Honey bees, bumble bees and yes, even flies, are responsible for much of the local bounty celebrated in the month-long food and farm festivities known as Savor the San Juans. While each creature deserves honorable mention, the honey bee is in a class of its own.

The art of beekeeping is not a casual sport, but requires attention to detail. Pesticides can cause bee populations to collapse. Creating a habitat conducive to foraging that enables bees to survive through the winter takes careful planning.

Colleen Howe, of Mitchell Bay Farm and Nursery, an organic farm on San Juan Island, began keeping bees 35 years ago for their honey. She quickly realized they play a key role in her orchard’s success.

“People were having trouble with their fruits and I wasn’t,” Howe said. “That’s when I realized it’s such a benefit to have bees.”

Bees can be kept primarily for their honey, but the benefits extend far beyond. Howe grows and sells a variety of crops, including Asian pears and smooth-skin kiwis, both of which rely heavily on pollination. Credit goes not only to the honey bees, Howe said, but to the native bumble bees and flies as well.

“If we want to eat it, it doesn’t have to be pollinated by a honeybee,” Howe said. “Even flies could do it. They never get any press. I’ve never seen a ‘Save the Flies’ t-shirt.”

Pesticides linked to hive collapse

Major devastation struck Howe’s hives in March. The bees were fine on a Friday and two days later thousands were dead. The rate at which they perished points to pesticides as the culprit.

“Bees have a two mile comfortable range,” Howe said. “There’s a huge amount of landowners in between. Bees don’t just die that quickly.”

A commercial grower and a homesteader growing nearly all of her own food, Howe recognizes the importance of helping the natural fertilization of plants along in anyway she can. Some suggest pesticides as the cause of major die-offs, both honey and bumble bees. That’s why it’s imperative to create a healthy habitat for all pollinators, Howe says, that means keeping areas unsprayed and un-mowed to promote foraging.

Thirty-five years of beekeeping and farming on the island has given Howe a strong foundation of beekeeping knowledge. Skip a generation, and you’ll find the craft still alive and well.

New keeper on the block

Enter Brady Ryan, a charismatic 28 year-old born and raised on the island, that has taken entrepreneurial initiative on his parent’s land, Ryan Family Farm. Ryan manages a small apiary where he founded San Juan Island Honey and San Juan Island Sea Salt. Ryan sells honey at local farmer’s markets where tourists are a big part of the business.

“People don’t just want to take home a t-shirt,” He said. “They want a taste of that place. Something that came from the land.”

Ryan studied math at the University of Washington, but gravitated toward the campus farm where he unearthed a passion for growing food. After graduating, Ryan worked at a vegetable farm in Snoqualmie Valley and moved on to Seattle’s Ballard Bee Company, where he learned the beekeeping craft.

Island harvested honey

Honey is stabilized nectar, essentially, food that the bee’s store for winter. For the bees, making honey is an intricate, complicated and sometimes volatile process complete with a queen, her loyal subjects, and virgins fighting to the death to claim the title as queen of the new clan.

“It’s very Romanesque,” Ryan said.

Honey is harvested in late July and early August. Ryan is careful to leave enough food for the bees to last the winter.

“Surviving the winter is key,” He said. “An established hive will produce closer to 35 pounds, and a new hive closer to 10.”

This year Ryan harvested an average of 18 to 20 pounds of honey per hive. He sold a total of 350 pounds this summer and has only 12 jars left as of Sept. 19. He plans to increase the number of hives each year at SJI Honey.

Ryan has been stung by the beekeeping bug (and by bees themselves) and his passion for honey is unwavering. And for Colleen Howe, in spite of turbulence over the years beekeeping has stuck to her like, well, honey sticks to beeswax.

“Once you get them you just want to keep them,” Howe said. “Once you realize the whole cycle you learn to pay attention. They really make you more aware.”