Expertease Experts on: Wild Honey

Danno, you're an expert in wild honey harvesting and so I thought we could probe your area. What? Of expertise. Oh, spelled wrong? Naturally. You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong, the podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Expert comedy writer Clare Sera and expert writer Danno Sullivan bring their expertise to other unrelated expertises. Very excited tonight, Danno, to talk to you about wild honey harvesting. Yes, people are abuzz about honey. I am a big fan of honey. How could you not be? It's the sweetest thing on earth.

Well, it's sweet and slightly bitter, which is one of the things that I've always thought about you. Clare, I became interested in honey as a young man. I was attracted, first of all, to sweet things. Like most kids, I enjoyed candy, cake, pie. I would ask my mom to pick up some honey to bring home so I could make my own candy cake and pie. Some of the kids even called me little Danny candy cake and pie. And I'm glad I outgrew that phase. Have you ever had candy? Oh, yes, I have. What do you like? What's your favorite? Licorice. Not very sweet, so that's interesting.

Well, that's molasses. And to be honest, we tried to get a wild molasses harvester on the show, but they are all in New Zealand for the conference this week. Yeah, I'm a little ashamed that we weren't able to take part in that. But really, it's two different worlds, and I need to just get over myself. Wild honey harvesting, what is it that you mean by wild honey? Wild honey is honey made by wild bees. So this is not backyard hives. This is not something that someone could do themselves on their patio. Because honey beekeeping has become a popular hobby. Urban beekeeping, it's called.

Urban beekeeping, yes, yep. As a promoter of honey, as a marketer of honey on my own side business, we want to disassociate with that wild honey when it was wild, and really be promoting new modern honey as a much more family-friendly substance. Well, I hear you saying that, and I admire it. But at the same time, I feel like you have a double-sided brand, because the act of extracting that wild honey is very dangerous and would not be something that I would want kids to want to try at home. It's dangerous. It is dangerous if you're not properly prepared.

That's the key. So we're promoting our at-home bee kit for kids. It's like an ant farm, except much more dangerous, because the ants can't come out and sting you, but the bees sure can. And we're working on a better slogan than that. But that's the best we've come up with so far. Well, it's truthful. At least it's truthful. That's the thing. Truth in advertising. I think people really respect that. And to go along with that, we've gotten some red pockmarked children covered with the stings of the bees to show how dangerous it can be, not how dangerous it must be.

If I might say, that is a great mascot. A pockmarked child. So we say, be happy, be joyous, bee. And it just ends there with kind of dot, dot, dot. It's a little bit of the spiritual side. Well, it's B-E-E, you see. Oh, I see. I dropped the last E in my mind. And that's a silent E. The trick is, some people get the silent E mixed up with the preceding non-silent E, which makes it two silent E's in a row. And they just pronounce it B. You know, if I might say, that's when I sort of zoned out of your documentary. You went into that for a really long time. Which of the E's is silent in the word bee?

I saw on your documentary, you talk about how the bees themselves scout the place they want to create their own hive. They will not be told where to hive. Yeah, you would think they were human. They do everything in such an organized fashion. It's like they've got little bee flow charts and little bee action plans, little bee task lists stuck up on the fridge in magnets. Of course, they don't. That's, you know, it's a metaphor. What is a metaphor? Growing clover to raise your bees. Beautiful, beautiful. So, you have a child, age 10, 11. Yes, that little... What did we name him a long time ago?

Yes, I have a little child, Clem. He is the 10-year-old we're using with the pockmarks. Oh, you don't have to paint the pockmarks on. Oh, no, no, no, no. Those are actual bee-made pockmarks. He volunteered. Well, he didn't volunteer. You know how parents volunteer a child for a task. He has no rights. He's a kid. And a lot of the controversy was you took, little Clem, on the dangerous of your expeditions, the most dangerous of all, the wild honey harvesting in the Andes, the cliffs of the Andes Mountains. So, you did watch the part of the documentary about the poisonous Andean bees.

Yeah, I woke back up again. Now, some of these hives that are built into the cliffs, I mean, you've got to know how to do rock climbing, repelling. Once you get up there, it's amazing. You're thinking about the bounty to come, which is this incredible honey unavailable by any other method or source. True. But what happened with us, we were so caught up in this wonderful realm, nobody thought to bring the beekeeper suits. So, you are up there clinging by your fingers and toes, and suddenly you're unprotected and you got nothing to do but swat. Oh, my gosh. That is absolutely terrifying.

It was even more terrifying because this particular hive of bees had built their hive right next to the eerie of a proud mother eagle. Oh, no. Six baby eaglets. What? And boy, are they protective. It turns out they have an asymmetric relationship. I think that's called. With the bees? It's asymmetrical with the bees? Yeah, the bees and the eagles are supporting one another. I guess the bees provide honey for the eagles, and the eagles provide feathers and worms for the bees. Oh, I didn't. So, this particular beehive, they use feathers and worms. Is that part of what gives it its- Oh, Claire.

I'm sure you've heard about local honey. You know, if you go to Ohio, you're going to get the flavor of the clover fields of Ohio. Right, right. If you go to France, you're going to get the flavor of the orange blossoms of the Southern Île-de-France in your honey. Yes. And baby, let me tell you, the flavor of mountainside worm and feather honey. Oh, my gosh. That's the flavor that turns little Danny Candy into great big Danno Mano. And on this particular outing, you were successful. We were successful, Claire. There we were on the cliff side. There was me leading the expedition.

Right. So, I had the initial rope lasso around my waist, and boy, that's like cinching into solid rock with a crampon. Right on. Right behind me, I've got Lil' Clem. He travels with me, kind of as we call him the pickup boy. And anything that I miss, he has to pick up. That's all that is. Sure, sure. But he hadn't climbed up the cliff face with you. Well, I had dragged him up. So, he's attached to the cable behind me. Oh, I see. So, he's probably just eight feet below. It's like the tail of a kite. So, it stabilizes me as I swing those mighty haunches up the cliff side.

But now, I'm guessing it was that downdraft that Clem was creating as part of what alerted the eagles to your arrival. Well, Clem is still small enough, young enough to get excited by certain things. And he screams out, Daddy, Daddy, eagles. And I think he's excited. He's pointing. He's terrified, the poor kid. He's never seen anything that big with talons and an eagle-like beak. So, you kept his mother away from him? But you can imagine a little lad like that being terrified, screaming out, Eagle Daddy, Eagle Daddy. I misunderstood him. I said, Eagle Mommy, Clem.

Eagle Mommy. Protective Eagle Mommy. You're just always trying to teach. You're just always teaching your child. Every moment is a teaching moment with a child. That's really, you know, why do we make documentaries if not for the children? I don't know if you've ever been stung by just a regular bee? Sure, sure. Who hasn't? It hurts like the dickens, does it not? It does. It stings. Yes. That's why they're called stingers. A little word information for you there. Yeah, that's another little piece of knowledge that you dropped. You just never stop. Well, what came to pass was they were fed up on us sting after sting after sting after sting, sucking in the blood, the flesh of me and little Clem.

There's a simple technique that wild beekeepers have mastered since almost the beginning of time. And it took us a little while to get out the supplies we needed to accomplish this. But once we did, we were able to tame those bees simply by the mere act of taking out our plastic bear-shaped containers. Oh my gosh. Instantly, those bees recognized a happy home for their honey. And they were willing to spurt it right in there for us. And knowing that their honey would be well cared for, we were allowed to leave. Claire, you won't believe it. I'm not sure I do.

The honey those bees produced tasted exactly like us. That is really, it's a much more exciting way to make a living than one would imagine on hearing, oh, you know, I'm a beekeeper. I harvest honey. Yeah, and I did not mean to imply that I'm making a living at this. It's done for the love. Oh, I see. I see. So this is a hobby. Yes. No. Yes. I come from a family of hobbyists. My father was a hobbyist. And, you know, we all had a hobby. My father was a hobbyist. And, you know, we all make money from our hobbies. But he was a professional hobbyist. And I and all of my siblings are all professional hobbyists as well.

Well, thank you so much, Dana, for coming out. Could I just mention, Claire, you put in a kind of a quiet plug for the molasses convention going on in New Zealand this week. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. They're kind of stealing our thunder a little bit because we do have the annual Honey Get Together in Texas. I'm sure that we'll have in the show notes when and where in Texas. Well, thank you so much, Dana, for coming out. Waxahachie. Waxahachie, Texas. The Honey Get Together, which is not associated with the New Zealand. Oh, it's not. You don't even need to mention it.

The whole point is I'm trying to attract people. No, we're not talking about the New Zealand molasses convention that has nothing to do with honey gathering. Well, thank you so much, Dana, for coming out. Once a year, there is a joint get together between the honey harvesters and the molasses makers. Oh, no, wait. I did not know about that. We have our differences, but, you know, there comes a time at least once a year where you got to set those differences aside. You really have one over on the molasses folks. If you... Claire, they're sulfated and we're not.

Well, thank you so much, Dana, for coming out. And I guess it's up to the individual. Is that a good thing or a bad thing to be sulfated? Right. Also, molasses, you're not going to get wax. I mean, you have a whole side business with beeswax. Oh, yeah. Our little side business, None of Your Beeswax, is... Well, go ahead and ask me about it. How's business? How is business? None of your beeswax. And I don't know why business is plummeting, but gosh, it's fun. Right. To say. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Dana, for coming out and regaling us with your adventures.

As well as your knowledge. You never do lose a teaching moment. And we appreciate that here at Expertise. That's what we're all about. Waxing at you, Texas, Saturday. Okay. Be there or be without honey. And what's a bee without honey? A wasp. The Expertise Spelled Wrong podcast is free and like the Amish, all are welcome. Be sure to sign up for our email announcements at funnypodcast.com and follow us in your favorite podcast app. Like the expert podcast listener we know you are. Don't hesitate to send us a swag bag to our P.O. box. Let us maybe have a little sample of that feather and worm honey.

You might like the big man odano flavor that we're specializing in now. Oh, that's tempting.