Interview with Jen from Hani Honey
Interview with Jennifer Holmes of Hani Honey
Q: How did you start beekeeping?
A: I started beekeeping about 15 years ago. My husband and I were both interested in beekeeping, and he got me a lesson at a commercial beekeeping operation here in Hobe Sound. It’s a really beautiful piece of land, untouched and undeveloped, 30 acres of Florida Sand Pine Scrub. I went out there and took a lesson, and loved it immediately. I took another lesson, and then I offered to help out at the operation. They let me volunteer, and I was hooked. Then Chris, my husband, started taking lessons, and he got hooked as well.
Q: Where did the name Hani Honey come from?
A: Hani means honey in a form of english. In Arabic it means happy, and in Hawaiian it means to move lightly and to touch. I thought it sounded like a nice synonym for honey.
Q: What is your favorite part of your job?
A: I like so much about being a beekeeper, it would be hard to list only one thing!
Education is a big one for me. Sharing beekeeping with those that have never been near honeybees and bringing bees to an event where I can show people how incredible they are is really exciting. I enjoy taking people out to a bee yard when they want to learn how to be a beekeeper. I think my favorite thing is actually working with the bees, though, because it’s very fulfilling and relaxing, being in nature. The bees themselves are just amazing. I love working with honey, beeswax, and all of the products the bees produce.
Q: What are some health benefits of honey and other bee products?
A: Honey has been historically revered by human cultures.Throughout history, people have been using honey as a natural remedy to improve overall health. People say that the components found in honey are soothing to the digestive system and the mucosa lining. Honey contains everything that the plants secrete in their nectar, so if it’s a mint you can only imagine some of the menthol and other components that would be in the honey. Like essential oils can be healthy for us, through inhalation, digestion, or topical use, honey may provide similar benefits. Honey is loaded with antioxidants. Being a complex sugar, honey provides nutritional benefits that simple sugars lack. is constructed of amino acids, so if the pollen is not filtered out of the honey, you’re even getting some form of protein!
Q: What is bee bread?
A: Bee bread is pollen mixed with nectar. Bees collect pollen, and mix the pollen with nectar to create a food for bee larvae. The final product is rich in enzymes and probiotics, but is not shelf stable.
Q: What about bee pollen?
A: The pollen you see in a supermarket or health food store usually looks like little granules. That pollen is collected from the bees’ legs when they come back to the hive. The bees squeeze through a little device that pulls the pollen off their legs and drops it into a collection box below. This pollen is dry because it has not been masticated with the nectar by the bees, therefore it is shelf stable.
Q: Which pollen do you sell?
A: We use the bee bread in our raw creamed honey, and we do sell dried pollen granules because they’re shelf stable.
Q: What products do you sell at JAR?
A: JAR sells all of our infusions, including chocolate honey, and our raw honey with pollen. JAR also sells beeswax, beeswax wraps, and candle products.
Q: Are there positive environmental impacts of beekeeping?
A: Bees have been on the planet longer than us, so they have had a role in the balance of nature and the environment longer than we have. I know they have been adapting, because they have been experiencing more traceable and identifiable diseases that animals have not had in the past.
Their environmental impact could be greater if they were not suffering from these issues.
Bees have been genetically adapting, so a good beekeeping stewardship program would allow different species to interact naturally in our environment without forcing them to produce product. We keep hives that we don’t do anything with. The bees move into the equipment, live there, and leave on their own terms. By allowing bees to reproduce naturally, we feel that we are contributing to their survival.
Q: Are there negative impacts of beekeeping?
A: There are millions of varieties of berries, greens, and other plant foods, but humans only eat two or three varieties of each. In order to pollinate food crops that we enjoy, and because we grow crops in such vast acreage, bees have to be moved around a lot. This in itself is unsustainable due to emissions and pesticide usage. Usually the beekeeper needs to evaluate, is this a good practice or not? We’re not judgemental, we think any farming practice deserves the journey of finding their path, and beekeeping is the same. We’ve been working hard to find our way and what we feel is the right thing to do with bees in our business. Honey is a great food, but it’s not infinite. It should be revered. We should recognize that honey is not as easy to produce as it used to be. For example, 10-15 years ago one colony of bees could make around 120 lb of orange blossom honey here when the citrus was blooming, but because of all the difficulties with the trees, climate change, and bee health, sometimes we make none and sometimes we make 10 or 20 lb a hive. If you think about that from the farming perspective, you might think a beekeeper would quit or go out of business. Instead, they start diversifying and finding other opportunities like pollination, selling bees, education, or anything they can do other than honey production. In the future, that may mean that we do not manipulate our hives to produce honey.
Q: What is the most humane way to beekeep?
A: The most humane way to beekeep is to observe the bees naturally without disturbing them. This is hard to do and not every state allows that. Because of diseases that bees have contracted, we have a law here in FL where every frame of the hives we keep has to be inspectable and we are required to have a permit. Naturally, if a bee wanted to live in a tree, I wouldn’t be able to keep that hive and consider it mine because the frames are not inspectable. For me, however, that would be the most noninvasive way to beekeep. Cultures all throughout history would occasionally get honey from bees. So all throughout time, people would climb cliffs or climb trees, use a little smoke, and then just take a little honey, shake the bees off the comb, and leave. To me that’s pretty humane. We try to imitate that in our beekeeping practice. We let the bees be as naturally as we can, we are gentle when we handle them, and we only take what we think won’t deplete them of the nutrition that they need. That’s about as humane as it could be, in the practice as it stands now, without taking any honey at all.
Q: Are there any practices that you disagree with, or consider inhumane?
A: We’re just a couple of people, and Hani Honey is a family business. If our business starts to grow larger than is comfortable for our family, we have to start raising more bees and hiring people. At some point it gets so big that maybe we’re not able to oversee each operation, and I would be concerned if I was unable to make sure everyone was handling the bees the same way we would want. We’re not judgemental, but when we see companies grow large, we feel like the quality and the care might be compromised. I think that’s easy to say for any form of agriculture. I do occasionally see a company that really maintains integrity through and through, and gets really big, but it’s hard to do. That would be my concern. I’ve seen a lot of large scale beekeeping operations, and they have to move very fast, so a lot of bees get hurt. We try very hard to be very mindful and not hurt any bees, and just take what we need. We know a lot of nice beekeepers, and it’s good when people can get connected with their food and support practices they believe in.
Q:What is the most profitable and /or marketable bee product for you?
A: Although we primarily deal with honey, we’ve started shifting. If you looked at a pie, honey was almost 100% in our profitable range for a really long time. Today a little piece of the pie is bee sales, so we actually sell bees and queen bees. I’m getting more into education as well. I’ll go out and talk for free any day any time if i can, and I’m still making enough to earn a living. I give as much time as I can. There are occasions when others ask if they can learn to be beekeepers and I tell them my rate and they say sure, so now that’s part of the pie. Workshops, classes, It’s starting to even out where it’s not as much honey. Honey is still a big part of it, but those other aspects are starting to grow, which makes me happy.
Q: What are some threats to bees? Globally and locally.
A: Climate change on a global scale is affecting beekeepers all over the world. We’ve talked to beekeepers from places that have had drought for years, and haven’t had a drop of honey, and it’s changed their entire farming practice. In Florida, we’ve had a lot of weather pattern changes as well. Parts of the state that don’t normally get hurricanes have had hurricanes, and here in Martin County we’ve also had two or three years where we had hurricane threats. Not a full hurricane, but enough wind and flooding that the trees got stressed, so then there wasn’t any food for the bees for a period of time. If that’s an effect of climate change or global warming, I would say that’s a threat. There is predation, so some of the invasive lizards are actually sitting outside the hives and chomping down on the bees. North Florida has a bear population, so they have to be mindful of the bears, because the bears are crowded out due to development, and they’re hungry too. I’d say our wildlife is also struggling for balance, and there are predators and honey is delicious. Apparently so are the bees. Some animals are not affected by their stingers. And then the diseases that we talked about. There are fungi, viruses, bacteria bothering bees just as much as humans and other animals.
Q: What is the importance of bees and pollinators?
A: Think of a cucumber. Have you ever seen a cucumber that is small on one end and big on the other? Predominantly, that’s a result of not enough visits to the flower before fruit set. So the bee usually has to visit the flower a certain number of times for the pollination to be complete. A blueberry is approximately 15 visits for a big plump blueberry sweet with seeds. It’s pretty important. Cucumbers, watermelons, they wouldn’t form all the way to size or with seeds without pollination. Some crops are dependent on pollinators for the fruit to even set. And then on top of that, it’s proven that they improve and increase the yield on things that aren’t dependent.
Q: How can we support pollinators?
A: To support pollinators, find out what grows really well in your area, a plant that any pollinator would like - native or otherwise. Butterfly, bat, moth, bird, bee, it doesn’t matter. And try to plant things that don’t require a lot of maintenance. I usually recommend native plants, , but I don’t like to limit people there because I want people to feel like it’s achievable. Do what works for you, but I highly recommend the natives because they don’t usually require a lot of water or nutrients, and they just handle our heat and humidity. There are lots of resources, like the Florida native plant society. UF has a whole website just about plants in Florida, and it’s pretty extensive. Be sure to plant things that bloom at different times of the year too, things that are quick growing and slow growing. Have a lot of diversity, plant wise and time wise.
Q: We don’t mow our yard very often, so we have tiny white flowers that bees seem to love. Are you familiar with those flowers, and are they good for the bees?
A: That flower is Richardia Brasiliensis, and the bees do like them. Richardia will resist mowing, so some of the flowers will remain even if you mow. You can just set the blade a little high. I would encourage people to try to let those beautiful flowers stay in their lawn and not worry about just having ornamental grass that doesn’t flower. When the bees are using that particular flower, that means they’re pretty hungry. That means there’s not a lot available, because they don’t really want to utilize a flower here, a flower there...or you have an abundance of it in your yard. There’s a mimosa that’s like that too, it makes a little pink puff flower. It’s called mimosa strigillosa, and it makes a nice blanket that your feet love. It’s really soft and it will take over your lawn. It’s a good one! Everybody should have that in their yard.
Q: Describe a day in the life of a beekeeper.
A: Beekeeping is nice, and a lot of people may not realize it but it’s just like the fruit here on my plate. I have to farm the product, so I have to take care of the livestock, and then I have to harvest the honey they make, and then I get to package it, sell it, deliver it. So I get to wear 10 different hats. I’m the farmer all the way to the person you meet at the store selling you the honey. That’s a day in the life for us, because we handle every aspect of our operation. For some beekeepers, they do a lot of beekeeping but they don’t sell honey, so they’re out in the field all day everyday and they don’t really interact with people, they just hang out with the bees. We enjoy all the aspects, so we have a little bit more of a diversity in our day to day. I do a lot of traveling because I deliver all of our products directly to the stores that we sell to unless I’m shipping them. So I get to meet a lot of people, which is cool because I can talk to them about honey bees. My favorite part is working with the bees!
Questions from 4th graders:
Q: Have you ever been stung?
A: Oh my gosh! More times than I can count. But I don’t get stung a lot! I go out beekeeping just like you see me here in a t-shirt, and I wear a tank top in the heat of the summer. The bees are extremely easy to work with when there’s a lot of food available, they’re very docile because they’re interested in the food and not me. Slow, quiet and gentle movements. If I bump into them or drop something, it riles them. Other than that, they’re not too difficult! When they’re hungry, or sick, or there’s bad weather, or they’re being predated, like say there’s ants bothering them, they might be cranky. If there’s no food, they might be cranky. Then, I either put my jacket on or come another day.
Q: What is it like taking care of hundreds of bees?
A: It makes you feel like you’re a mom and you have a lot of children. It really does! It makes you feel like you have a lot of important things to take care of.
Q: How hard is it to harvest honey?
A: It’s a lot of fun, but it’s really hard! Every frame of honey we pick up out of the hive weighs 8-10 lbs, so the whole box weighs 60-80 lbs, and sometimes when we harvest honey we have 40 of those. And we do it all by hand. We shake the bees and gently brush the bees off every frame, load ‘em up, bring ‘em home, uncap every single frame with a knife, and then spin it out in our extractor, and then pack it all and store it all until it’s time to sell it. Days and days of work just for one harvest.
Q: How much does one harvest yield?
A: It depends. Some hives will make a full box, and that’s about 60 lbs, so that’s good. We are always hopeful for more, but until there’s more forage, and the bees are healthier, that is about it. The bees’ health is going to determine what they can collect. If they’re not well enough to fly, and they don’t have the energy, or they can’t remember where to go because of something disrupting their neurological functions, honey production will be lower.