Feature on Bike a Bee

I'll admit, I am pretty scared of bees so maybe that is why I am fascinated with Jana Kinsman of Bike a Bee. She has my utmost respect for being Chicago's queen bee keeper.

"It tastes like Chicago summer," says Jana Kinsman, Chicago's traveling beekeeper, of the hot, syrupy honey she has just pulled from a beehive at a West Side elementary school. "It's very minty. Sweet but not cloying, and not too musky."

Kinsman, 30, is the founder of Bike a Bee, a company that allows her to travel the city by — you guessed it — bicycle to tend beehives at schools, community gardens and urban farms. You may have seen her in the news earlier this summer when she captured a swarm of bees (not hers) that had covered a bicycle parked in the Loop. The scene was surreal but calm as she explained to the crowd that during swarm season, bees may leave their hives to make a new home. This crew just so happened to take to a bike.

Today, we're harvesting honey from the hive at Suder Montessori Magnet Elementary, a Chicago public school in East Garfield Park. Like many local foods, honey is in the middle of harvest season. Now is when nectar stops flowing in local flowers, plants and trees, so bees stop foraging and get busy making enough honey to survive on until the nectar starts streaming again next year. More than enough, in fact — the extra is what keepers harvest.

You can buy honey from Bike a Bee's harvest in several locations. To learn more, see the rest of of the article:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/dining/foodfocus/ct-bike-a-bee-food-0...