Open Hive Demo + Chester County Honey and Bee Products
By Cate Hennessey
Beekeeping is a magical sort of dance with nature, a chance to mingle with insects in a surprisingly personal way.
After I read C. Marina Marchese’s Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper, I appreciated honeybees as a sustainable resource. But my real interest was selfish. As an allergy sufferer and the mother of two kids who always seem to be sick, I wanted the health benefits of local raw honey and bee pollen. So I went on a search for Chester County beekeepers and their products.
One of my first encounters was at a free workshop sponsored by Chester Countians for a Clean Environment (CFACE). For nearly three hours on a clear, chilly Saturday morning, Walt Broughton of Swarmbustin’ Honey demonstrated how to open, inspect, and split an active hive.
Calmed by pine smoke and the cool air, the bees hovered in their frames while potential and novice keepers learned to identify bee bread and egg cells. The more experienced helped move full frames of bees from an overcrowded hive into a new home. At this point, bees took to the air, but more curious than perturbed, they passed gently from person to person. It wasn’t hard to see why the workshop was a success – beekeeping is a magical sort of dance with nature, a chance to mingle with insects in a surprisingly personal way.
Of course, not everyone enjoys the presence of bees, but the environmental and health benefits of local honey and other bee products are universal. Here in Southeastern Pa., we’re fortunate to have a variety of producers. It’s worth trying honey from each one, as the taste of honey differs from farm to farm.
The largest local honey producer, Walt Broughton’s Swarmbustin’ Honey is based in West Grove with 300 hives across the county, from Chatham to Conshohocken. From Totally Raw Honey to Buckwheat Honey, (more…)
Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper
By Cate Hennessey
Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper, by C. Marina Marchese. Black Dog and Leventhal: 2009. 256 pages.
My first memory of honey comes from my father. Saturday mornings, he liked to spoon the golden sweet onto buttered toast and then fold the toast in half. Before bringing it to his mouth, he murmured, “The food of the gods!”
I agreed with him and ate my toast exactly the same way. I still do.
The other constant about honey in my life has been that it comes from the grocery store in a squeezable plastic container – sometimes bear-shaped, sometimes vase-shaped. It’s found in the aisle with the peanut butter and jelly, and then, once purchased, sits in the pantry with baking supplies.
C. Marina Marchese’s Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper has made me whisk that honey from the pantry and examine it – as well as the honeybees that produced it — in a whole new light.
At first blush, the book may seem like it belongs on the city-person-turned-agricultural-pioneer bookshelf. Certainly, Marchese chronicles the first year of her journey from bee neophyte to beekeeper extraordinaire. (She eventually leaves her “real world” job as a designer to begin her own bee business, Red Bee.)
But the book’s center is not Marchese at all. Rather, it focuses on the creatures that provide her livelihood. As a result, the pages delve into the intricacies of the honeybee — its anatomy, sociology, lifecycle, and vital role in agriculture. In short, the honeybees make fruit and vegetable production possible; without the honeybee, our food supply would collapse.
If the importance of the honeybee to agriculture isn’t impressive enough, Marchese details the role of honey, beeswax, and the honeybee in history, covering countries as (more…)
