♪♪ -Hi, I'm Allen Smith.

Welcome back.

You know, one of the things I've learned over the years in a place like this, that even some of the smallest things carry the greatest amount of effort and produce the greatest amount of yield.

And I think they go unnoticed too often.

Today, what we're going to do is take an insider's look into the fascinating universe of honeybees.

My friend Ted Junkin, who's our beekeeper here at Moss Mountain Farm, is here to check on the hives.

And we'll talk about some of my favorite pollinator plants.

Then in the art studio, we'll explore the magic of, well, bee art.

We'll enjoy the sweet side of all the bees' hard work and will make a simple but delicious honey cake.

Of course, with the honey from the farm.

So come on, let's get started.

-Funding for "P. Allen Smith's A Sense of Place" is provided in part by... -Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company -- since 1998, growing, saving and sharing rare heirloom varieties, seeds with stories and a sense of place, seeds worth saving.

NARRATOR: And First Community Bank, where community comes first.

-Supporting the pharmacology here is really critical.

I think that's the reason I do all this, and one of the things here that we support are pollinators of all kinds.

Today we're going to talk a lot about the honeybee.

But I just want to say this.

You know, there are so many other pollinators that need to be recognized.

I think maybe the honeybee might be the poster child, but it's not a native bee.

There are probably over 4,000 native species of bees in North America.

So there's a staggering number of these very important insects that really don't get the limelight that they should.

The honeybee does for a lot of reasons.

It's a very productive and fascinating creature.

And so today we're going to talk about what we do to support that piece of the ecology of the farm.

What you find with honeybees is they're always going to go for what's in bloom and what's closest to the hive.

And so today you can see this glorious basil in bloom.

This is a plant that I began growing here several years ago now.

It doesn't come up from seed.

We take cuttings.

I say we -- Ted Junkin, who helps with the bees here, takes these cuttings and then brings them back to us in the spring.

Little rooted plants and we grow these out.

And this time of year, really through the entire summer, this -- this basil, blue African basil, produces a great deal of nectar.

And so it's a wonderful food source for honeybees.

You'll see.

They're just working these flowers over and over and over and carrying back that nectar to the hives.

♪♪ Now I'd like to introduce you to my friend Ted Junkin.

He's my neighbor.

He lives down the road, and he's our beekeeper, an extraordinary fellow who really understands this little microcosm of the universe.

He's just kind of the king of the bees, as far as I'm concerned.

Ted, you know that old phrase people say, if something's really good, they say it.

that's the bee's knees, -Uh-huh.

-What does that mean?

-I don't know.

-I don't know either.

I've always heard it my whole life.

I didn't -- I don't know about a bee's knee.

-No.

-I guess it's loaded with pollen.

That's good.

-Maybe so.

They say the smoke is always -- The theory was that they thought the woods was on fire and they were going to have to evacuate.

-Oh, I see.

-So loaded up with honey.

And of course, like anything else, when their stomachs full, they kind of get lazy.

They don't want to fight.

-That's what they say.

-You understand.

-Are they wanting to?

-Yep.

They're wanting to.

-I hadn't gotten stung yet.

Let me put mine on, too.

-Yeah.

-Ted, how long have you been keeping bees?

-Right around 50 years.

-50 years.

So 50 years in keeping bees.

And you've been -- You've known this farm for a long time.

-It hasn't been, what?

About five years now.

-Maybe six.

-Maybe six.

-Yeah.

-I tried one time before that.

-Yeah, before I came.

-Yeah.

They had a dairy farm here.

-Mm-hmm.

-And I thought it would be an excellent place.

-Yeah.

-But it turned out it wasn't.

-They just didn't have enough pollinator plants?

-Not enough plants to feed on.

-Well, we've done our part to make this a better place.

I'm so pleased to see them coming in with so much pollen.

That's good.

-Right.

Usually if you see that pollen, you know that the queen is laying eggs.

-Yeah.

-They don't bring it in for no purpose at all.

-You know, it's amazing how many eggs she can lay in a day.

-They say up to 2,000.

-That's what I read.

Yeah.

-Mm-hmm.

-She's probably the hardest working member in the whole hive.

-Yes.

And she doesn't have time to stop and eat, so they take the food to her.

-There's a division of labor and work, isn't there?

There are bees that clean, bees that guard.

-Uh-huh.

-Bees that take care of the nursery.

The babies.

-Right.

-You want to try this?

Here's some larvae coming out here.

You want to try this one?

Oh, yeah.

A lot of brood on this one.

-You look to see if she's doing her job.

-And we just noticed she was doing her job.

-She was doing her job.

Yes.

-What's the life -- life-span of a worker bee?

Three or four weeks?

-About five weeks in the summertime when it's foraging activity.

[ Bees buzzing ] Of course, the main reason that they die in the spring is they fly their wings off.

The wings get all tattered.

-From overuse.

-From overuse.

They travel a lot of miles.

-And the queen up to -- what?

-- a couple of years?

-Two or three years.

-Two or three years.

Yeah.

How do the queen cells emerge?

-They find an egg that's less than 24 hours old.

The food they give her determines if she becomes a queen or if she stays a worker.

-So that would be the royal jelly.

-Royal jelly.

-Yeah.

And then that -- She'll then transform into a queen based on what she's fed.

This is an example of a healthy hive, isn't it, Ted?

-Yes.

And a lot of pollen packed in there.

See the pollen?

-Yeah.

There's the pollen.

-They've got fresh nectar in there.

-Mm-hmm.

You can see a clear liquid in there.

That's the nectar, right?

-Right.

They haven't evaporated enough water out yet that they can put this capping on it.

-And they actively do the evaporation with their movement of the wings, isn't it?

-Yes.

They have to get it down to about 18% moisture content for it to keep.

-And they just instinctively know what that ratio is, don't they?

-Yes.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Clearly, honeybees are very important, particularly when you think about our food sources.

You know, the pollination of plants to produce the vegetables is critical to us.

That's why I'm so big on how do we conserve the honeybees?

You know, the plight of the honeybee right now is really due to pesticides being used, the fact that habitat is being removed or altered in some way, and then the Varroa mite that is plaguing many of the hives.

Those are three of the most important reasons why honeybees are in decline, or there's a struggle for them to to have healthy hives.

You know, the kinds of products that bees provide us and how they can help us with our own well-being seems to be endless.

For instance, this is bee pollen, something that I take every day.

Um, I just like the flavor of it.

It's very sweet, as you might imagine.

A little bit of a honey flavor to it.

And then this is an interesting mixture.

This is a product that includes several bee products.

It's royal jelly.

It is propolis.

And it also includes bee pollen.

And it is very delicious.

And it tastes like honey.

It's got a little bit of texture to it.

Now, the royal jelly, as you know, is what is fed to the queen.

It's a white substance.

That's all she consumes.

And so it's a superfood.

I mean, you think about I mean, she's laying up to 2,000 eggs a day.

So just imagine what's in that royal jelly.

And then the larvae are also fed royal jelly.

There's a lot of questions about the flavor of honey and how -- how that comes about.

Well, it's really -- When you think about it, it's the nectar of flowers that they're bringing back to the hive.

And then with the movement of their wings, they're driving off the water.

And so they're concentrating it and creating the honey that way.

So whatever they're feeding on at any given time is going to influence the flavor.

So the food source, of course, will be flowers from which they draw nectar.

And a term is used -- nectar flow.

And it really begins in the spring, as you can imagine, as the blossoms of various things begin to open up.

And that is fascinating because the bees will go to what is the closest and what is the most abundant to them.

And that flow influences the flavor of the honey ultimately.

Now, these are honey here from the farm harvested at two different times of the year.

You can see one's much lighter.

This would have been early in the spring.

I'm just going to taste the flavor.

Very good.

Very, very light.

Delicious.

This is harvested later in the season so you're going to get a combination nectar there.

Definitely a deeper, richer flavor here.

Really quite a cocktail if you will of of all these nectars from all these flowers that we've planted here at the farm.

So , it's kind of a distillation of this place in a way, which is terribly exciting to think about that we can consume it, and it really tastes good too.

♪♪ "For this reason especially, the bee is more honored than the other animals.

not because she labors, but because she labors for others."

Saint John Chrysostom.

♪♪ As you can imagine, feeding the bees is critically important not just in one season but across the season as much as possible.

So we've planted with that in mind.

Now, here you can see we have Salvias, and I've got two varieties here.

This one is an old standby here, a very good perennial Salvia called Black and Blue.

But then this pink one is Wendy's Wish.

And they seem to really be attracted to Wendy's Wish.

You may look in a garden and you may say, oh, the bees aren't over on this planter.

They're not on that plant.

There must not be nectar there.

Bees are very efficient.

They're going to go to the plant that is producing the most nectar.

And as I said presently, what we have is a lot of nectar flow coming out of that basil.

So if the basil weren't here, they may be on the Salvias, but they're looking for the most efficient way to gather food.

♪♪ Now, I think it's important to reiterate this idea or drive home the point that what one needs in a garden to support hives is a succession of bloom.

Had you been here with me a month ago, you would have seen these garlic chives in full bloom.

Beautiful white flowers.

And the bees were absolutely all over them, really working all the nectar out of them.

A happy hive is a well-fed hive, and that's why we really try to think about what can we have for the bees?

What can be on the menu?

Earlier in the season, you saw hyssop blue fortune, purple coneflowers as well as sunflowers.

♪♪ Rarely is a plant specific to a pollinator.

Many of the plants in our garden -- well, most of them -- attract all kinds of pollinators, not only honeybees, but in the case of this Lantana, butterflies.

If you love butterflies in your garden, this Lantana is called Miss Huff.

It's the coldest hardy Lantana known.

Zone seven through 11.

We're in zone 8a, and Miss Huff comes back for us year after year.

She grows about four feet tall, about four feet wide.

But I've seen examples of Miss Huff where she has grown as high as 10 feet right here in zone 8a.

And that's what I want to achieve here in this garden.

I want some 10-foot Miss Huffs.

♪♪ ♪♪ When you really take your time and look at something very, very closely, you -- the whole world opens up and you're able to appreciate a universe you didn't know previously existed.

It's really all around us.

You can look at very ordinary things we just take for granted.

A hive of bees is an amazing creation.

A single bee is an amazing creation.

The fact that a worker bee only lives for, you know, just a few weeks, it's really quite amazing.

They're so ethereal.

So it makes me want to document them or learn more about them.

I was inspired years ago by a French artist from the Art Nouveau period who did amazing things with insects, big insects.

E.A.

Séguy was infinitely talented with pattern and overall design.

When you see his work, it's like you never forget it.

It's so graphically beautiful.

Séguy's pichwai, or stencil approach, it was much more defined very elegantly, as you might expect with the Art Nouveau period, but it was sort of layered color with stencil, these intense colors, mainly butterflies and grasshoppers, a wide range of insects.

And I think that his work really inspired me.

I've gotten really into looking at insects in a different way, but right now I'm sort of jazzed about honeybees, as you can can see here with this recent creation.

That's why I'm kind of going off the charts with color here and just experimenting with it.

I've been working on this drawing of a honeybee.

And, you know, one of the things that you begin to realize about them is that they're really fuzzy.

You know, they're -- you look closely at bees and they're really sort of furry little creatures.

It's a great way to relax and shift your mind into another place and just kind of get in a zone.

♪♪ ♪♪ I'm always looking for delicious recipes for using honey.

We produce so much honey here at Moss Mountain Farm, so any excuse to apply it to a recipe, I'm all in.

So I want to share with you a delicious honey cake.

We're going to take our dry ingredients first.

We're gonna sift them together.

1 cup of flour.

1/4 cup of cornstarch.

Teaspoon and a half of baking powder.

1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon, and 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda.

I'm going to just sift all that together.

And we're just going to set this aside.

We're going to put together a few other ingredients.

This cake is for a 8x3 cake pan.

And I've already oiled the bottom.

And then I've put a piece of parchment paper just in the bottom of it so it doesn't stick.

So we're ready there.

Alright.

Now I'm just going to take the melted butter.

You want 1/4 cup of butter.

I'm going to add that with 1/4 cup of vegetable oil.

1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla.

And then I'm going to add the eggs.

It takes two large eggs, but I like to use our little bantam eggs.

They're small.

So I will use three of these for one large egg.

These are eggs from our little white-faced black Spanish bantams.

They're a heritage breed the Spanish, the Mediterranean breed.

So that's one egg.

And then we'll use a white-faced black Spanish standard size.

And there we have it, two eggs.

Those little bantam Spanish are absolutely adorable.

They make great pets for children.

We're going to add the two eggs.

I'm going to whisk all this together.

What I'm going to do is warm the milk and the honey.

I'm going to combine it together in just a little container and put it on the stove.

It's 1/2 cup of whole milk and 1/2 cup of honey.

We just want this to come together in a beautiful way.

Just a little bit of heat.

We'll do that.

That'll take just a few minutes.

Let's bring back our dry goods here.

And then I'm just going to begin to add these wet ingredients.

There we go.

It takes a little while to get the batter all set up.

It is really worth it.

And then I'm going to add this... ...honey and milk and mix all this together.

Make sure there are no lumps.

1/2 cup of honey.

It's really coming through.

Alright, now we're ready to put it into the pan.

Look at that.

Isn't it a beautiful color?

Now we're going to pop it in a preheated 350-degree oven for about 30 minutes.

♪♪ Taking a little break out here on the porch.

It's so nice while that cake bakes.

I love to have a little bit of our content mint tea.

This is one of my favorite places to to sit, by the way.

It's just so inviting.

It's one of those indoor/outdoor blur the lines between an inside and out spaces, the porch.

But this tea I love.

It's our blend from here.

And as you know, I like to use as much as I can from this place.

This is called content mint tea, and it's made from the only caffeinated plant in North America.

It's a native plant called yaupon holly.

It grows here on the farm.

We've got hedges of it, but it also grows in the woodland or the woodlands edge really, because it needs full sun.

But the tea is made from the dried leaves.

It's delightful.

We add a little bit of mint, dried mint leaves, in the tea and it's just... ...very soothing.

I think there's an interesting story around the name of this plant.

Again, yaupon holly.

Its botanical name is rather inauspicious.

It's called Ilex, which is the genus for holly, Ilex vomitoria.

So that's the species.

Well, one might raise their eyebrow about that name.

And the history is that when Europeans came here, they identified the native tribes using this caffeinated drink in rituals.

It's a very concentrated form of herbs, which included yaupon, and it would induce vomiting.

But yaupon does not do that alone, so it's not anything to worry about.

But what a terrible name for marketing a tea.

Vomitoria?

It's very delicious.

♪♪ Now for the finishing touches.

This is my favorite part other than actually eating the cake.

You know, I made this little glaze of just butter and honey and I used about 3 or 4 tablespoons of honey and butter, and I just heated it up on the stove.

It doesn't take long.

You want that to kind of soak in.

Mm.

My mouth's watering.

And then now I take these toasted almonds and I just sprinkle these toasted almonds.

I just toasted them with a little butter.

And I like the crunch, the textural contrast.

It's really good.

Just let it drip over the sides and pile it on top and make it exuberant.

Look at that.

Mm.

Marvelous.

♪♪ ♪♪ Mm.

Mm-mmm!

That's really good.

And the only sweetener here is honey, remember.

And I think the almonds add a nice touch.

Very, very good.

Delicious.

♪♪ Bees gather the briefest of things.

A bloom, a breath of sunlight, a passing season.

And they make something that never spoils.

They touch eternity with their small wings.

In its purest form, this is what creation looks like.

A thousand small efforts pulling in the same direction until the world changes.

And it's a choice we all have to show up again and again for what matters.

Now, that is a sense of place.

I'm Allen Smith.

I hope you've enjoyed our time together as much as I have.

I'll see you next time.

-Funding for "P. Allen Smith's A Sense of Place" is provided in part by... -Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company -- since 1998, growing, saving and sharing rare heirloom varieties, seeds with stories and a sense of place, seeds worth saving.

Learn more at rareseeds.com.

NARRATOR: And First Community Bank, where community comes first.

-Behind every episode of "A Sense of Place" is a story that extends beyond the screen.

Allen's companion coffee table book brings those stories together through more than 500 photographs he selected of the house, gardens, flowers, and animals that define life at Moss Mountain Farm.

Available at pallensmith.com.

-Learn more at my website, pallensmith.com, and dig a little deeper with our weekly newsletter, and make sure you follow along with our social media.

It's amazing to me how they maintain the temperature in a hive.

How do they do that when it drops down to eight or nine degrees, single digits here?

-Well, they flex their wing muscles without moving their wings.

And that generates heat.

-Heat.

Okay.

-If it gets too hot in the summer, they'll bring some water in and sprinkle it over the cones and then fan it.

And when it evaporates, it cools off the hive.

-I see.

Why are you so intrigued with bees?

-Yeah, you have to be a little crazy to work with stinging insects.

-[ Laughs ] Even after 50 years, you still feel like you're learning things about them.

-You still learn something new every time.

They'll teach you.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-What's a good lesson they've taught you?

-To know when to quit.

[ Both laugh ] If it gets too hot, time to quit.

Try it a different day.

-Try a different day.

Right.

-Yes.