Making Good Mead Part I - Where Does Honey Come From?

Making Good Mead Part I - Where Does Honey Come From? By Pete Ricks The more I learn about bees and honey, the more I want to learn about bees and honey. Honey has been a valuable commodity for centuries. To this day, honey is a prized commodity used in brewing and many other food products. Not to mention candles, soaps, and the medicinal products derived from honeybees. Honeybees are also responsible for pollinating a large part of the fruits and veggies consumed in the human diet. Out of all of the pollinating insects, honeybees are responsible for 80% of overall pollination. So where does honey come from? From honeybees, like the one shown in the picture. This worker bee is working over a blossom on a lemon tree. It is sucking the nectar out of that lemon blossom, which it will later spit out into a honeycomb when it gets back to the hive. Why do bees do this? Because this is their food. Bees harvest nectar during the months when vegetation is blooming and store it for the months where they don't have a food source. The type of vegetation that provides the nectar is what determines the variety of honey. Here in the desert southwest, we are blessed with several varieties of high quality honey. Citrus honey, which is sourced from the nectar of orange, grapefruit, and other citrus trees, is fairly common but is starting to die out in the Phoenix area as orchards of fruit trees are plowed under to make way for more subdivisions. Desert honey is a mixture of citrus and other desert plants. Other varieties that you can get locally are Mesquite, Cotton, and Camelthorn honey, which I discovered on a recent trip to Flagstaff. Flagstaff beekeeper Dennis Arp tells me that Camelthorn is classified as a noxious weed by the State of Arizona, but it sure does make for some flavorful honey. Somewhat lighter from the traditional desert honey that is so prevalent in the area, I found this honey to be unique in flavor and character. I have a mead fermenting with this honey as I write this article and it will be interesting to see how it turns out. The Beekeeper lNow I'm no expert when it comes to honeybees, but I have become more interested over the years in understanding where the honey that I brew my meads comes from. I like to think that I've picked up a few tidbits about bees and honey in my conversations with various beekeepers, like Phoenix beekeeper Virl Dowdy, pictured at left checking a screen for bee mites. First and foremost, bees are a misunderstood insect. The media in recent years has conditioned the public into believing we are under a massive invasion from Africanized bees, which are more aggressive than European varieties of bees. While there is no question that Africanized varieties of bees have moved into this country, so have many other more aggressive species of insect, like the fire ant. Africanized bees are more aggressive and when they feel threatened by humans or other creatures, they have a tendency to swarm more vigorously than domestic varieties of bees, sting more, and in some cases, kill. But the majority of bees in this country are not Africanized at this point. The European honey bee is still the bee of choice for most beekeepers due to its ability to create more honey. Virl tells me he is raising Russian queens because they have a natural resistance to mites, which seem to be a growing problem in the area. The Bee Crib Bees live in colonies. Colonies consist of a queen, worker bees, and drones. The queen bee is the largest bee in the hive and all activities by the colony are in support of the queen. The queen bee can lay up to 3000 eggs in a single day, which is a good thing since the average worker bee has a life span of about 30 days. The drones are male bees whose primary role is to provide fertilization services to the queen. They don't have to gather honey and they don't have stingers. Sounds like all these male bees need is some homebrew and a big screen! The worker bees are females that never made it to being queen. So who takes care of bees? Well, in many cases no one does as bees live in the wild and keep to themselves. However, there are professional and hobbyist beekeepers like Virl and they provide a vital role in the production of honey and caring of bee colonies. When I visited Virl at his residence in Phoenix, he had several boxes set up like the ones shown above. Within these boxes are "brood boxes", like the one in the above right picture. This is where the honey is stored. When Virl took me closer to the hives, he warned me to stay out of the path of the bees. I could see many bees swarming in and out of the box and they were performing the duty of collecting food for the hive. The path that Virl had warned me about was a virtual highway of bees in the air flying in and out of the hive. Even when they were 20 - 30 yards away from the box, these bees still seemed to have a precise take off and landing approach to the hive. I always like stopping by and talking to Virl about bees as I can tell he is a true caretaker of these amazing creatures. As well as being an integral part of the bee care and honey production process, Virl also produces some excellent honey, which is good for Mead brewers. If you like to brew Mead, I would recommend that you get to know one of your local beekeepers as that is where you get the pure stuff. They are usually very down to earth people who will talk your ear off about bees and honey. Next month, we will show you how the honey is extracted from the boxes and cover some of the more popular varieties. Until next time, Wassail!