A few weeks ago, our friend Tish came over for dinner. She brought us a jar of honey, and a big chunk of honey comb from her friends Judy and Ted in Montana who own a few bee hives. We were super grateful for the fresh honey, but were even more interested in the story behind her honey producing friends. It's not uncommon to hear about home gardeners, or folks brewing their own beer, but raising several hives of honeybees is pretty cool.

Ever since I read A Book of Bees by Susan Hubbell, I've been obsessed with bees. Camri is allergic to them, and we live in the city, so it's not really realistic to raise our own bees. We were excited to have access to real live beekeepers that we could ask questions of.

We got their email address from Tish, and wrote them asking about what got them into beekeeping. "I brew my own beer and I tried a delicious mead, which is fermented honey water," Ted writes in his email, "the price of honey is expensive when you have to use five pounds, so I decided to become a beekeeper and have my own source of honey."

Each hive produces 100 to 150 pounds of honey. The amount of labor isn't trivial, but it's not intensive either, "Spring time is the laborsome time inspecting each overwintered hive, feeding pollen substitute, sugar syrup w/medication, and monitoring brood production. It takes about an hour per hive, once a week for about 4-6 weeks. During the summer it doesn't hardly take any time other than inspecting the hive for honey production and putting on more supers to gather more honey. Summer is the time for the bees to work and me to enjoy watching their production."

When production ends, the really fun part begins, "Towards the end of summer and early fall it is time to start removing the honey filled supers, extracting and bottling , and attending farmer 's markets and craft fairs for selling. Once this is done it is time to make sure I have left enough honey in the hives for the bees and start preparing them for their winters rest. The whole process starts mid April and ends at the end of October."

Recent reports of honeybees disappearing have illustrated how important the honeybees role is in the great big circle of agriculture. From the New York Times, "one study says that honeybees annually pollinate more than $14 billion worth of seeds and crops in US." When we asked Ted what he thought was causing the nationwide bee vanishings, he suggested global warming. The winter time temperature fluctuations cause the bees to leave the hive too early, "Most hives don't get monitored very often during the winter while we are in the house reading A Book of Bees, by the warm fire and sipping on our hot tea w/honey and planning our strategy for next season."

Thanks Judy and Ted for answering our questions, and for the great honey.