The Local Honey Social Network

Part of what draws people’s inter­est into Damian’s work is the unique qual­ity of his honey. By plac­ing bee­hives in dif­fer­ent neigh­bor­hoods and cities—25 hives so far—he has found that the hon­eys from each of these areas have com­pletely dif­fer­ent fla­vors, much like the char­ac­ter of a wine depends on the land and qual­i­ties of the area where its grapes are grown. Hence, local res­i­dents can shop for honey that orig­i­nated right in their own neighborhoods—and know the fla­vors will be unique to those areas.

“The social com­po­nent of what I do is edu­ca­tion and out­reach, and that’s really impor­tant,” Damian told Organic Connections. “The honey’s great, and peo­ple love to go to one of our local spe­cialty stores; they see it and say, ‘Wow! That’s honey from my neigh­bor­hood!’ They are really excited by it. So when I have an oppor­tu­nity to talk to peo­ple, they’re like, ‘This is inter­est­ing! Is what you do very dif­fer­ent?’ I say, ‘Yes, it’s dif­fer­ent.’ Then I start talk­ing about how bees for­age, and it inevitably leads into a con­ver­sa­tion about the prob­lems fac­ing bees. I explain about these larger issues; about how our agri­cul­tural sys­tem is bro­ken and we need to take a seri­ous look at that.”

Honey Varieties

Damian made his star­tling fla­vor dis­cov­ery sev­eral years ago. “A few years back I started with one hive,” he related. “I then ended up catch­ing swarms, which is some­thing a lot of bee­keep­ers do, so I wound up with more hives than I could actu­ally put in my back­yard. Some friends vol­un­teered to host one in their back­yard, and when har­vest came along, I har­vested some from their hive and some from mine. Our neigh­bor­hoods are about six or seven miles apart, and when I tasted the two hon­eys, they were com­pletely dif­fer­ent. Then I real­ized how much sense it made. Bees nor­mally for­age within roughly a two- to four-mile radius; so it fol­lows that if the for­age and the nec­tar they’re get­ting is dif­fer­ent in another area, then of course the honey’s going to be entirely dif­fer­ent. It’s totally at the mercy of what’s flowering.

“After that I started putting them in a vari­ety of neigh­bor­hoods to really test it out, and the next year it played out exactly as I thought: all the hon­eys were com­pletely different.”

Bees in the Backyard

Having peo­ple host hives in their yards adds another com­po­nent to edu­cat­ing oth­ers about bees. “Because of the way I host, I’m engag­ing a neigh­bor­hood,” Damian explained. “I’m cre­at­ing com­mu­ni­ties by plac­ing these hives in dif­fer­ent areas. It’s kind of cool; I’m exposed to some pretty fas­ci­nat­ing indi­vid­u­als, from super-normal folks to CEOs of com­pa­nies. This whole thing is just really an oppor­tu­nity to edu­cate them. It gives me the abil­ity to bring aware­ness and bring com­mu­nity together through some­thing as sim­ple as beekeeping.”

One might think that peo­ple would be a bit wary about hav­ing bee­hives in their back­yards; but Damian has found any such con­cerns eas­ily addressed, and fod­der for more edu­ca­tion. “Surprisingly enough, peo­ple are really into it,” he said. “We live in a unique spot in Portland, and urban gar­den­ing, grow­ing your own food and all that sort of thing is embraced with open arms. I’ve had a cou­ple of peo­ple with some neigh­bors who’ve been, ‘Ah, I don’t know . . .’ But you’ll find the more you edu­cate folks about the behav­ior of hon­ey­bees, the more they are fas­ci­nated by them and the more com­fort­able they become with them.

“Bees are very focused on their work. We have two dogs and a cat, and hang out in our back­yard all the time. Our backyard’s not that big, and there are a cou­ple of hives back there. We have bar­be­cues with people’s kids run­ning around, and there’s never been a prob­lem. If you don’t point them out to peo­ple, peo­ple don’t even real­ize they’re there. They have a par­tic­u­lar flight path they’re going to take in and out of that hive, and they’re not going to bother you. Once peo­ple see that and real­ize it, they’re kind
of amazed.”

Click any image above to see a larger version.

Bee Knowledge

Damian is draw­ing from a deep wealth of under­stand­ing of bees and how they live—knowledge that has brought him both to work with the Oregon State University hon­ey­bee lab and to be a men­tor for the Oregon State mas­ter bee­keep­ing pro­gram. This same knowl­edge is of course uti­lized in his car­ing for the bees.

“The main dif­fer­ence between me and com­mer­cial bee­keep­ers is that I’m not mov­ing the bees,” Damian pointed out. “When you’re mov­ing them, it causes a lot of stress on the colony. The other thing with com­mer­cial bee­keep­ers is it’s really impor­tant that their colonies are healthy and strong, which is good—but to do that they’ll use some pretty hard-core antibi­otics. They use them pro­phy­lac­ti­cally,* which, just like in human beings, starts cre­at­ing super­bugs or super-organisms that are resis­tant to fur­ther uses of the antibi­otics. Those antibi­otics will also kill ben­e­fi­cial organ­isms in the bee’s stom­ach that help absorb pro­teins. Instead of treat­ing that way, I try to let the bees man­age their own colony. They’ve been around for 6 million-plus years and pretty much know what they’re doing. So I look at my duty as being to help sup­port them and inter­vene when it’s necessary.”

In addi­tion, with an under­stand­ing of honey and how to best pro­duce it, Damian is able to bring together a supe­rior prod­uct. “Commercial bee­keep­ers sell the honey from their hives to big pack­ers, who just throw it all together, heat it up, fil­ter it, and make this homog­e­nized, sort of taste­less stuff that you find in the gro­cery stores in those honey bears,” Damian said. “I don’t heat it, because when you heat the honey it loses its fla­vor and you lose some of the nuance. I also don’t overly fil­ter it, because when you over­fil­ter it and pull all the pollen
out, you lose some of the health ben­e­fits
and again some of the fla­vor that makes it absolutely unique.”

Due to the suc­cess of Damian’s work with bees and honey, he was recently able to quit his “day job” and work full time on his pas­sion. Not sur­pris­ingly, that pas­sion is his future. “I’m soon to be fea­tured in a seg­ment for the Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, so that’s pretty excit­ing! I want to expand into new cities and I’m work­ing on that plan right now,” Damian con­cluded. “I’ve got a hive in San Francisco; I want to put more in Eugene and Olympia [Washington], and Austin is on my radar. Right now I have about 25 hives, and I am doing all the work myself. As I expand out to new cities, I’m def­i­nitely going to need peo­ple on the ground to help out.”

For more about Damian and his arti­san neigh­bor­hood honey, visit www.beelocal.com.

*pro­phy­lac­ti­cally: defend­ing or pro­tect­ing before­hand from dis­ease or infec­tion, as opposed to treat­ment after a dis­ease or infec­tion has already struck.