The Daily O’Collegian

Shane Lansdown/O’Collegian

Mick Denny carefully removes the wax from a honey-laden hive frame.

“This can’t end well,” I thought to myself as I stood perched on the roof of my truck, attempting to delicately clip a branch holding legions of angry bees amid flashlight beams and plenty of neighborly advice.

My pole-saw trembled nervously as directions were being issued by Myron Denny, a local expert whose number I’d received from a call to animal control earlier that evening.

The next few minutes were a chaotic mess of flailing, cursing and apitoxin (the acidic irritant in a honey bee’s pointy end).

While men in very nice, sting-proof suits collected the bees, I became curious as to what sort of product could possibly be worth the hardship we had endured that evening, and I found it.

My next few weekends were spent suited up in bee-proof garb with Myron (Mick) Denny and his grandson-in-law, Clint, wandering through prairies and checking on Mick’s hive boxes.

Mick keeps about 16 swarms around his farm near Glencoe and we inspected several of them as he noted idiosyncrasies of bee strains and the subtleties governing different plants’ impacts on honey flavor.

It was shear terror to stand amidst the deafening roar of thousands of bees while Mick prodded and examined the hives.

He inspected the frames that hold the golden compartments of honey, looked in on the young bees being hatched from the brood chambers and pointed out differences between the workers, drones and queens.

A call from Clint on Tuesday bore an invitation back to Mick’s farm the following Sunday to collect the honey.

I was at the farm 15 minutes early, camera in hand.

Myron showed us to his honey-house where I watched as the apiary artist melted the wax caps off each frame using a heated knife.

Each swath across the frame uncovered thousands of hexagonal chambers flooded with fragrant wildflower honey.

His wife worked in stride with him taking the uncapped frames and placing them gently in an extractor, which spun the sticky liquid from its comb and guided it through a spout into a large vessel.

I watched and sighed at the addition of another hobby to my growing list of work-laden distractions.

But I have to say the taste of natural, native, wildflower honey is as comparable to store-bought brands as real BBQ is to the Rib Crib—but that’s another story.

Mick and Sally Myron sell honey from their home on a first come-first served basis.

Their home is two and a half miles east of Highway 108 on McElroy Road.