Tasting Notes: warm beeswax, pine resin. young wood. warms the back of your throat.

Site Notes: Oriana Kruszewski has been growing Asian pear trees in northern IL for over 20 years. Last year she asked me to put some bees at her orchard in Winslow, IL, near the Wisconsin border. She said many have tried to keep bees there but they've all failed. Oriana is a very critical, strong, independent woman; I wanted to prove that I could be a dependable young farmer. So I put three hives there. Little did I know this would be the most transformative experience of my summer. I'd show up at the orchard on days when Oriana was there too, complete checking the hives in about 30 minutes, then have the rest of the day to work with her in the orchard. I fell in love with everything there, and loved seeing the trees' transformations from early spring to fall. I learned so much about fruit tree care from simply listening and watching Oriana, as well as working and sweating alongside her during my bi-weekly visits. I formed some really special relationships at the orchard, not the least of which is my friendship with Oriana, which I treasure so deeply. 

Tasting Notes: dry cider, light fermented taste. fruity. pink lady apple.

Site Notes: Global Gardens is a vacant lot garden in Albany Park next to the Chicago River. Over 100 Burmese and Bhutanese families farm there, selling produce to neighbors and nearby restaurants. Bike a Bee's beekeeper Ed Vlcek is the main caretaker of the hive there.

Tasting Notes: very simple linden honey. pure. floral aftertaste

Site Notes: Heartache Honey comes from a beehive we placed on top of the (super sturdy) chicken coop of a dear female friend in Garfield Park. In spring when we placed the hive, all seemed to be going well in her life. After our first or second inspection, she told me her husband was leaving her. The hive grew huge. They became our biggest and best producing hive. As we added the last super to be filled with surplus honey, I found out she was getting a divorce. Every time I checked on the hive, I learned more sad news, and yet here was this hive doing fantastically. Heartache honey is the product of this crazy summer, and the strength of my friend for surviving it! Proof that something sweet can come out of something sad. Eat this honey to cure your bad vibes and brighten your mood! 

Tasting Notes: beeswaxy, floral and sweet up front, dulce de leche finish.

Site Notes: Fulton Community Garden is one of our oldest hive sites. I think it may actually be one of the first gardens to say YES to hosting a hive, back when this project was just an idea. This hive has access to all of the best vacant lot plant life that Garfield Park has to offer. Right next door to the garden is a whole entire lot filled with goldenrod in late summer. It makes me smile every time I see it. 

Tasting Notes: strong, bold flavor. heavy pollen, middle-ground honey. good for cooking

Site Notes: Friend Savanna is a vacant lot garden with raised beds managed by a few friends who love gardening weird things, like native prairie rarities and crazy varieties of amaranth. Most of the year this garden is completely feral, with a huge patch of raspberries guarding the sidewalk-facing entrance of it. My friend Daniel was the one to invite me to have a hive at the garden. I chose a spot for it beneath the boughs of a young black locust... my favorite spring tree. We actually had a hive here during our first year, in another corner of the garden when it was managed by someone else. A building was built to the south of the garden, and it threw a shadow on the hive in the winter, contributing to its death. I'm glad we have a nice new spot for it at the reborn Friend Savanna.

Tasting Notes: sweet fermenting fruit, heavy pollen. our darkest honey. molasses.

Site Notes: Kuumba's hive was our ONLY HIVE from 2014 to survive the winter. Their queen is one of my favorites, obviously for her hardiness but also for her golden glow. Miss Gina is the garden's caretaker, and we love her so much. The garden was once a house owned by her family. Now it nourishes the community with movie nights and activities for school groups and neighborhood families. This honey is especially rich in pollen because of the hive's age, since they have used the frames as pollen storage before. 

Tasting Notes: slight linden mintiness, slight waxy flavor. licorice. sour, clean aftertaste. simple. a good mixing honey

Site Notes: This garden is new for 2015, managed by a fantastic man named Patrick. He also manages the garden at Kenwood. All of the neighbors around the Wilcox hive have come said hello to us at one time or another, proving to me that Garfield Park is the friendliest neighborhood in Chicago. This hive surprised us twice. Once, when we were inspecting the hive, we found the queen crawling on the inside of the inner cover! Later in the season, they must have secretly swarmed, because we found three(!) virgin queens running around inside the hive. Favorite memory at the Wilcox hive? Beekeeping along to the neighbors blasting 2 Chainz.

Tasting Notes: more clover than linden. electric sweetness. light vanilla mint. straight up sweet honey. basic

Site Notes: Queen Dale was a swarm given to us by a man named Dale. We placed the colony in a hive located at the Madison St. Garden, the same place where we keep our Madison St. Garden hive (duh.) Despite being a smaller amount of bees, the Queen Dale hive did an outstanding job growing huge over the summer, producing a lot of honey for us. 

Tasting Notes: cooked sweet potato, raisin. the outdoors.

Site Notes: Madison St. Garden is a large vacant lot community garden in East Garfield Park. Our friend Liz has a raised bed there! Bike a Bee has kept a hive at or near this garden from the very beginning. We love the location where it is now, it gets full sun in winter. Fun fact about this hive: we got the huge rock that holds the outer cover on when a bunch of kids threw it at the hive, knocking the outer cover off! Luckily John, one of the garden founders, told me right away. A good rock like that is worth keeping, so we use it for good now, not evil.

Tasting Notes: honeydew melon, very fruity and floral, very bright. lingers.

Site Notes: This year, as part of my rural expansion, I thought it would be fun to put a couple hives out at my Aunt's house in St. Charles, IL. I thought, well, I'm going out to these farms, may as well have some hives along the way. My Aunt's house is right up against a huge forest preserve and extensive prairie, as well as some farmland. Aside from producing my favorite honey of 2015 (that's right, folks), I got the added benefit of seeing my Aunt, Uncle, and cousins with a lot more frequency. It's been really wonderful! 

Tasting Notes: very electric and bright upfront. rooibos tea. raspberry. smooth, warm finish.

Site Notes: Roland's yard is one of the exceptions to Bike a Bee's mission statement to only keep hives in public spaces. After our first year, Roland emailed me after seeing the hives at The Plant, asking me if I might put a hive in his backyard. I said no at first, but then he sent me photos of his yard. It was, and still is, this amazing oasis of prairie plants and all sorts of fruits and vegetables. At the time, the hives at The Plant were my southern-most hives, and I was living all the way up in Logan Square. So, I reconsidered and put two hives there to make my trip south more worthwhile. Roland's yard makes me happy every time I visit, and the bees have ample forage in his yard and in the surrounding vacant lots all over the Back of the Yards neighborhood.

Tasting Notes: deep rich linden. waxy. slightly tannic.

Site Notes: The Plant is another location that Bike a Bee has had a hive at the longest. Getting to have a hive here is the best, because it means that I get to visit the building whenever I want! I STRONGLY suggest you visit The Plant yourself for a tour. John Edel, the man behind it all, is one of my personal heroes. His drive to make crazy wonderful things happen in a city that can sometimes be too pessimistic for its own good is so inspiring to me. He was interviewed for Lumpen Magazine once. When asked if The Plant is a Chicagoan, he replied with my favorite quote of all time: "There’s some audacious Chicago-ness about it in terms of its rulebreaking. That’s always been kind of a Chicago way of doing things—this kind of blustery, 'beg forgiveness, don’t ask permission.'"

Every time I read that quote I tear-up for some reason. Chicago pride?

Tasting Notes: heavy, bright and tingly linden. cedarwood. clean aftertaste.

Site Notes: The Pie Patch is a special certified organic u-pick garden run by our friend Breanne. At The Pie Patch, Breanne grows ingredients that would go into a pie! Like strawberries, raspberries, pumpkins, sweet potatoes... you name it. The garden is still young, but we are happy to be there, helping with pollination. The garden is on the property of Su Casa, a shelter for battered hispanic women and their families. A few years ago, the garden was tended by Growing Home, another Chicago farming project. Our beekeeper Ed had his very first swarm capturing experience back then, catching a swarm that had come from one of Growing Home's hives with master beekeeper Michael Thompson!

Tasting Notes: simple, straightforward. sugar syrup. Sweet clover, dutch clover.

Site Notes: Kenwood is down in, well, the Kenwood neighborhood. Along with the Heartache Honey hive, Kenwood was our best producer. When I came to set this hive up in spring, no one was able to provide us with cinderblocks to set the hive on. I had to improvise, so i grabbed some big, paver-looking rocks that were scattered around the huge vacant lot. I set the hive up on them, thinking I would replace them soon. Yeah, right. The hive proceeded to get enormous, with these poor rocks holding up over 300lbs of honey, bees, and equipment all summer. Thankfully they never failed us. The Kenwood hive is also a few blocks away from the Obama residence! I bet the bees visited his yard a few times... how about that! 

Tasting Notes: waxy. cedarwood. leafy greens. "Fruity Pebbles and then you, like, drink some orange juice afterwards"- Ed

Site Notes: Mike Mendez found out about Bike a Bee last year and asked if we would put a hive in the vacant lot he just bought next to his property through the city's Large Lots program. I went down to check the site out in winter and determined that it would indeed be a good location, so we put one hive there. In Chicago, it is our furthest south hive, pushing our Hyde Park boundary. To be honest I wanted to put a hive here because it's one block from Jackson Park, and I wanted to ride my bike home from beekeeping days along the lake :)

Tasting Notes: autumn leaf litter, musky. cooked squash. the scent of rose.

Site Notes: Molly Breslin and her father John Breslin grow certified organic row crops out in Ottawa, IL. Molly had been beekeeping for a couple years on their property, but she felt she wasn't having any luck. Last winter I offered to take care of her bees and share in the honey. This spring I took over the care of their 6 hives and it turned out to be a very productive summer! We got SO MUCH honey from them! In addition to the row crops, the Breslins also have a large section of prairie in a low section of their farm. This contributes greatly to the health of all pollinators!