GARDINER — Kim Redmond and her helper, Maizie Tucker, 7, have no trouble attracting people to their table.
At Wild Birds Unlimited’s Earth Day fair Sunday, Maizie, who’s from Port Angeles, proffered free honey sticks and stickers that say “Honey I love u,” while Redmond handed out honey-lemon squares and tidbits of information about how honeybees get along.
Such as: There are three castes of honeybees in a colony. The one and only queen lives with thousands of workers — all female — and hundreds of drones, all male.
To make a pound of honey, honeybees visit about 2 million flowers.
And native honeybees aren’t aggressive by nature, Redmond promises. They will sting when protecting their hive or when provoked.
She should know. Redmond, whose Chimacum operation is the Bee-I-E-I-O Honey Farm, has six hives, and hopes to expand to 10 this year.
She takes her “observation hive” to classrooms around the North Olympic Peninsula. She’s also happy to conduct honey tastings to help people experience the differences — in scent, hue and flavor among buckwheat, fireweed and Tupelo honey.
Redmond also tempts tasters with bee-made elixir from Chimacum, of course, as well as with wildflower honey from Alaska and orange blossom honey from Florida.
The Florida stuff has “a heavenly, floral flavor,” she said.
“It’s totally different,” from, say, blackberry honey from the Pacific Northwest.
Beekeepers association
A kind of honeybee ambassador, Redmond started the East Jefferson Beekeepers Association, which has pollinated itself to more than 60 members, she said.
“Interest in beekeeping has taken a huge surge,” Redmond added.
More people are aware of the honeybee die-offs that have occurred across the nation and world — called Colony Collapse Disorder — and they’re doing something about the problem.
“For every third bite of food you take, you can thank a pollinator,” Redmond said.
That’s because bees pollinate fields and orchards of flowers, from apple blossoms, nuts, berries and vegetables to the alfalfa that cattle live on.
“Last year’s honey harvest was just terrible,” Redmond said.
Filled with optimism
This year, though, she’s filled with optimism, what with the budding beekeepers at work on the Peninsula.
Redmond encourages anyone interested in what she calls “the art-task-endeavor” of beekeeping to visit the Washington State Beekeepers Association Web site, www.WASBA.org, which has links to organizations in both Clallam and Jefferson counties.
“Be active in a group,” Redmond urged. “Whether it is to offer support or ask for help, it’s the best way to keep up with what’s going on in the world of honeybees.”
Anyone who would like to schedule a classroom session with the observation beehive or host a honey tasting, Redmond added, can phone her at 360-531-1970.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@ peninsuladailynews.com.