Edmon J. Rodman dons
beekeeper's gear to
get a honey of a High
Holiday story.
Going to the source of Rosh Hashanah sweetness.
Edmon J. Rodman
JTA
H
ere's the buzz about Rosh
Hashanah: Beyond a congrega-
tion or family, it takes a hive to
have a holiday. You may have your tickets,
new dress or suit and High Holiday app,
but without the honey in which to dip a
slice of apple, where would you be?
We wish each other "Shanah tovah umetu-
kah," "Have a good and sweet New Year." To
further sweeten the calendar change we eat
honey cake — even Martha Stewart has a
recipe — and teiglach, little twisted balls of
dough boiled in honey syrup.
Little do we realize that to fill a jar or
squeeze bottle containing two cups of the
sticky, golden stuff, a hive of honeybees
must visit 5 million flowers.
For most of us, the honey seems a some-
how natural byproduct of the cute, bear-
shaped squeeze bottle that we pick up at the
store. But for beekeeper Uri Laio, honey is
like a gift from heaven. His motto, "Honey
72
August 29 • 2013
and Beeswax with Intention:' is on his web-
site, chassidicbeekeeper.com.
"Everyone takes honey for granted; I did:'
says Laio, who is affiliated with Chabad
and attended yeshivah in Jerusalem and
Morristown, N.J.
Not wanting to take my holiday honey
for granted anymore, I suited up along with
him in a white cotton bee suit and hood to
visit the hives he keeps near the large garden
area of the Highland Hall Waldorf School, an
11-acre campus in Northridge, Calif.
After three years of beekeeping — he also
leads sessions with the school's students —
Laio has learned to appreciate that "thou-
sands of bees gave their entire lives to fill a
jar of honey' In the summer, that's five to
six weeks for an adult worker; in the winter
it's longer.
It's been an appreciation gained through
experience — the throbbing kind.
"It's dangerous. I've been stung a lot. It's
part of the learning; Laio says. "The first
summer I thought I was going into ana-
phylactic shock," he adds, advising me to
.
•
_
-2..= •
Uri Laio, the Chassidic Beekeeper, on his
craft: 'You need to be calm."
stay out of the bees' flight path to the hive's
entrance.
Drawing on his education, Laio puts a dab
of honey on his finger and holds it out. Soon a
bee lands and begins to feed.
"Have you ever been stung?" he asks.
"A couple of times' I answer, as Laio uses a
hand-held bee smoker to puff in some white
smoke to "calm the hive' After waiting a few
minutes for the smoke to take effect, and with
me watching wide-eyed, he carefully pries off
the hive's wooden lid. Half expecting to see
an angry swarm of bees come flying out like
in a horror flick, I step back.
"They seem calm," says Laio, bending
down to listen to the buzz level coming
from the hive. "Some days the humming
sounds almost like song:'
The rectangular stack of boxes, called a
Langstroth Hive, allows the bee colony —
estimated by Laio to be 50,000 — to effi-
ciently build the waxy cells of honeycomb
into vertical frames.
As he inspects the frames, each still hold-
ing sedated bees, he finds few capped cells
of honey. The bees have a way to go if Laio
is going to be able to put up a small number
of jars for sale, as he did last year for Rosh
Hashanah.
According to Laio, hives can be attacked
by ants, mites, moths and a disease called
bee colony collapse disorder that has been
decimating hives increasingly over the last
10 years.
Pesticides contribute to the disorder as
well as genetically modified plants, he says.
Underscoring the importance that bees
have in our lives beyond the Days of Awe,
Laio calculates that "one out of every three
bits of food you eat is a result of honeybee
pollination:'
Laio practices backwards or treatment-
free beekeeping; so called because he relies
on observation and natural practices and
forgoes pesticides or chemicals in his bee-
keeping.
The resulting wildflower honey — Laio
hands me a jar to try — is sweet, flavorful
and thick, tastier than any honey from the
store.
"Honey is a superfood. And it heals
better than Neosporin," Laio claims. "In
Europe there are bandages impregnated
with honey"
He says it takes a certain type of charac-
ter to be a beekeeper.
"You need to have patience. Be deter-
mined. Learn your limitations. Be calm in
stressful situations:' he says.
"People are fascinated with it. I can't tell
you how many Shabbos table meals have
been filled with people asking me about
bees:'
On the Sabbath, Laio likes to sip on a
mint iced tea sweetened with his honey —
his only sweetener, he says.
"In the Talmud, honey is considered to be
one-sixtieth of manna:' says Laio, referring
to the "bread" that fell from the sky for 40
years while the Israelites wandered in the
desert. "The blessing for manna ended with
'AIM hashamayim:Trom the heavens; and
not min haaretz:Trom the Earth"'
With the honey-manna connection in
mind, especially at the Jewish New Year,
Laio finds that "all the sweetness, whatever
form it is in, comes straight from God:'
❑
Edmon J. Rodman is a JTA columnist who
writes on Jewish life from Los Angeles. Contact
him at edmojace@gmail.com.