More honey more problems

The buzzing of bees multiplies once the Bay Area summer weather arrives, and Dirk Kiehne is back to sell his honey at SF State’s Farmers Market.

With the return of the market, his business has increased production, and he sells his honey bi-weekly. He restored his hives after they died over the winter due to the weather. 

In Menlo Park, there are residents that are host to his hives and allow him to continue his passion for beekeeping. Morganne Maher and her husband have been hosts since 2010. They receive honey from him for the space in their backyard.  

“I mean, it’s just completely delicious I don’t even know how to describe it,” said Maher. “It’s very sweet because it comes from a lot of flowers. It’s very good, beautiful color, consistency. It’s just perfect honey.” 

Maher prefers Kiehne’s honey over store-bought. She believes that it’s better to know where the honey comes from when buying. 

“The cheapest kind of honey you would buy would be in a place like Safeway,” said Maher. “It’s not even made from flowers. The beekeepers just feed sugar to the bees. It’s a honey factory. There’s a difference between wild honey and wild in the sense of just letting the bees kinda go wherever they go and find whatever they find and make money from it then the store-bought kind.”

With the honey being natural, it gives students an opportunity to know what they buy comes from. Amongst Kiehne, there are around 10 to 12 vendors at each event. Kiehne plans to continue selling during the Farmers Market in the summer.                                                      

“I interact mostly with only my bees,” said Kiehne. “Beekeeping is something I do for fun.”