Hi, there! Wendy Mather, program manager of the California Master Beekeeper Program, waves to the California Honey Festival crowd. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

The annual California Honey Festival, free and open to the public, will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, May 6 in downtown Woodland. It's about celebrating the importance of bees; the festival's mission is "to promote honey and honey bees and their products." Last year's event drew some 40,000 people.

Honey bees pollinate more than 30 California crops, including almonds, a $5 billion industry (no bees, no pollination, no almonds). Indeed, California produces more than a third of our country's vegetables and three-quarters of our fruits and nuts. However, colony losses are alarming due to pesticides, pests, predators and pathogens. 

The event, launched in 2017, is both educational and entertaining. You can taste honey, check out bee observation hives, watch cooking demonstrations and kids' shows, taste mead and other alcoholic drinks (if you're of age) and learn about bees from beekeepers and bee scientists. Vendors, offering various products and food, will line the streets.

Co-founder of the California Honey Festival, with the city of Woodland, is Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, Robert Mondavi Institute. At her annual booth, she explains what the honey flavor wheel is and invites the crowd to sample honey varietals. 

An integral part of the festival is the UC Davis-based California Master Beekeeper Program (CAMBP), founded and directed by Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of the UC Davis Department Entomology and Nematology faculty. Since 2016, the CAMBP team has provided a program of learning, teaching, research, and public service, delivering comprehensive, science-based information about honey bees and honey bee health.  They've donated donated 32,000 hours of volunteer time and served 186,630 individuals in education, outreach and beekeeping mentorship since 2016. Read more about their classes and their work on their website.

Here's a photographic glimpse of previous California Honey Festivals:

Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, checks out the aroma before tasting honey. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

But sometimes folks associate "sweet" with honey.

Honey, however, is not always sweet, says Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, who is to honey what noted wine connoisseurs are to wine. 

Her descriptions of honey varietals are not only remarkable but legendary.

You, too, can learn about honey and how to taste varietals from California, the United States, and throughout the world at the center's series of three classes that begin next month.

The classes take place Feb. 8,  March 22, and April 25 in the Sensory Theater, Robert Mondavi Institute, located at 392 Old Davis Road, UC Davis campus. You can register for a single class ($100) or register for all three classes and receive a sample set of three honeys as a gift ($25 value).

Honey Exploration: California

Part of the process of extracting honey from a frame. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

It's interesting that a company based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, has announced plans to produce a "bee-free honey."

Snackandbakery.com recently published a piece about Fooditive's plans. 

"By mass-producing a bio-identical honey that eliminates the need to intensively farm honeybees, Fooditive aims to create a scalable, provenanced supply," the article related. "This will address consumer concerns about animal welfare and sustainability, as well as provide all the traditional benefits of traditional honey."

The Dutch-based company proclaims on its website: "At the beginning of our journey, we had a dream. The dream was to create something that could change the world and make people's lives better by making the world sweeter with no side effects. We wanted to help people get the things they need or just make their day better, but the dream grew and became a mission to make healthy food affordable."

The dream now is to apparently to start production trials in 2023 of "the world's first 100 percent bee-free honey."

Fooditive founder and CEO Moayad Abushokhedim is quoted as saying: “Our goal is to provide the world's first 100% bee-free honey with no compromise on taste, quality or price. The process of genetic sequence modification used in our honey already has an established track record with our vegan casein. We believe our process will be the stepping stone for a revolutionary advancement in the food and biotechnology industries, enabling any animal product to be mimicked and even improved by bioengineering plant-based ingredients.”

The problem is, if it's not from bees, it's not honey. Call it Hon-ee, or Hawn-ee or Hun-ee, but it's not honey.  There's also a product called "Bee Free Honee," an apple-based vegan alternative to honey. The company went out of business in 2019.

Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center (no, not the UC Davis Bee-Free Honey and Pollination Center) minces no words. "Call it what it is. A honey substitute. Or a vegan alternative."

"Honey," she says, "is the product of honey bees."

Want to learn about honey? What the honey bees really make? The UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center is offering a series of three classes on Honey Exploration where you can learn about--and taste--honey varietals throughout the world. The series starts Feb. 8, continues March 22, and ends April 25.

Honey Exploration: California

Honey Exploration: United States

Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Nothing is better than this!

A glass of mead. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollinator Center at the Robert Mondavi Institute, is actually the "queen bee" of this organization but she's also a worker bee. She's scheduled two mead workshops in February, and a series of three honey exploration classes--exploring honey in California, United States and the world--in February, March and April.

2023 Mead Making Bootcamp

Want some hands-on experience? This hands-on course will feature small learning groups, each with its own UC Davis leader and a talented mead maker. Groups of 5-6 will follow a basic mead recipe. Finally, students will bottle the mead made in previous workshops. The bootcamp is from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Feb. 2 in the Robert Mondavi Institute, LEED Platinum Winery  Event Details

2023 Intro to Mead Making

Brewers and winemakers alike know that the buzz in the world of alcoholic beverages is all about mead. Explore this fascinating fermented beverage from its rich history to its recent rebirth in America. Taste and learn the styles, ingredient selection, and steps to making good mead. This is from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Feb. 3-4 in the Sensory Theater, Robert Mondavi Institute, located at 392 Old Davis Road, Davis. Event Details

A cordovan honey bee, as golden as they come. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Honey Exploration: California

This is the first in the series of three classes. You can taste the honeys of California while learning about the unique characteristics of each varietal, Harris says. The honeys will be paired with a selection of cheeses from throughout the state. The first class is from 5:30 to 7 p.m., Feb. 8 in the Sensory Theater, Robert Mondavi Institute. As earlier mentioned it's located on 392 Old Davis Road, Davis. Event Details

Honey Exploration: United States

The second of the three classes in the Honey Exploration Series is from 5:30 to 7 p.m., March 22 in the Sensory Theater, Robert Mondavi Institute. Event Details

A "glowing" jar of honey from the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Center, UC Davis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Honey Exploration: The World

The last of the three classes in the Honey Exploration Series means "traveling the world through your taste buds."  You may not have traveled much, but you'll taste honey from Brazil, Australia, Europe and perhaps even a tiny bit of the rare Melipona, a genus of stingless bees.  (Factoid from Wikipedia: "The largest producer of honey from Melipona bees in Mexico is in the state of Yucatán where bees are studied at an interactive park called 'Bee Planet' which is within the Cuxtal Ecological Reserve. The class is set for 5:30 to 7 p.m., April 25 in the Sensory Theater, Robert Mondavi Institute. Event Details

You can also sign up to receive the Honey and Pollination Center's newsletter here.

 The Honey and Pollination Center aims to help UC Davis " to become the world's leading authority on honey bee health, pollination, and honey."

Goals include:

1. Expand research and education efforts addressing the production, nutritional value, health benefits, economics, quality standards and appreciation of honey.
2. Help the industry develop informative and descriptive labeling guidelines for honey and bee-related products to establish transparency in the marketplace.
3. Elevate the perceived value of varietal honey to producers and consumers through education, marketing, and truth in labeling with the end goal of increasing the consumption of honey.
4. Organize and implement programs and short courses about pollinators and pollination, beekeeping education and honey and honey products.
5. Support students engaged in research, teaching and outreach, which promotes the mission of the Center. 

 Now about that honey-butter....how many more minutes until that loaf of yeast bread comes out of the oven?