Health & Fitness
Beekeeping Adventure Brings Honey Harvest at Homeward Bound
With help from Marin Bee Co., Homeward Bound this week collected a second harvest from its Novato hives. Look for our "Bee Home" local honey on sale soon!
The industrious culinary students at Fresh Starts Culinary Academy usually buzz with activity, but we also have real worker bees in three hives supervised pro bono by the Marin Bee Co.
They showed us what comes of their daily activities this week when we drew out a a bounty of all-natural, local Novato honey that will be bottled for sale at this weekend’s Hamilton Arts & Crafts Fair and other Marin events.
The adventure began in spring 2011, when the Kitze family in Tiburon sponsored our first hive with Marin Bee Co. Installed next to our citrus grove and near the produce garden at New Beginnings Center, the colony grew and we harvested three dozen jars of honey.
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Then the hive collapsed, falling victim to the varroa mite that has devastated bee colonies throughout the region. With Marin Bee Co. encouragement, Homeward Bound of Marin purchased two hives last spring.
Their expertise has been vital to shepherding the bees and beekeepers among our staff members, a task that comes naturally to the husband-and-wife team of Debra and Bill Tomaszewski. They started Marin Bee Co. while living in Kentfield to service backyard beekeepers but have evolved to focus on education aimed at “Changing the world, one bee at a time.”
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They supervise hives at Google and Intel in Silicon Valley as well as Whole Foods Market in Novato, where they offer free monthly workshops. Marin Bee Co. also has launched beekeeping at Kent and Davidson middle schools with on-site hives and student workshops.
“For the first couple of years, we thought we'd just be offering beekeeping services,” Debra says. “Now we still do coaching and rescue swarms, but we’re turning more toward education and a philanthropic focus.”
She’s developing a line of organic honey-based skin care products for sale, intending the revenues will fuel the charitable and education efforts.
Homeward Bound directors and culinary students gathered this week to assist and applaud the harvest, scraping wax off the frames to uncap the honeycomb and setting them into the Marin Bee Co. machine to spin out the honey.
This week’s harvest indicates the adventure will continue, with more than 5 gallons collected. Look for our “Bee Home” local honey on sale soon!
