Big Sur Bakery Cookbook - Michelle Wojtowicz [16]
In addition to doing “waggle dances,” bees communicate with each other primarily through smell. The queen bee, who sits tight in the center of the hive and can live for more than five years, releases pheromones that dictate the whole mood of the hive. So if she’s anxious, it rubs off on all the other bees. Jack says that if you’re experienced enough, you can smell the variations too. “It’s like the difference between the air freshener you put in a bathroom versus a living room,” he says. “It’s almost the same, but slightly different—and it triggers the whole hive.”
Because bees rely so heavily on their sense of smell, it’s important to pay close attention to odor when you’re approaching the hive. Jack tries not to wash his hair or use deodorant before he works with the hive because the smell would be, as he puts it, like blasting the bees in the face with a firehose—the strong smell overwhelms their communication systems, and they get angry. One time, when Jack made the mistake of wearing freshly laundered clothes under his bee suit, the smell of fabric softener on his cuffs got the bees so upset that he ended up with about forty of them swarming around each ankle, stinging. Now, he blows a few puffs of smoke from burnt burlap on himself before working with the bees—for some reason, they don’t mind the smell.
Photographs by Sara Remington
To make honey, worker bees fly out of the hive and collect nectar from flowering plants, helping to pollinate them in the meantime. After ingesting and regurgitating the nectar a few times until it is partially digested, they deposit it in the comb’s cells. Then the bees in the hive beat their wings to create a breeze to help the water in the honey evaporate. The bees are looking for about an 80/20 ratio of sugar to water—too much sugar and the honey will become solid; too much water and it will ferment into mead. Once they think they’ve gotten the ratio about right, they cap off each cell with beeswax and allow it to sit, checking on it occasionally to make sure that the ratios are still correct.
So far, Jack’s bees haven’t succumbed to colony collapse disorder, the mysterious killer of thousands of beehives across the United States. But he still has to deal with natural predators like skunks and ants, both of whom love honey, and blue jays, who like to prey on the bees themselves. Pesticides that are used along the side of Highway 1 knock out thousands of bees, and a dry year with little rain will shorten each season’s bloom. In other words, honey takes a lot of work—from bees and beekeeper alike. We’re happy that Jack is willing to share his with us.
Photographs by Sara Remington
Photographs by Sara Remington
PROFILE: JACK/BEEKEEPER
Photographs by Sara Remington
How do the bees fit in?
Beekeeping is a side hobby. It’s not an easy thing these days. People think the bee just squeezes honey into the jar, but there’s a lot of process there.
Number of hives
Between five and twenty, depending on the year.
Largest amount of honey produced in a year
Fifty-five gallons.
Smallest?
Three. There was a drought.
What do you use your honey for?
I eat it with tea, oatmeal, cereal, chai. Oh—and I carry honey on me in the backcountry in case I get cut. It’s an antiseptic. As soon as it hits blood, the honey turns to hydrogen peroxide.
Amount personally consumed per year
If I don’t have five gallons of honey, I’m in trouble.
Who gets the leftovers?
It’s not commercial—just for local people and people I’ve known for years. When you get thirty-five people in Big Sur who buy honey, that takes care of a lot of the surplus.
First experience with bees
I fell into a beehive when I was young and got stung head to toe and didn’t die. I was lucky.
What kind of plants do your bees use?
It depends on the time of year. We’ve got rosemary, sage, thyme, orange trees, avocados,