December 2003/January 2004, page 38
Life Is Sweet
An eclectic assortment of Island beekeepers savor the pleasures of working with one of nature’s most sociable creatures
story by Pamela Frierson
photos by Franco Salmoiraghi
Hawaii
is awash in flowers—and, not surprisingly, in bees. The furry
insects are the unsung heroes of the Islands, for they pollinate a multitude
of our crops, including macadamia nuts and coffee. They also produce some
amazing honey. Since I moved to the Big Island years ago, my kitchen pantry
has never been without at least one jar of someone’s "backyard"
honey. The liquid has ranged in color from pale gold to rich amber and
often been dotted with small dark flecks that I suspect are bee legs.
Sometimes the honey conjures up the blossoms of its source. Sometimes
it tastes a little fermented, as if produced by tippling bees. Clearly,
behind the production of this complex food are some amazing insects.
And, as the saying goes, some busy ones. In fact, the industry of bees is astonishing: To make one pound of honey, bees fly an estimated 55,000 miles and tap two million flowers—and a productive hive can make up to two pounds of honey a day. Bees have a highly developed language that allows them to communicate to each other the distance, direction, quality and quantity of a new nectar source—and, amazingly, it’s all done through a dance (scientist Karl von Frisch won a Nobel Prize for figuring that one out).
But
it is the intricate society of the hive that has most deeply intrigued
humans. Bees work together seamlessly to support their colony—gathering
nectar, building and sealing honeycomb, raising young bees, attending
the queen—and the hive has long been seen as a social model that
could, as Shakespeare put it, "teach the act of order to a peopled
kingdom."
Unique nectar sources give Hawaiian honey an edge in the gourmet foods market. Richard Spiegel, who produces his organic white honey from a hundred hives on a 1,000-acre kiawe forest in South Kohala, is currently Hawaii’s most successful high-end honey-maker.
Spiegel’s
home, and the office of his VOLCANO ISLAND HONEY COMPANY, are in the
highlands of the north end of the Big Island, where one-lane roads lined
with eucalyptus trees wind past small farms, and the feeling is more
Mendocino than Hawaii. It’s harvest time when I arrive to see Spiegel,
and honey-filled frames have been removed from the hives and trucked
in from the forest. In the company’s processing room, a crew straight
from the pages of the Whole Earth Catalog is at work, led by Spiegel,
a gray-bearded beekeeper who reminds me of The Lord of the Rings’ wizard
Gandalf.
The small, screened processing room barely accommodates the simple machinery
and the crew. A few disconsolate bees hover around the frames, which are
stacked next to a machine that strips the sealing wax covering the honeycombs.
The frames are then loaded on a central piston in a large vat. When the
piston and frames spin, the centrifugal force pulls the honey from the
comb.
From the extractor, the honey runs through a pipe and drips slowly through
nylon mesh into a holding tank. "We strain out only the large particles,
so we don’t lose the enzymes," Spiegel says. "Honey should
be a ‘live’ food. From here, it goes directly into the jar."
He offers me a creamy teaspoonful. It is unlike any honey I’ve ever
tasted—buttery and smooth, and the aftertaste, instead of being
fruity or flowery, is a little like fresh-baked bread. It’s delicious.
In Spiegel’s living room, he and I indulge in a ’60s nostalgia fest, comparing days when we both, armed with How To manuals, lived in the backwoods in two different regions of the West. Spiegel had been a practicing lawyer in D.C. in 1970, when he was struck with what the French tartly call nostalgie de la boue (literally "a hankering for mud"): a desire to live a pared-down life close to the land. He came to Hawaii in 1977 to heal after a serious accident with a chainsaw and fell into beekeeping company while running the West Hawaii Mediation Center. After his wife died, he turned to beekeeping in a serious way. Although his honey now graces the shelves of swanky stores in New York City, Spiegel is determined to keep his company small. A proponent of the artisan approach, he is determined to keep producing honey in a way that is, he says, "in keeping with what the ancients saw it as: a gift from the gods."