![]() In her role at UVM, Johnson provides technical assistance and applied research in partnership with Vermont farms and consults with them about when, where and what to plant to support pollination. When she returned to Vermont, Johnson started keeping bees of her own and selling honey on a small scale to a farm stand. ![]() “But actually working with them day in and day out like that made me think about it differently.” After that experience, she went to New Mexico State University, where she got a degree in horticulture. “I always had a lot of different types of interactions with the honeybee world,” she said. She lived on a farm in Paraguay, where she worked with honeybees. Johnson didn’t think about bees in the context of her own career until she started working for the Peace Corps. ![]() Beekeeping was her mom’s favorite hobby she’d spend many hours in the yard with her boxes of bees. Johnson’s interest in honeybees came from her childhood in Vermont's Upper Valley. They’re part of a sweet beekeeping tradition that dates to the 18th century. The state is also home to hundreds of part-timers and hobbyists. Munkres is one of Vermont’s 15 full-time beekeepers, or apiculturists. It’s full of strong, sweet flavor and much richer than any clear-colored generic brand you’d buy at the grocery store. The fresh honey is chewy - it still contains bits of raw honeycomb. Dark gold liquid oozes out of the box, ready to eat. It’s like a second stomach where they can store nectar.”Īfter returning the bee to the hive, Munkres swipes a tool that resembles a palette knife across the top of a waxy, sealed honeycomb. “See that, there?” he says, exposing the underside of the bee’s abdomen. Munkres reaches in to pick up one of the bees lightly between his fingers as calmly as moviegoers grab popcorn out of a bucket. A honey bee showing pollen collected on its hind legs, perched on a blue asterĮxtremely comfortable around the bees despite getting stung nearly every day, he brushes a few of them away with his bare hands.Then he lifts a box that looks like a filing cabinet with a beehive inside. When he goes out to check on the bees wearing his veil and coveralls, Munkres blows smoke into the hives to dilute the scent of pheromones, the substance bees excrete to communicate danger. Now he has more bees in his apiary than there are people in the state of Vermont. Munkres became interested in beekeeping 20 years ago, after he stopped raising livestock on his farm. That’s where Lemon Fair owner Andrew Munkres comes in. Their hard work fills the boxes in the apiary with hundreds of pounds of golden honey - far more than they would be able to consume themselves. The bees return to the hive with glistening stomachs full of nectar and balls of pollen attached to their tiny thighs like bright yellow saddlebags. Then they fly across the landscape and harvest nectar and pollen from a variety of trees and wildflowers. Thousands of them exit the apiary at Lemon Fair Honeyworks and pass the electric fence that keeps out bears. Shortly after the sun begins to rise in Cornwall, the bees get to work. Andrew Munkres inspecting a hive at Lemon Fair Honeyworks in Cornwall, Vt.
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