A Buzz at Farmers Market's Final Week: Island Apiaries

Two little girls, riveted by the sight of Island Apiaries' sealed Plexiglas and wood bee hive, pause in their barrage of questions when owner David Neal gets them to stop tapping the front of the hive long enough to notice the bees making honey and sealing it off in the honeycomb.

“Now there’s honey in there, but there used to be bee larva in those areas,” he explains. “The queen bee is slowing down for the winter, so she doesn’t need to lay eggs for more workers, so now the bees are storing honey as food for the winter.”

Educating children and adults about beekeeping and honey comes naturally to Neel, whose Whidbey Island-based business, Island Apiaries, sells honey, wax candles and bees for plant pollination at the Mercer Island Farmers Market each Sunday through October 9. Neal was a Headstart and behavioral disorder elementary school teacher in Tacoma for 15 years.

“I started helping my uncle keep bees when I was 6 years old, with my own little bee suit and everything,” said Neel. “Four years ago I decided I’d had enough of teaching, and because I have an understanding wife, she let me pursue my dreams to become a commercial beekeeper, and I’ve been buying hives from retiring beekeepers to grow the business ever since.” 

Neel started with only 20 hives inherited from his uncle, and has currently kept 515 hives going full tilt, producing 12 types of honey and 7 ‘flavor infused’ honeys, in addition to dozens of beeswax candles in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some of the most popular flavors include blackberry, raspberry, fireweed, sunflower, carrots, pumpkin, buckwheat and lavender. Neel infuses honey with flavors like chamomile and coffee by putting blossoms or beans in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket, and then pouring honey over it and letting it sit for 9 months to a year, when he strains the infused honey and jars it.

“For general purposes I like blackberry honey,” Neel said to a customer query of which honey her favors. “If I want a sweeter honey for tea, I’d go with raspberry because its thinner but sweeter, and buckwheat is best for baking and spreading on toast because it tastes like molasses mixed with coffee.”

Though he’s only had a problem once with his Plexiglas-sided hive being knocked over by a child with a stick, (no bees escaped or were harmed) Neel said he feels strongly that customer education is an important part of his job. “Getting bees out where people can see them is not just a draw for kids, it’s a valuable tool in educating people about bees and destroying the myths that people have about them,” he said. “For example, honeybees will leave most people alone; people who have been stung are almost always stung by wasps (yellow jackets), because honeybees know that if they sting you, they’ll die, whereas wasps can sting you over and over.”

A customer queries Neel with a common question about why honeybees are reported as dying in droves all over the United States.

“The reality is that every region in the US has its own set of issues. Our problem here in the NW is a mite and a type of bacteria that can stress bees, and there’s a shallow genetic base to honeybees in the US because of a government ban on importing bee stock since 1922, so inbred populations are weak,” Neel noted. “I have a friend (who is an expert in bee genetics) whom I’ve gotten queen bees from with new genetics that perform amazingly well.”

All of Neel's jars are labeled “raw honey” because he doesn’t heat his honey so that it will stay liquid, as stores do. “Stores overheat honey so it won’t crystallize, which is its natural state,” he said. “I let people know that you can use it that way, because that is the way most of the world uses honey.”

But the most important thing for a budding beekeeper to know, Neel notes, isn’t about honey at all. “All beekeepers need understanding spouses,” he laughs.