Matthew. That was a few years ago.
Eventually, the couple got so busy
with their new beekeeping business
that they had to make a decision: keep
building theater sets or put their attention
on Noble Nectar. The bees won.
One interesting change that the
museum has had to make since the
bees moved in is to update its emergency
preparedness plan. “Besides
planning for the safety of visitors and
the art, we now have to make provisions
for how to take care of the bees,”
says Wilson.
What about the safety of visitors
related to the bees? Wilson points
out that the bees aren’t accessible to
anyone except the professional beekeepers.
Besides, European honey
bees are very docile, says Allison, who
enjoys going out to local schools to
teach students about bees.
“People are nervous around bees,
but education can change their point of
view. It’s just a lack of understanding, “
says Allison. “The bees are just going
about their business and will not go
out of their way to sting you. Chances
are very good that feral colonies are
already living near you in the wild. You
just don’t know it.”
In a different corner of downtown
and an entirely different kind of venue,
two colonies of honey bees are thriving
on the rooftop of the city’s popular
Green Bench Brewing Company and
its newest venue, Webb City
Cellar, where the back corner
is dedicated to cider and
mead production.
Mead is made with fermented
honey and Brian
Wing, Green Bench’s head mead maker,
imports honey from all over the world
to make the half-dozen or so varieties
of mead the brewery produces. But in
the spring and fall, he uses local Green
Bench honey for small-batch “estate”
meads.
“There’s not a lot of volume—we can
only make one or two batches, but we
love the hyper local aspect of it and the
Pete based on the date and season it’s
made,” says Wing.
Luke Galloway’s full-time career is
a hobby and a passion. When he’s not
Bench tending to the bees. He’s also
Florida Botanical Gardens.
Locally harvested honey is darker
a thicker consistency, says Galloway.
That’s due to the bees diet of palmetto,
mangrove, Brazilian pepper
ornamentals like Ixoras and Hibiscus in
homeowners’ yards to actual Florida
natives like sweet clover and black-
Green Bench might be considered
-
ing trend as the bees have been living
on the brewery’s rooftop for the past
four years. “We were approached by a
local beekeeper who used to frequent
Green Bench before he moved away,”
of the brewery. “We'd been looking for
ways to better connect with our natural
environment and knew bee colonies
were struggling. He approached us at
the perfect time and explained that our
roof could be an ideal urban beekeeping
environment. We loved the idea
and said yes.”
According to the Florida Department
of Agriculture, small-scale beekeepers
play a “valuable and critical role”
and helping pollinate crops critical to
the state’s agriculture, as well as the
-
in embracing this idea. Look for local
honey at the city’s many produce and
craft markets, and in the near future at
the Museum of Fine Arts gift shop.
Noble Nectar
bees. Allison Lynn
Photography
Matt and Allison
Davis of Noble
Nectar Apiaries.
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