Living in a tight-knit community, my food and I have developed a connection that runs deeper than a grocery store transaction. At a local-food-only potluck down the street I tried homemade sprouted grain bread for the first time. I used to get backyard cherry wine from an artist friend who lives only a few blocks from my house, which borders Fernwood and Oaklands. Up the street and over a smidge lives another friend, a fisherman and university student from whom I have bought halibut and tuna. I often stop to get dark, seedy bread from a friend who plants organic gardens and works in a bakery. But in my cellar lives the most sacred item of all: a bottle of mead collected before the bee colonies started collapsing. I got it from the “B-man” at the top of the hill.

Man behind the mesh

John Defayette is the man behind B’s Honey and the proud keeper of seven hives. The bees live in his backyard, near a cherry tree with some string-suspended suet hanging from a branch to lure the birds. He’s been retired for 25 years, which helped him turn his preoccupation with beekeeping into a full-time hobby.

Though Defayette is 80, don’t let his white hair fool you. “You’re always learning,” he says. The gleam in his eye is a playful one — it belongs to someone who is amazed at the complexity of even the simplest things. He holds up a frame from one of his hives, a pruned finger pointing at the honeycomb.

“You and I could never make — least I couldn’t — cells like that consistently,” he says, revelling at the bees’ mathematical accuracy.

It is hard not to be intrigued by the work of the honeybee. According to the Canadian Honey Council, bees pollinate one-third of our food crops. The estimated value of this pollination is $782 million. Think apples, blueberries, canola, pumpkins, pears, cucumbers and many other plants we consume daily.

For Defayette, it all started just five sweet years ago. He was travelling with his wife Eloise and son Chris in the Yucatan Peninsula on the southern tip of Mexico. His other son, John, had suggested he take up beekeeping in the past, but it wasn’t until he found an illustrated book on the topic at a mercado that he truly became interested. On the drive from Merida to Cancun, they stopped in a small town and he purchased some beekeeping supplies. The events fell into place when he met Lorraine Munro of the Capital Region Beekeepers Association on the return trip home. He joined the club and has been keeping bees ever since, selling his products under the name of B’s Honey.

Basement beekeeping

I visited Defayette several times over the past few years, after signing onto a mead contact list at an unoccupied winter market table in 2006. I first met him in my apartment lobby, after he offered to deliver some of his mead. I was sick at the time, and he had warned that I should wait until my cold was gone before cracking the mead. But he offered me a small taster of honey, told me to eat it until I was better. I’ve never been much of a honey person, but I brought the honey inside my apartment and dipped into it with a spoon. It was different than any honey I had ever tasted. It wasn’t simply a sugar: it was a whole garden’s worth of flavours. Sweet hints of crocus and heather bloomed in my mouth. A few days later, I was feeling much better; the honey was gone and I was officially hooked.

My subsequent visits to Defayette’s house always included a hint of whimsy. On a recent visit, I wandered into the backyard and passed by yellow caution signs warning me I was in a honeybee yard. Defayette appeared, in brown cords and a plaid shirt (never have I seen him in a white apiarist suit). With a high giggle — the kind you would expect from a mischievous elf — he led me into his basement. The soft light of a hanging bulb greeted me, along with a familiar smell. He handed me a short white straw; I plunked it in the jar of honey, then in my mouth. Together, we sampled all the honeys he had at the time, then sampled the mead.

Depending on the time of year, the honeys range from light, to medium, to dark, then maybe there’d be a waxier strain. They are always different. I remember one particular brand of light front-yard honey that was much fruitier than other batches. Defayette simply shrugged his shoulders and said, “Who knows where they go?” The clover in Stadacona Park across the street is one likely destination. But like me, the bees have just over a two-kilometre radius of land they cover to collect their precious goods — pollen and resin in their case.

Local buzz

Defayette, the bees and I live in a unique part of Victoria. Just northeast of downtown, Fernwood is a happening place, home to a strong community of artists and environmentally conscious individuals. In Fernwood Square you can find the Belfry Theatre, and just down the street is an art gallery, as well as a community garden with an herb spiral and cob oven. Some days, in the Victoria High School field beside the square, people practice spinning fire poi and fighting with wooden swords. The community newspaper The Village Vibe comes out once a month. My heart lives on Haultain Street, a major artery for bike traffic. Across the street from the Koffi shop is the Ministry of Casual Living — an art space that plays on modern voyeurism. It consists of a small room that people can see through a large street-level window. Exhibits range from an estimated life-sized Sasquatch made from real fur and shark teeth to the movie Back to the Future being played in chronological order.

In all the excitement, and with all the yards to visit, it’s a wonder the bees find their way back home at all. But they are diligent workers; they collect the resins and pollens — fruits of the season — and bring them back to their queen. Most of the time.

In the U.S., the end of 2006 saw unprecedented bee losses. Some of these losses were due to mite infestations and exposure to pesticides. But worker bees were also abandoning their queens and hives, leaving the pupae to fend for themselves and baffling beekeepers everywhere. This came to be known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which has become a recurring problem in the States. A survey commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA) and the USDA-ARS Beltsville Honey Bee Lab last year showed that 36 per cent of bee colonies died, over a 13 per cent increase from 2007. There is no single clear cause for this phenomenon, and at least 71 per cent of the dead colonies showed no signs of CCD.

The problem has surfaced in Canada, but with different symptoms. According to the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists (CAPA), last year the number of colony deaths over winter and colony dwindling over spring more than doubled from 2007. B.C. had the second-highest provincial colony death rate of 38 per cent of winter colonies, surpassed only by Alberta’s death rate of 44 per cent. Vancouver Island lost 43 per cent of overwintered colonies. CAPA suggests deaths are caused by a prevalence of Varroa mites, whose feeding patterns not only cause bee losses, but also make bees susceptible to viruses. Other culprits include a couple of species of Nosema parasites, which are hard to diagnose and treat.

The need for mead

Two little glass sherry tasters sat atop the centrifuge — a large white tank that spins the frames around to extract the honey. The honey would fall to a tap on the bottom of the machine. A white pail sat below the tap. A sieve rested above it to catch the particles, and strain out the bee parts and some of the pollen. Defayette’s basement had a candied odour, with a tinge of sour. A jar of apple cider was quietly fermenting in the corner by the door.

Defayette smiled at me from under a newsboy cap. He poured us some mead with a glimmer in his eye. Little stars bumped around in my stomach as I tried to contain my mirth. This time our tasting wouldn’t just be from the new batch. I pulled out the small green glass bottle I brought with me; it was smaller than a Chinese eggplant. He located two more sherry glasses and I poured from my bottle. The liquid was a bit darker than the recent batch. We sniffed.

Earlier that day, I had opened the oldest bottle of mead I owned, saved from the second batch I obtained from Defayette. I had etched a “2” on the cork when I brought it home to remind myself. When I moved from my apartment to a room in a house, then switched rooms, it moved right along with me — from closet to closet to crawl space. Now, a couple of years after I had obtained it, I was ripping into that cork, waking the sweet golden liquid from its slumber. I funnelled some into a smaller bottle and stuck it in my purse.

A wild, complex aroma filled my nose. The old batch of mead smelled beautiful — strong, with a bittersweet finish. The recent batch smelled less and the aroma was more alcoholic. The difference in smells alone was like artisan wine to hooch. We sipped the older stuff, and I fell into a sweet fog of daffodils and dandelions. It started off sweet, but the flavour morphed after a moment. It seemed to use all my taste buds and had a strong, dry kick at the end that hung in my mouth. The newer wine was good, but mild — something you could sip on a warm summer day. The flavour didn’t mature in my mouth.

Defayette started making mead his second year in the honey business. The ancient beverage even pre-dates wine. It was a preferred drink in Ancient Greece, a staple in the mead halls of the Middle Ages. The basic recipe is honey, water and yeast; Defayette uses champagne yeast. Usually it takes four or five months to ferment, but the last couple of times he’s tried to make it, it’s taken a year or more.

“Some change is happening with the honey, something with the pollen,” Defayette told me. “There’s something, I don’t know what.”

In the winter of 2007, Defayette lost five out of seven of his hives. He tried to make mead with all the extra honey he had, but it wasn’t working.

“What was I doing different? The yeast was the same, the water was the same; it had to be the honey. And we have the proof now,” he said, pointing at our mead tasters. “Between this batch and the last batch, you can tell the difference — it’s amazing, is what it is.”

Nature’s wonder drugs

As a retired Ottawa college professor of marketing and management, Defayette recognizes the value of his products. He sells beeswax for candles, honeycomb, pollen (which sells out quickly), raw, unpasteurized honey and propolis. Honey is not only tasty; it also works as an antiseptic for infected wounds. Bee pollen is considered a wonder food by the health food community because it is very high in protein. It contains 18 amino acids as well as a long list of vitamins and minerals such as vitamin B complex and iron. But that’s not all. Defayette says if you consider pollen, wax and honey in terms of what a human needs to survive, “you’ve got three of the most important elements of life: the protein, the fat and the carbohydrate.”

Although less marketable, bee stings even have their benefits, as they produce cortisol in the lymphatic system, which treats Defayette’s arthritis. Bee venom is also a known treatment for Multiple Sclerosis (MS).

Defayette holds out his right hand; his pinkie finger looks stiff and a little red.

“Doctor said it [the arthritis] was going to be worse, but it’s not,” he says. “But I need a sting for the spring.”

His favourite product is propolis. “Bee glue,” as he calls it, is made from resin collected by the bees, and is used to cement the frames together in the hive. It’s also useful for humans in ways one wouldn’t expect, such as treating colds, mouth sores, gingivitis and wounds. It has anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal and anti-oxidant properties.

“There are very few products that have all four of those things,” says Defayette.

It is a bit sweet, but mostly bitter, with pure booze as its carrier. I squeeze out a drop above my open mouth. The tincture makes the tip of my tongue twitch. Alcohol tangs my mouth. The aftertaste hangs like a sharp note in my throat.

In 2007, Defayette self-published a book entitled B’s Honey — Using Bee Products for a Natural Lifestyle. In it, he provides recipes for hand cream, honey soap, lip balm and other useful household products. There are also sweet and savoury recipes like honey orange squares and roast honey pork. He mentions uses for pollen, like putting some in your shampoo or making a dandruff rinse, and gives instructions on how to make a propolis tincture.

Knowing the market

When Defayette first started producing honey he had nowhere to sell it, so he made mead instead with a recipe he obtained from John A. MacDonald. MacDonald, a local legendary bee lover who sold honey at Moss Street Market, granted Defayette permission to sell honey at the Moss Street Winter Market. MacDonald died the following year, and Defayette took over his spot at the market as honey successor. But Defayette isn’t exclusive.

“I’ll go wherever there’s a market — I’m a market manager,” he says, laughing.

B’s Honey is named after his granddaughter, Bea. Defayette thinks it’s perfect, marketing-wise. Defayette says he used to strain his honey several times to achieve a uniform, medium-light coloured honey, but then the clientele changed.

“It used to be I did everything the same,” Defayette says. “But I don’t do that anymore because people now know the difference between honey.”

He compares it to cheese.

“It’s just the difference between old and extra old,” he says. “Or, if you like blue cheese, then you’d know that the darker the strain in there, the better the cheese ... Most things are like that: the product is good, better and best.”

Defayette sells me a jar of the honey equivalent to extra-aged cheddar: a deep brown substance with a flavour that instils a heavy bliss. A thick mix of syrupy pollen curls around the base of the straw when I dip. I raise it to my mouth, let the dark glob dissolve on my tongue. It’s the taste of a season in a second — of dark early evenings, of fog and rain, thick down blankets, tea. It’s a sweet blend of aster, golden rod and nasturtium — the winter flowers have long since fallen back to the ground, but the bees keep their memory stored safe in their hives. Until something in the hive falters, and the bees’ flawless organization somehow breaks down.

A sting to the bees

Defayette lost another hive this past winter, which is where this dark honey came from.

“I call myself a naturalist,” he says.

Some beekeepers use sugar water to feed the bees and collect as much honey as they can. Instead, Defayette keeps the honey in the hives for the bees to live off of over the winter, and collects the leftover honey in the spring — if there is any. This year, the bees didn’t come out until mid-March, which is late for them.

“There are a number of factors that [show] we’re losing bees, and a big one is climatic conditions,” says Defayette.

The Beekeeper’s Association takes the bees out to various locations to get different pollen sources. One of these places is the Sooke Hills, where there is ample fireweed.

“Last year,” Defayette says, “there was still snow — cold up there ... this was in July.”

He also said wasps are invading the hives and killing the bees.

The third cause of honeybee deaths that CAPA suggests is a sobering one: starvation, plain and simple. Inadequate nectar flows on Vancouver Island and other locations have made it so that bees can’t get the nectar they need to survive the winter.

Defayette has taken measures to protect his bees from the elements. He created enough space to shelter five hives under his porch. This way, the bees aren’t exposed to cold winds. He also makes sure they have enough honey stored to last the long winters. But this also depends on how much honey they produce in the months before.

“If you’re fortunate, with good weather (you call yourself a farmer, because you’re always looking to see where the sun is) you’ll run into a good season,” he says.

Hope blooms

Defayette made a new batch of mead with the dark honey from his recently-fallen hive. Rather than taking a year to ferment, it was ready a few months later, its quality far surpassing the last batch.

The new mead’s intoxicating aroma is as complex as its flavour. But his latest creation is also fermenting: honey vinegar. He mixes honey with fermented organic apple cider and lets it turn to vinegar. Because of the mead’s slow fermentation, he thought a marketing change was in order.

“[I thought,] what am I going to do with all this extra honey?” he says. “And that’s why I started making honey vinegar — because you can’t sell all the honey you make.”

This is a startling realization: how is it that a small-time local beekeeper can’t sell all of his honey?

People buy generic factory honey, imported from China among other places.

Due to its seemingly scarce availability, some people may have never considered the idea of purchasing local honey, or those who have choose honeys easily found in the supermarket, like Babe’s brand of light fireweed honey from the 14-acre farm in Saanich. But if you’re interested in cultivating a two-kilometre diet like the bees, your local market is a good place to start.

As summer comes into bloom, so do the dogwoods and marigolds. Weather willing, the next batch of honey will taste of roses and apple blossoms.