiling water and melted plastic. I frantically pulled the bear’s head out of the pot only to drip sticky honey and plastic all over the floor, the counter, and my suit pants.

  There are documented cases of containers of honey buried with Egyptian mummies thousands of years ago. This is no surprise because mummies were buried with their prized possessions, personal belongings, and food to assist them in their journey to the afterlife. The archaeologists who discovered these ancient tombs must have been astounded to find an earthen ceramic pot of honey nestled next to King Tut. It probably took a lot of nerve for them to dip their fingers into the honey, lick it off their fingertips, and declare the honey still fresh. But they did. Google it.

  Since honey can last for thousands of years in the oven-hot Egyptian desert, it should come as no surprise that it needs no refrigeration. I am bewildered when I snoop in friends’ fridges and find jars of honey. If you are keeping your honey in the fridge, take it out and save your fridge space for Mother Nature’s more spoilable offerings, such as milk and cheese, foods that are not as perfectly engineered as ever-fresh bee ambrosia. Store your honey in a cupboard at room temperature and pull it out in the year 2774 to experience flavour as fresh as the first day a forager bee collected it and a worker bee fanned it wit
h its wings.

  Honey, without any human intervention, meets three out of the four desirable processed-food attributes—like I said, it is three-quarters perfect! And bees go through one heck of a complicated process to make it so, carefully gathering, chemically modifying, and storing it. After bees extract the nectar from the plants with their proboscises, they swallow it. I myself was surprised to learn they don’t bring it back in tiny buckets. In fact, when bees make honey, it’s a cross between a puke-a-thon and a barf-fest. A small portion of the nectar they swallow goes into their stomachs to give them the energy and stamina they need to visit up to 1,500 plants and flowers daily. The rest of the nectar goes into a spare stomach for storage. But wait, it gets grosser. When they get back to the hive, each worker bee finds a processor bee and then regurgitates the nectar sucrose from its storage stomach into the processor bee’s mouth.

  Here is where the production gets a bit technical. The processor bees that stay in the hive keep the sucrose nectar in their stomachs for about half an hour. During those 30 minutes, the bee’s stomach enzymes break down the sucrose nectar by converting sucrose into glucose and fructose; we’re talking a highly complicated chemical operation. Processor bees are younger than worker bees, so they still have the proper stomach enzymes to break down sucrose. Once bees get older, they lose those enzymes and have to go out and forage (or work, hence the name worker bee). The analogy is striking. For many of us, our youth is spent drinking and barfing; then as we get older we have to get on with it and go out to work.

  After half an hour of stomach-based chemical conversion, the processor bee is ready to hurl the contents of her stomach, and it’s not like she can reach for a barf bag with one of her six arms. There are thousands of processor bees in the hive, so there wouldn’t be enough barf bags to go around. Each bee just pukes the glucose and fructose concoction from her stomach into one of the handy six-sided cells that comprise the hive. It is not quite honey yet. The solution is too watery, so the processor bees spend a day or two fanning the honeycomb cells with their wings to reduce the water content.