BY: STEVEN THOMAS KENT

PHOTOS : STEPH HARDING

STEVEN THOMAS KENT: So this is a business that’s run in your family for a while, right?

JOHN EBERS: Yeah, it goes back four generations. My dad started [beekeeping] when he was 16, and he learned it from his cousin, who learned it from his grandfather.

STK: Did you always think you were going to get involved in it?

JE: No. When you’re growing up, your dad being a beekeeper is probably the worst job possible. Other kids, I mean, they’re not getting stung every day as a fourth or fifth grader.

But I mean, I think when you’re a kid, any type of labor where you’re not playing video games with your friends… Now, as an adult, I fully appreciate the fact that I had to work in the summers, even as a fifth grader. When you grow up on a farm and it’s a family business, everyone has to work.

STK: So at what point were you finally like, “All right, I give. Beekeeping it is.”

JE: I really started to appreciate beekeeping after I worked, we’ll call them menial jobs, where you’re like, “Man, there’s this whole HR policy about how I have to act?” I never had to deal with that when I was working with my dad. All of a sudden getting stung by bees doesn’t sound so bad when you’re working in a cubicle alley.

JE (opening up the bee colony): So you can see here, where the honey actually is… A bee only makes, I think, one tenth of a teaspoon in their lifetime. One capsule of honey in the hive takes a lot of bee hours.

STK: So they just spend a million hours making one drop, and then you just come in and take it from them, huh? And you never feel bad about that?

JE: Yeah, well, sometimes. Beekeepers are pretty mean. You give them a home and then you pretty much treat them like shit and take all their honey.

STK: You’re just working here in your bare arms, while I’m in the full radiation suit. You must feel pretty comfortable with the bees.

JE: Yeah, I mean, there are certain times of the year you don’t have to get your coveralls on. This is one of those times where, the weather… They’re happy. They get really calm, you don’t have to worry. They’re not gonna fly up at you.

In the spring, there’s usually this time between apples and… actually, the first nectar-producing flower, and I hope you include this in your article, it’s dandelions. And dandelions are actually a huge important factor for all pollinators, and the fact that people get rid of ‘em… They’re an important nectar source. Whenever my mom pulls dandelions, my dad yells at her, so there is kind of a joke there. Even in our family, we struggle to convince people.

STK: Which is important because bee population decline is a pretty serious problem, right? Has Michigan Bee been affected by those trends at all?

JE: We don’t think we’ve experienced what people technically call “colony collapse disorder.” You certainly have a lot of winter die-off, and there are always diseases… We see a lot of die-off in the winter. And that’s American foulbrood and Varroa [a bee disease and parasitic mite, respectively — Ed.], which have been around a long time. What they’re calling this colony collapse disorder, there’s a lot of theories out there, but the major one… There are some pretty nasty pesticides out there.

STK: So what’s the solution? We’re not just going to stop using pesticides overnight, so what happens next?

HIVE-MINDEDWhen I was a kid, I was terrified of bees. I’ve never been stung to this day, but I’ve always squirreled away a secret, irrational belief that when the fateful stab finally comes, I’ll swell up like a red-speckled balloon and vomit out my internal organs.

After researching this piece and going beekeeping with Michigan Bee Company’s John Ebers, though, I’m not afraid of bees anymore. In fact, if anything, I’m afraid of the catastrophic changes we’d experience if they disappear. Over the last several years, scientists and journalists have been sounding an ever-louder alarm over the severe population decline of American honeybees — precipitated by a mysterious and ominous-sounding phenomenon called “colony collapse disorder.”

Even with the backdrop of rising industry panic, though, going out with John Ebers and cracking open his colony crates doesn’t lead to a two-hour treatise on death and destruction. He still thinks American honeybees can recover and thrive with some research and careful breeding, and his bees haven’t been affected with any apocalyptic die-offs... so far. Plus, he’s pretty sure he’s got some of the best honey you’ll find among the Great Lakes.

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JE: It really is a serious issue. The University of Georgia, Michigan State and Cornell are the big research institutes, and they’re really starting to breed bees for genetic diversity, and I think that’s probably where we need to be. Just getting bees so they can, not so much withstand the pesticides, but so they can withstand some of these mites like Varroa... I think that’s going to be a bigger help to our industry, and then hopefully with the elimination of certain pesticides… because really, it comes down to the appropriate application.

Obviously I think pesticides would be great to eliminate, but they also provide us a lot of food. I mean, there is a reason for them. I’m not going to sit here and say we need to ban them all. If we did that, you probably wouldn’t see much food on your table all of a sudden.

STK: So what are some of the ramifications of bee decline, I mean, for the business side of the industry?

JE: Prices have increased, for sure. I mean, if you can grow bees, you can make some serious money. But I think what’s scary is, there are some beekeepers, and they’re bigger than us, but they’ve seen significant die-offs. And these aren’t people that just started beekeeping last week. They really know animal husbandry and they’re good beekeepers, and…

Imagine if I’d have brought you into this yard, and we opened these crates up and there’s nothing here. That’s really what it’s like. You have beekeepers that are good at this, and it’s their livelihood, and… It’d be similar to a cattle rancher walking out into his pasture and it’s just empty.

STK: Would you say it’s accurate, then, to say that beekeeping is kind of a high-risk, high-reward sort of an industry right now?

JE: I suppose. I think it’s like any commodities business. When it’s good it can be really good, and when it’s bad, it can be really bad.

STK: Do you worry a lot? I mean about your livelihood, your bees?

JE: I do. I think we can recover, though. I take Lake Erie in the ‘70s — and I only know this from the history books — but there have been ecosystems that have rebounded, as there have been species that have been able to rebound. I just hope that at this point in our civilization, we can replicate that with honey bees. It’s just… there’s some nasty stuff out there.

STK: But are you still happy to be doing this, even with all the pitfalls that are involved right now?

JE: I am. One of the things that I guess got me into the business was, my dad, we’ve always had people say to us that our honey is the best. And I always thought they were just being really nice because they were neighbors or family friends. Growing up, I never knew any difference, but later, you know, every now and then you’d try some honey from the store or whatever, and I’d say, man, this doesn’t taste anything like what we had growing up.

So I started talking to some of the local chefs, and some of them that didn’t know honey, said, ‘Well, what’s the difference? [Yours is]the same stuff we might get from Gordon Foods.’ And I said, ‘Well, give it a try.’ And people did notice a difference, and obviously I knew these guys weren’t just being polite.

So we kind of built our reputation around these places who bought our honey, like San Chez or the Six One Six. To have them say those things to me really said something. I was like… Maybe this was something they’ll want to use in their menu, and they do now.

Like at San Chez, it’s their fried goat cheese balls with jalapeño, and there’s also honey, and it’s our honey in that. Or the guys at Nantucket [Baking Company], they buy it for bread and also make their granola mix with it.

STK: That’s gotta be rewarding, to see your stuff going into local menus and know people are ordering it every day.

JE: Oh, definitely. This time of year, goldenrod, you know, most people don’t like it, but that’s a really good nectar source, and the honey is… We’ve had yards where most of it is goldenrod honey, and the chefs at San Chez, they love it. I brought them some and it’s a lot darker and I was a little worried, because most people think clearer honey is a little better for you, but it’s been proven that there’s more antioxidants in darker honey. So I brought it to the chefs at Sanchez and I was like, ‘If you don’t like it, I’m happy to take it back,’ but they were like.. ‘This is the chronic, man. The chronic of honey.’

STK: Yeah, I guess I never thought about it, but I guess the honey from different areas or types of plants would be…

JE: Yeah, it’s similar to… what is the term in wine — terroir, tenoir? [yep, terroir. — Ed.] It’s the geography of the land, and the effect it has on the taste. If you go to a farmer’s market in Tallahassee, they’ll have like an orange blossom honey; If you go out to Colorado, they’ll have a light, lemony honey. If you go out to Australia, they have this stuff called Månuka honey, or this other stuff called leather jack honey that’s supposed to be really good. I just watched a documentary on it.

STK: Any particular favorite honey region?

JE: Oh, well I like ours, of course. But just like as you travel now, if you can try a local honey, you’ll start to notice the differences.

JE: Alright, so… Anything else you guys want to ask about the colonies?

STEPH HARDING, RB photographer (chiming in): How do they make it through the winter?

JE: Well, most of them don’t.

STK: Don’t they also kick out all the men? I remember reading that they boot out all the drones.

JE: Yep. They kick out all the men. For about three months the men don’t have to do anything but procreate while the women feed them. It’s pretty much the best living possible. Then they get their asses kicked out for the winter.

STK: Brutal.

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