In this episode of The Farmer & The Foodie.

Almost every single fruit and vegetable that we eat is pollinated by a bee or another kind of pollinator.

Beekeeping is something that you never can figure it out.

And you can take all the tools in your toolbox, but you're gonna have to apply them in a little bit different way.

I would eat this meal any time of day.

Oh, yeah.

And what's fun about it is it's very flexible.

You can impart all sorts of different flavors here.

I'm Maggie Keith, and I'm the farmer.

And I'm Lindsey McClave, and I'm the foodie.

And this is.

The Farmer & The Foodie.

[music playing] Today, we finally get to see honeybees.

I'm super excited.

Ever since Maggie and I have been together, we've always had this dream of harvesting honey, seeing honeybees, understanding how that works.

And they are buzzing like crazy.

I cannot wait.

The way that bees play such an important role in agriculture, but also in the kitchen, they work together as a team, just like us.

It makes total sense.

And we're gonna visit some bees.

It's gonna be sweet.

[music playing] We have different hives here.

And you'll notice that there's several different kinds of hives.

So, here in the middle, the hive that we're gonna be getting into, this is a new swarm.

So, what we're gonna be looking at in here is how well the bees are establishing.

[music playing] So, you have a big job as the state apiarist.

[laughs] Yeah.

So tell us about that.

I cover all 120 counties in Kentucky.

I work with all of our beekeepers to try to help keep Kentucky's bees healthy.

As part of my job as an inspector, I work with folks that are shipping bees in and out of the state to do health certificates and make sure that the colonies are healthy before there's movement in or out of the state.

And then, I also do a lot of education.

So, I go to the different bee clubs.

Kentucky has 74 different bee clubs that are located across the state.

So, I'm kind of everywhere, all at the same time, just trying to focus on keeping our bees healthy.

So, I started in the entomology department as an undergrad and got a lot of exposure to how insects are really important in agriculture systems, particularly bees, and the impact that honeybees can have on our food system and how valuable they are, and how can we keep bees healthy so that we have food to feed our families.

So, what kind of impact do bees have on agriculture?

They have a huge impact.

So, almost every single fruit and vegetable that we eat is pollinated by a bee or another kind of pollinator.

So, honeybees are just one of many pollinators.

Kentucky actually has 450 species of native bees.

Wow.

Yeah.

So.

And they're really important to us because they live in environments like the one that's around us right now.

They'll live in kind of those forested areas, eat pollen and nectar from those spaces.

But also, come into the fields and help pollinate.

And most of those bees are solitary bees.

So, they live on their own.

Honeybees are different because they have a queen and that queen will lay eggs.

And she can decide if she's gonna lay male eggs or female eggs.

Oh, wow.

Male eggs turn into drones.

Those will be used for mating with other queens from other colonies.

And then, the females are the worker bees.

And they have different roles throughout their lifetime, but they help to raise the brood, gather food and pollen and nectar, build the honeycomb to help build the hive.

What are you looking for right now?

I mean, you mentioned you don't wanna -- they know what to do, which is what's the most amazing thing to me, but what are you.

So, when I'm checking on a swarm like this, or a newly established swarm, I'm looking to see if the queen is laying eggs and I'm looking to see if she's got established brood.

So, are those larvae growing and developing?

And then, how are they doing on food resources?

So, this is a food resource frame for the most part.

There's some brood down here in this corner, but there's a lot of pollen that is packed in here and some honey on this outer edge.

So, this tells me the queen was here, but she was here a little while ago.

So, we're gonna keep looking through this box and see what we can find.

Bees are one of the only animals that we can actually translate their language into something we can understand as humans.

So, they will come back to the hive.

They will do a dance that reflects the distance and the direction of that floral resource.

They'll share samples, right?

They'll take some of that nectar or that pollen that they think is really good.

That's incredible.

And then, they will get their sisters to go with them to kind of utilize that resource and bring it back to the colony.

So, that's why they're really effective in things like almonds or apple orchards.

Because once they find that food resource, everyone from the colony is headed that way.

Wow.

What are the struggles of beekeepers here?

One of the things that we really try to monitor and try to help beekeepers with is keeping their Varroa mites under control.

It's an ectoparasite.

Each one of those Varroa mites can cause damage not only by feeding, but also spreading viruses to the bees.

Second to that is going to be our pollinator habitat.

So, as more and more people turn to making their lawns all grass, we lose a lot of the resources that bees need.

So, the more folks that can plant native flowers, have perennial gardens, resources for bees, even in really urban areas, those become like little islands that the bees can kind of hop to, to find those resources.

Well, we can get on board with that.

That's something us as consumers can support.

Can anyone just go buy a kit?

And should anybody just go put bees in their backyard?

We really recommend that you spend about a year getting to know bees before you commit to having bees yourself.

So, getting involved in one of those local clubs is a great way to start learning about bees, going to a bee school, and we have them hosted all across Kentucky.

Some of them have hands-on components, and that's a really big win.

A lot of people get really excited about bees until suddenly 30,000 of them are on you while you're working in a hive.

[laughs] Yeah.

And that makes some people really nervous.

So, having some education before you jump straight in is really important, and we've tried to make it as easy as possible for folks to get access to that education.

Yeah.

Oh, there she is.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

Look at how she's just running around.

[laughs] That's incredible.

Whoa.

That's incredible.

She's so cool.

She does such good work for the colony.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes.

[music playing] [music playing] Next, we made our way to Harrodsburg to spend time with beekeeper and farmer Tim Sheehan and got a sweet look at the care and craft of his honey-producing operation.

[music playing] I first started with a couple of hives in spring orchard, [Laughs] and then the addiction got to me.

Right now, I'm around 180 hives or so.

I would guess there's 60 here, maybe a little north of that, and then the others are on four other farms here in Mercer County.

And how do you decide where the hives go?

Is that for the bees to access different types of flowers and landscapes?

They need water.

They need pollen.

They need nectar.

They need to be in the sun.

That's a unique thing to control, because I feel like -- you know where your cattle graze.

You know, but the bees -- Exactly.

-- you can only control Yeah.

what -- I mean, that's a. What kind of radius do they fly?

They forage out to three miles.

Okay.

That's one of the nice things about bees is you could have an acre, and you'd be farming 3,000 or 20,000 acres.

Wow.

Would you consider yourself a generational beekeeper?

My grandfather was a beekeeper.

My mom and uncles grew up on a farm in Henderson, Kentucky.

I picked it up about 20 years ago.

My brother probably picked it up 40 years ago.

Yeah.

So, you went from a family with bees for the purpose of feeding the family.

Yeah.

How has the industry changed and evolved from that level of beekeeping to what it is today?

Your strategies for what you do become different.

Instead of personalizing each hive, you do things for efficiency, for time efficiency.

What is one thing you've learned through this whole experience, sort of a life takeaway, would you say, from your bees?

Patience.

It's like you never can figure it out completely.

The things you think you know, the natural circumstances the following year are different.

And you can take all the tools in your toolbox, but you're gonna have to apply them in a little bit different way.

And that's pretty cool.

Beekeeping is an escape.

You're usually by yourself, and you're in a beehive, and that can be some of the best times of the day on the farm.

Tim built his own honey house to keep up with his growing operation.

Tim welcomed us in to share the love and labor poured into raw honey.

The market for raw, unfiltered local honey is just unbelievable.

And if you're reputable, you just run out of honey.

So, honey is one of the most adulterated products that you'll find in the grocery stores, in the top three.

Certified Kentucky Honey is a guarantee that that honey was produced in Kentucky and processed at Kentucky.

And it's sent off, and a pollen analysis is done.

And if that pollen doesn't match local sources from where those hives are, then they're not in the program anymore.

There's a lot to produce in real honey.

There's nothing to buying it from a foreign country and mixing corn syrup with it.

How much honey do you produce on average?

Our average production is around 6,000 pounds a year.

Wow.

And it's all consumed within about a three-county area.

That's what surprises me.

And we still can't produce enough.

I feel like in the store or local markets, I see an array of colors of honey in a jar.

What does that mean?

Our honey in Kentucky is as diverse as our landscape, okay?

So, you have mountain honey, you have bluegrass honey, you have Western Kentucky honey.

So, the source of the nectar changes the honey.

And the source, even if you stay right here in the Bluegrass, the source changes through the seasons.

From the early season, the black locust, honeysuckle, dandelion, all this is really light, water-white nectar.

That honey will be super light.

The early middle part of the summer, you're into blackberry, yellow-poplar produces a really dark honey.

Clover, there'll be a heavy clover influence in the bluegrass.

And so, you'll get into this amber-colored honey, and the taste changes.

You'll get some really dark honey out of Eastern Kentucky.

I've been so impressed by how smart bees are.

So, what do you think bees are teaching us about our state of agriculture right now?

I don't know if it's necessarily agriculture, but it's bee behavior and how it relates to human behavior.

Okay.

And there's a lot of research about how things are organized and how communication works and how decisions work, because it's working in a hive.

Yes.

And if you can mimic that in a human population, you're doing something pretty good.

Yeah.

So, what are all these different bee smokers we see here?

I was always intrigued, because my uncle's 100 years old, and he kept bees until just a couple years ago.

And I wondered about the equipment they used, and it hadn't changed a whole lot.

Some bee smokers that predated 100 years, the wedge-type cone one down there, those are extremely rare.

Wow.

Kelley's was probably one of the three largest bee supply companies, and they're right here in Kentucky.

So, do you feel confident about the future and the integrity of honey?

A lot of the barriers to a farmer getting started and getting established is a land base, and equipment, and the risk, and the knowledge to be a successful farmer.

So, if you have a kid coming out of high school that's got a good work ethic, with a minimal amount of land, a growing knowledge, plenty of information out there, a minimal investment, they can easily make six figures off of honey.

Wow.

I'm doing it in retirement, but there's probably three of us in this county that have over 100 hives, or in the world.

I mean, the business model seems to prove itself, which is not normal in farming.

[laughs] No.

No, it's not.

And you can have a bad year.

It is farming.

You can have a bad year.

You can go through a drought.

The risk is there, but not as high.

Right.

And do you think that the consumers, like the foodies out there, are helping drive good honey and good agriculture around honey?

Absolutely.

Okay.

Yeah, because I had no intention of doing any of this.

Yeah.

I was successful at beekeeping enough to where I'd given honey to all my neighbors, and friends, and family, and we had two buckets left over.

A hundred and twenty-one pound jars was gone in two weeks.

Wow.

And I was like, "Wow."

And it was all consumer-driven.

Yeah.

And I wasn't aware of it, I just put honey on bread and biscuits.

They wanted it for allergies and medicinal reasons.

Yeah, definitely.

It seems to be an insatiable appetite for real honey.

[music playing] Bees are an important part of agriculture, and so I loved visiting where it all starts, with pollinators.

It was such a thrill to see how honey is created and made, and appreciate what a truly wonderful, valuable good it is to us.

It gives us so many vitamins and nutrients.

It's so comprehensive to our world, and like you said, our ecosystem.

It's really, really special.

And I just can't wait to cook with it today.

So, we're gonna start making some chicken and waffles.

We're kind of going with a brunch thing.

I like the idea of just sweet honey, I think of honey in my tea, and it just sort of went from there.

And waffles, we're incorporating the honey into that, but we also are going to incorporate the honey a little bit here with the chicken.

So, I've had some chicken thighs hanging out in some buttermilk.

I've done this for about eight hours.

You don't wanna let it sit in a buttermilk bath for too, too long, because it is so rich, and it could kind of start to break the chicken down just a little bit more than you might want it to, but eight hours is great.

It's gonna really tenderize the chicken.

And when you work with chicken thighs, you just really can't go wrong.

So, boneless, skinless chicken thighs in here, along with one egg and a tablespoon of honey, and it's just kind of adding to just the base flavor of the chicken.

It's not gonna be super sweet, but it is gonna have just a nice undercurrent.

And then, we're gonna make our dredge.

This is super straightforward.

This is just two cups of all-purpose flour, and we're just gonna make sure it's super-duper flavorful.

So, we're gonna start with a tablespoon of granulated onion.

I love these two together.

Garlic and onion.

Yep, can't go wrong.

Just a tiny bit of cumin.

We're gonna go with about a tablespoon and a half.

I'm a big fan of ground cumin.

It adds just a light smokiness, and I think just enhances the depth of flavor, and I think it'll play nice with the honey too.

We're gonna have a little bit of spicy too, and these are from your garden.

Yes, a little cayenne pepper.

And I just super appreciate the texture here.

You can tell that is fresh ground.

We wanna make sure this is very well-salted.

There's some salt in the buttermilk bath as well, but we're gonna add that there.

Nice.

A few cracks of black pepper.

And then, if you wanna give that a good whisk, just to bring it together.

I'm so excited we're frying in tallow.

We're frying in beef tallow.

Our beef tallow.

Yes, we are.

And it's actually tallow that we're purposing, we've it for another fry.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I really, really appreciate that.

I'm just gonna let.

Sorry to the cows.

Yes.

[laughs] I'm gonna let the excess of the strip off just a little bit, and then just in over here.

Okay.

Take the dry hand.

We'll do one like that.

Let's see how long this dry wet lasts.

Yeah, I know.

Right?

I know.

I start out with such good intentions.

You want just the flour to kind of get in all the nooks and crannies so we get some good craggly bits, but also wanna be mindful that this is pairing with a waffle.

So, we don't want it to be like a crazy thick batter because we already have a waffle, which is nice and bready and warm.

So, we're trying to have a balanced dish here with that.

So, we'll just keep breading.

Keep going.

Yup.

Okay.

[music playing] Actually, I would eat this meal any time of day.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Now, this, and what's fun about it is it's very flexible.

And when you can do it, you can impart all sorts of different flavors here.

[music playing] Working in batches, carefully place the chicken into the oil, laying it away from you so it doesn't splash onto you.

We're gonna let it cook and fry for about three to four minutes a side.

You'll flip and then go an additional three to four minutes more until it's nice and golden.

Remove to a platter with a paper towel so any excess oil can drip off.

Season immediately with some salt, and you're ready to eat.

Our chicken is fried, keeping warm in the oven, and now we need its best friend, some waffles.

Great.

So, I'm really excited to make this recipe today.

Recently, I had the opportunity to travel to Belgium and to Germany.

This amazing host that we stayed with on their farm, Sarah Juergens, she is a master chef and pastry chef, and made the most amazing breads and made us a waffle, and it was just out of this world.

So, I asked her to share her recipe.

I don't come close to doing it justice, but what makes it extra special is it has sourdough in it.

Yeah.

And I know you make sourdough waffles at home too.

Yeah.

I brought you my starter, which is always such a good friend thing to do.

It is.

I feel like this is a recipe of gifts.

I was gifted the recipe, I was gifted the sourdough starter, and it has a couple different elements.

There's no baking soda or baking powder.

Wow.

It just is these simple, farm-fresh ingredients.

And yeah, I'm really excited.

So, in what we are making, one tiny tweak, instead of using sugar, we are using honey.

Okay.

So, it really adds -- Love that.

-- just a lovely aromatic in there.

So, in our mixing bowl here, we have nine tablespoons of room temperature butter, and then we are just gonna measure out 100 grams of honey.

I am using a kitchen scale here, and I highly recommend it.

Oh, you need a kitchen scale to go in sourdough.

You do.

And just like I would with sugar, I really wanna whip this up nice and creamy together.

While it's going, I'm gonna add the rest of my wet ingredients, including an egg, which I feel like it's good luck for today.

We got a double yolk.

And a little bit of vanilla, a little bit of salt.

So, here is our sourdough.

I fed it this morning so you can.

Yay.

It looks so good.

I'm happy.

I know.

And this is definitely an area I'm still very much learning and getting adjusted to.

But you just smelled it.

Tell me what you're looking for there.

I wanted to make sure it wasn't too sour, and also you wanna smell like a little sweetness.

You nailed it.

Oh, good.

Yay.

And a couple tricks that I love, you can add potato water to help get it really going.

So, like the water you soak your potatoes in, or a little tiny rye flour with your all-purpose flour when you're feeding it.

Oh.

Well, I love the texture of it.

So, we're again gonna add just until it gets to about 50 here.

And have you learned how sticky that jar gets?

[laughs] So sticky.

So sticky.

[laughs] You're doing a good job not getting too much aon the top.

Yep.

There we go.

Perfect.

Okay.

We'll set you back here.

All right, I'm gonna mix this in, add my milk, and then slowly incorporate my flour, and then it will be ready to hang out and ferment.

Okay.

So, this is a waffle batter I went ahead and made overnight, and I've just kind of re-revitalized it here with a little -- Yes.

It looks nice and fluffy.

I am gonna take this scoop to measure out.

Oh, how handy.

Yes.

And we're gonna go on in.

Sarah recommended using your waffle iron at a very high setting to really get a nice crunchy outside and a smooth, tender inside of the waffle.

So, I've got mine.

Every waffle maker's different.

So, just kinda use your judgment.

And this one we pour in from the top and let it all fill in.

That's fascinating.

I know.

So, we're gonna let that cook.

And while those bake off, we're not only gonna top it with fried chicken, but we have gone ahead and made some hot honey, which is -- I love hot honey.

Yes, me too.

And when you warm up honey too high, it still tastes delicious, but it will lose all its nutritious properties.

There's a lot of ways to make hot honey without even warming it up.

It takes a really long time.

Yeah.

Peppers and honey for a long time?

Basically for weeks.

So, that is an option.

I took a little bit of a shortcut, and I did put one cup of honey on the stove in a small pot and one tablespoon of your red pepper flakes.

Okay.

I kept the heat really, really low on the burner and continuously stirred it.

I just wanted the honey to become softened and easier to incorporate.

Warm up enough not to boil, not to simmer, just to kind of give -- I feel like it's giving the red pepper flakes a hug.

It's just like, "Oh, come on in."

Yeah.

Infuse.

And then, that's it.

Then transfer it to this jar.

I will stir it here and there.

I'll keep it on the counter.

But yeah, every day it will get a little bit spicier.

Oh, my gosh.

I can't wait.

-- and a little bit more delicious.

[beeping] Well, how about that?

All right.

So, our waffle is ready.

Oh, it looks so moist.

Let's transfer this.

It does.

It smells delicious.

[music playing] This is stunning.

What is this beautiful, colorful garnish you added?

So, these are bachelor's buttons.

We have a little chocolate mint here for something sweet.

I love it.

I love it.

Well, I would eat this any meal, like you said, but it does definitely sort of ring true for brunch to me.

And yeah, let's dig in.

Yum, yum.

And that honey, mmm.

It's so yummy.

What I love about this is the honey adds this warm, really beautiful layer of flavor, but it's not overtly sweet.

Yes.

And the waffle is so light and fluffy.

It is.

I can't help but think that that hot honey would also be amazing on a flatbread, which feels very brunchy delicious to me, too.

Maybe make some flatbread with, I think, a creamy sauce, some asparagus, since those are so fresh right now.

And yeah, hot honey at the end.

Sounds good to me.

Let's do it.

Start with the flatbread to make the dough.

It's a yeast dough.

Generally, you'd add sugar to activate the yeast and get it all nice and bubbly and happy, but we're gonna use honey instead.

Yeah.

So, if you wanna add, Maggie, the yeast here.

And this is a dry yeast.

It's two teaspoons plus one quarter teaspoon.

Same as a packet of yeast.

This is one and a third cups of, you want warm water.

Yes.

So, pour that on in.

And then, go ahead and add one tablespoon of the honey.

And the yeast is gonna feed on this warm, sugary honey, and that's what's gonna make it start to bubble up.

Perfect.

Delish.

And then, I just like to take my hand and just give it a little swish around.

You'll feel the yeast in there and the honey.

You just kind of wanna make sure the honey dissolves in the water enough, it doesn't just sit there.

Same thing with sugar.

I just give it a little swirl to make sure it kind of comes together.

I can feel the clump of honey.

Okay.

There we go.

There you go.

All right, perfect.

I see why you use your hand.

Yep.

It just works the best.

Clean hands are a cook's best friend.

Yes.

Okay.

We're gonna let that just sit and get happy.

I like to give it 15 minutes, and you'll see the honey, the yeast start to activate.

It gets foamy, and you know you're on the right track.

So, while that happens, let's make our sauce.

This is one of my favorite sauces to use for pizza, obviously flatbread.

When I have leftovers, I put it on top of fish and bake it.

Oh, yum.

It's just cream with flavoring, but I absolutely love it.

So, we're gonna take about a cup of heavy cream.

This is the good stuff.

You can tell when you pour it out, it is really thick.

Oh, we visited that farm.

We sure did, and you know I'm a big fan.

So, good cream is your friend here.

And then, I really mix this up.

I just use whatever's around.

So, we've got some really lovely fresh thyme here I'm gonna throw in there.

Yeah, you can go ahead and do a couple.

That's one of my favorite little tricks, thyme tricks.

It's the best.

I love to use a garlic clove or two in here, but since we've got green garlic, obviously that's what we're gonna do.

So, if you just wanna give that a good rough chop, it's gonna go in here.

And while you do that, I'm just gonna tear off, this is some parsley we got from a farm friend.

I'm just gonna give that a good tear.

Perfect.

Excellent.

All right, great.

And then, we're gonna add a really nice shower of salt.

Yes.

Always helps.

Cracks the pepper.

And if you wanna cut that lemon open, we wanna keep it nice and bright here.

We'll start with one half.

Squeeze that in, catch any seeds.

That's probably enough.

We'll give it a blend and see.

You have to kind of watch it.

You could start to make butter.

But we wanna make whipped cream essentially.

So, this is gonna whip it really nice and get it big and fluffy.

So, you wanna keep your eye on it.

But you'll know when it's just kind of -- you'll see it transforms.

It gets bigger.

It gets really, really bright.

We get a lot of air in.

[rattling] The yeast is gonna be nice and bubbly and ready.

All I'm gonna do is add some whole wheat flour.

I really like that with the honey.

A honey and whole wheat flatbread, really, really nice.

And I think they both complement each other so nicely.

We'll add some salt, some olive oils.

Bring it together.

I'm gonna knead it.

After it sits and rises for about two hours on the counter, it will double in size.

[music playing] Well, I think these turned out beautiful.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

We've got a little bacon on top, the hot honey drizzle, which to me will just bring it all together.

And I personally want a whole wheat crust.

I just love the darkness of the -- you can just see the whole wheat in there.

I think we're definitely gonna be able to taste the honey that's infused into the dough.

Yeah, I want a bite.

What about you?

Okay.

Yeah.

[music playing] Bon appétit.

I love it.

[music playing] It's so good.

[laughs] I like the cheddar in it a lot.

And the bacon adds such a -- the salty and sweet of the bacon and the honey.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

Well, cheers.

I hope we've done the bees justice, the honey justice.

And yeah, I'm so grateful to have it in my life for every meal.

Yes.

[laughs] To the bees.

To the bees.

Cheers.

[music playing] [music playing]