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Photos by Br

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in Colorado, honey can be used to sup-
press a cough, boost energy, moisturize
skin (they recommend a rose oil and
honey facemask) and act as an antioxi-
dant.
Their statistics show that "the 60,000
or so bees in a beehive may collectively
travel as much as 55,000 miles and visit
more than two million flowers to gather
enough nectar to make just a pound of
honey."
The honey's color and flavor depends
upon the flowers from which the nectar
is taken and include clover, alfalfa, dan-
delions and star thistle, which forms the
base of Letvin's honey. In general, lighter-
colored honeys are mild in flavor, and
darker honeys are usually more robust.
Separate from its Rosh Hashanah hype,
September is National Honey Month
because much of the 200 million or so
pounds of honey produced in the U.S.
is harvested during this time, including
more than 300 flavors.

Where Does It Come From

Joel Letvin holds a
smoker that he uses to
calm the bees when he's
ready to harvest honey.

For A Sweet New Year

Beekeeper Joel Letvin goes straight to the source
for Rosh Hashanah honey.

Shelli Liebman Dorfman
Contributing Writer

A

pension actuary by day, Joel
Letvin is also a year-round
apiarist or beekeeper, harvesting
honey before Rosh Hashanah each year.
"Honey is made throughout the spring,
summer and fall," said Letvin, who owns
beehives in Union Lake and Milford. What
his bees don't eat and don't need to store
for the winter, he collects once a year in
early fall.
Some of what he harvests ends up on
his family's table at Rosh Hashanah, a
time when many Jews eat apples dipped
in honey to symbolize hope for a sweet
new year, or challah and honey represent-
ing the cycle of the year. In Letvin's West
Bloomfield home, there are also honey
cakes baked by his wife, Dana.
Letvin was introduced to beekeeping
while in the Peace Corps in West Africa
from 1969-1971. He was trained while
working for Huston Honey Company in
California in the mid-1970s and does a lot
of reading about bees.

8

September 29 • 2011

Letvin got started by searching his
neighborhood for bees, ordering them by
mail and calling police and fire stations
asking to be notified when residents called
to get rid of them.
In recent years, Letvin has harvested
anywhere from 300-1,100 pounds of
honey each season."Lately, it's been on the
low end:' he said. "I'm having a difficult
problem keeping the bees alive. The varroa
and tracheal mites entered the country
about 20 years ago and have been very
destructive to honeybees. Poor honeyflows
and hard winters are also problems. I try
to run 15 hives, but currently I'm down to
three!'
At its height, Letvin owned hundreds
of hives and made a business of selling
the honey — labeled under his name
and as Liquid Sunshine Honey Company
— at health food stores and the Pontiac
Farmers Market.
When his children — Michael, 33,
Amelia, 29, and Alexander, 27 — were
younger they helped with all phases of
sales and production. His wife and his
mother, Eileen, of West Bloomfield helped

with bottling and sales. Now most of what
he makes is consumed by his family or
given away.

Sweetness Of Honey
According to Rabbi Shneur Silberberg,
even though bees are not kosher, honey is
because the bee merely stores the honey,
but doesn't produce it.
The Bible mentions honey as represent-
ing wealth and good living, the wisdom of
the Torah and the words of God. It is also
listed as a prime sweetener.
To Letvin, honey is his sweetener of
choice, citing the health benefits of honey
over sugar.
Chassidic philosophy has its own
explanation of honey's sweetness. "It says
honey is especially sweet because it comes
from an animal that can sting: a bee
said Silberberg, outreach director at Bais
Chabad Torah Center in West Bloomfield.
"This represents the idea that there is
an additional sweetness that can be pro-
duced though overcoming struggles that
life presents!"
According to the National Honey Board

Honey is produced when bees stop on
flowers to sip their nectar. While they
drink, pollen grains become attached to
their body and legs and combine with
enzymes they secrete. When they return
to the hive, they deposit this produc-
tion for younger bees to spread around
the hive. "The bees have to evaporate it
down to 5 percent of its original volume
Letvin said. Then it becomes honey.
The inside of a beehive is made of
hexagonal cells of beeswax, called honey-
comb, where bees store food (honey and
pollen) and eggs, larvae and pupae.
Letvin builds his beehives using wood-
en boxes made with finger joints, with a
ledge cut into the top to hold the frames
and wooden slats and beeswax inside.
Unlike most other insects, bees do not
hibernate so they make enough honey
to use as food and heat sources to stay
alive during the winter, when they don't
produce.
What they will not need for the winter
is what Letvin harvests.
To get the honey, he sends smoke into
the hive to calm the bees. "Then I induce
a smelly odor [buteric acid or vomit
smell] on top of the hive to drive the bees
down into the hive, and I pull the honey
off the top:' he said.
Later in his garage, he spins a large,
metal centrifuge that separates the honey
from the beeswax.
What is produced is raw honey. "If it
sits in the tank for three days or so, most
of the wax and dead bees will float to the
top and you have a pretty nice product,"
he said. "It can be further processed by
heating and filtering.
"Supermarket honey has been
destroyed by the processors (who) over-
heat and over-filter the honey to give it a
long 'shelf life," he says.