LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk 41 an honor to open and enter a hive and have the occupants go about their business while you go about yours." You can hear her passion when she speaks about the sym- biotic relationship beekeepers have with their hives. She warmly talks about the social structure of a hive and how im- portant it is for the beekeeper to earn the hive's trust. She begins by taking time to watch the hive's entrance to "gauge what is going on" before attempting to work alongside these busy collectors and producers. At the same time, she warns that beekeeping is hard work. "Beware if you think you are just going to shake a package of bees into a new hive, walk away and magically come back to a hive overflowing with honey at the end of the summer." Life is good for the colony unless the queen becomes ill and dies. This is where the beekeeper steps in, inspecting the hive and making sure the queen stays fit. If the queen dies, the colony will not sur vive for long. The bees will tr y to continue their work regimen but will become agitated and aggressive without their queen in place. Sometimes bees choose to engage or disconnect with their existing queen. When this happens, the hive may swarm, leaving the queen to sever ties with the hive and take up to 60 percent of the colony with her and go in search of a new hive location, while the remaining 40 percent install a new queen. The beekeep- er's task is to monitor the health of a queen by checking to make sure she is not damaged and that she continues to lay good "brood patterns" in the hive. If the queen becomes ill and dies, the beekeeper must introduce a new queen before the hive fails. Michael Harmon, of Adirondack Honey in Malone, New York, speaks about the process of har vesting honey, the re- ward for a work-intensive summer of watching and caring for the bee colonies under his care: "Once the honey supers [the box and honeycomb frames of the hive] are filled and "capped," they are removed from the hives, uncapped, and placed in an extractor that spins, using centrifugal force to extract the honey from the cells. The honey is pumped into a holding tank, where it is filtered and stored in barrels. When it is time to bottle the honey, it is transferred to tanks that heat the golden liquid at a low temperature to assist with the viscosity before bottling." An ancillar y benefit of the bees' collecting nectar and pol- len is their pollination of important food plants as they do so. Nearly 75 percent of the fruits and nuts we eat depends on bee pollination for crop production. Without bees, our food supply would be in serious trouble. Remember that the next time you curse a bee that buzzes by your head or plants its stinger in your leg. Michael Harmon states that in early spring and summer, his worker bees are feasting on the nectar and pollen from dandelions, clover, black locust, and basswood. Linda Gillil- land has obser ved that in late summer and early fall, many of the floral sources in the Adirondacks include goldenrod, buckwheat, sweet clover, asters, Japanese knotweed, and thistles. The flowers bees access for nectar and pollen im- pact the flavor of the honey they produce. At the same time, even with this abundance, the amount of available nectar di- minishes throughout the season. Linda informed me that the USDA classifies honey by color grades, and she loves them all. "There are seven grades: water white, extra white, white, extra-light amber, light amber, amber, and dark amber. Gen- erally, we har vest light amber at Ben Wever." In the Adirondacks, beekeepers also face the challenges of deep winters and the sometimes undependable late-spring weather. Bees are resilient but must form a collaborative pact with beekeepers to ensure that their environment is supportive year-round. Beekeepers generally leave honey in the hive to help support the bees through the long Adiron- dack winters. With winter's approach, the bees' temperament and sense of urgency swell. According to Linda, "The honey bees become more defen- sive as the days become shorter and all creatures are tr ying to stock up on groceries before cold sets in." At this time, the colony is vulnerable to mite infestation, bee swarms, mice, bears, wasps, skunks, and birds, who are all fighting to steal a share of the bee's golden product. The atmosphere around a hive is frenzied when it is open and ex- posed during har vest, so the beekeeper must be quick and aware. In the end, Michael boasts: "It is a lot of work with a few stings along the way, but it's worth it!" For Adirondack chefs, honey becomes an essential ingre- dient, a more interesting sweetener than sugar, and some- thing that works well with both savor y and sweet dishes. The rustic comfort foods that make up Adirondack-style cooking pair particularly easily with the floral accents of honey, from crunchy granola to braised meats with honey undertones and fusion condiments like the Asian-style barbeque sauce be- low, honey always finds a home on regional chefs' ingredient shelves. 1 – The Australian Academy of Science – curious earth.

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