Payson Farmers Market co-founder goes on a bee-autiful adventure

"Nature is amazing, bees are fascinating, the honey from Sunflower Honey is delicious and it's worth way more than we pay." 

By John Roethlein

I may be one of the luckiest people around. As a Co-Founder of the Payson Farmers Market I get to hang out with great people, and eat delicious fresh food.. Recently I had an opportunity for adventure with David Jones, one of our vendors and the beekeeper for Sunflower Honey.

I was lucky enough to spend the evening working with David inspecting and maintaining his beehives, also known as Apiaries near Gisela. What a fantastic experience. Dressing in long pants, shirts, heavy socks, boots and hats we donned coveralls, velcroed and taped closed any openings bees could enter, and went to work. It was a balmy 95 degrees but the sun was setting so at least it was cooling down.

According to Wikipedia wild beekeeping started around 13,000 BC with domestic beekeeping as we know it today starting sometime after that.  On the wall of the Egyptian sun temple of Nyuserre Ini there are pictures from before 2422 BC showing workers blowing smoke into hives as they are removing the honeycombs. So joining our ancestors I blew smoke into my first hive, driving the bees inside so we could work. Opening the lid we were stunned to see the hive was dead. The queen was gone and so were the workers and drones. The only thing remaining were Honey Moths, who it turns out enter the hive, lay eggs which hatch then eat everything, killing the hive.

Moving on, we checked hive after hive and fortunately no others were dead. They were in various levels of growth, from small hives, where laying eggs, and raising enough workers to produce honey was the priority, to large hives so full we added a layer of boxes on top to make room. Beehives are complete little factories, where everyone is born, lives, eats, works and dies. They are born and live in the lower boxes and honey production is done upstairs. It’s a self-contained system where life and death is based on genetics, the strength of the hive to repel invaders like the Honey Moth and access to flowers and other pollen producing plants so they can make enough food. Every hive is different and some thrive and some do not.

I certainly learned a lot about bees and I only scratched the surface. But I can say this for sure. Nature is amazing, bees are fascinating, the honey from Sunflower Honey is delicious and it’s worth way more than we pay.

Thanks David for letting me work with you and see you at the market!