Asheville, North Carolina is the first certified
Bee City USA committed to creating friendly
living and working spaces for birds, butterflies, and bees.
The movement was launched in 2012
by the Buncombe County Beekeepers Association
because of national concern over rapid decline
in bee colonies.
Honey production is especially essential to bee enthusiasts
like Ivar Schloz, who uses this natural sugar
to make honey wine called mead.
He invited me to check out his hives
and get to know his sweetie pies.
- [Ivar] Watch out, honey.
Sweetie pie.
- Good morning, bees.
- Really for me, the beekeeping aspect is,
is connecting with another creature.
And in fact, a very fascinating creature.
It's about the middle of spring here,
so the nectar flows are typically starting at this time.
The tree honeys are really being stored and saved up,
and the nectar's being collected.
You can see this is capped honey here.
So this is nectar that has been dehydrated.
The job of the smaller bees is to dehydrate the nectar
until it's at a right moisture,
and then they'll go over and cap it with wax.
- [Deborah] It wasn't long
before I fell in love with bees, too.
- And actually these guys are having a little snack.
- They're cute.
Next stop, the Asheville Bee Charmer.
Now that I know a little about the honey-making process,
I wanted to take a taste of honey,
and check out a lot more.
You can do it right in here.
- On page 87 from the book Fried Green Tomatoes
that I've been carrying around forever,
Ruth says to Idgie Threadgoode,
"You are just nothing but an old bee charmer"
and it's stuck with us.
And in our store, obviously,
we have a lot of honey.
We have locally made candles, a lot of local body care
made with honey or beeswax.
We have pillows and T-shirts.
We have some jewelries.
Honey dippers.
We have some beautiful art from Julia Fosson
and Laurie Terial,
both local people
that make some beautiful encaustic art for us.
We have our bee theme,
and we try and really stick with the bee theme,
or the hexagon pattern.
But all in all, we really wanna get
the issue of the plight of the bee out to people.
- I think that's the whole reason that we're doing this.
We have a really big issue with colony collapse disorder.
We're losing about
40% every year.
And that's even with master beekeepers.
I wish everybody had a hive in the backyard.
Kidding aside, I think it would be fantastic.
- [Deborah] Something that's already really fantastic
at the Asheville Bee Charmer is their honey tasting bar.
- We've got a little piece of the world here.
Everything from local, in and around Asheville,
across the country,
France, Italy,
Spain, Scotland,
Ireland, infused little bit of whisky.
- [Deborah] This is how it starts.
And this is how it goes.
And goes, taste after delicious taste,
of honeys sweet and smooth, thick and nutty,
even some hot and spicy.
For certain at the Bee Charmer,
you'll find lots of things bee and honey.
But not as yet honey wine.
So to sample some mead, we headed back to Fairview.
- Our business is Looking Glass Creamery
and we're here in beautiful Fairview
just outside of Asheville.
And we have a great destination here
where you can come and have a cheese plate,
enjoy some wine.
And we serve local Bee & Bramble wine,
which is made just a few miles away from here.
So it's great to have that,
and we're hosting a tasting here today of that too.
- [Deborah] Why're we sampling mead at a cheese shop?
- Well, I think meads and cheeses are a natural fit
with one another.
As with cheeses, you have a range from mild to sharp.
And the same thing with our range of meads.
- Bee & Bramble's fine meads
echo the fruits and flowers visited by the bees
who provided its source honey.
He offers seven blends, including a refreshingly tart
Blackberry Buzz.
And his clean and subtle Traditional,
simply made with honey, yeast, and water.
In Asheville, you'll discover new ways to love honey
and the fuzzy little females working hard to make it.
For North Carolina Weekend, I'm Deborah Holt Noel.
The Asheville Bee Charmer is at 38 Battery Park Avenue
in downtown Asheville.
And they're open daily.
To find out more, visit their website at
ashevillebeecharmer.com or give them a call
at [828] 424-7274.
Bee & Bramble Fine Meads can be found
at Looking Glass Creamery and they're at 57 Noble Road
in Fairview.
For more information, go to beeandbramble.com
and ashevillecheese.com.