Willow Glen Resident

Cover Story

Photograph by Vicki Thompson

Make a Beeline: Kelsey McDaid (left) and her brother, Benjamin, are members of the El Sereno 4-H Club beekeeping class at San Jose History Park. The siblings pull out a frame that is placed in the hives to prevent the bees from making combs.

What's the Buzz?

Steve Demkowski sells Willow Glen Honey

By Alicia Upano

Steve Demkowski sits with students after a hot afternoon of beekeeping. Under the shade of a tree, the group drinks water and honey-infused lemon-verbena tea, as 10-year-old Kelsey McDaid and Demkowski recite their favorite bee tale.

"And then there was a flower," Demkowski begins.

"A bud," Kelsey says, clasping her fingertips to a point resembling a makeshift tulip.

Then the story deviates to what the children have learned during their 4-H beekeeping sessions over the last three years. Students and their parents excitedly explain the sophisticated society of bees, from the guards at the hive to the foragers who collect pollen and nectar. The group talks about the importance of bees for crop pollination and the flavor nuances of honey, and how they like to eat it.

This year, Demkowski's students have their own hand-painted hives in a corner of History Park at Kelley Park.

"These tiny little insects do all these amazing things," says Demkowski, who has been a beekeeper for five years.

Not only do bees produce honey, but they also pollinate 80 percent of the country's crops, Demkowski says.

In addition to creating bumper crops, local honey helps alleviate seasonal allergies by building the body's immune system to allergy-causing pollen, according to Stephanie Rosenbaum, author of Honey: From Flower to Table. Both Demkowski and 4-H parent Aminah Ramezany regularly eat honey for their allergies, but it's important to know that children under 12 months should never eat honey because of the risk of botulism.

Demkowski makes his own honey at his Willow Glen home, and it's as local as it gets, labeled as Willow Glen Honey. The nectar is sold in the History San Jose shop, various Willow Glen craft fairs and his Dry Creek Road residence.

Sharing his enthusiasm about honey is the only thing Demkowski likes more than playing golf, beekeeping and eating honey on vanilla ice cream. He teaches the El Sereno 4-H Club at the history park and speaks to Hacienda and Booksin elementary schools and several Brownie troops. He has even welcomed a Gilroy book club that read Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees for a bee lesson on his porch.

"When we started, none of us knew anything," says Ramezany, a History San Jose education assistant. Ramezany brings her daughters, Cepideh and Rahimeh, to the biweekly beekeeping sessions at the park. She also keeps a hive at home, where the bees feast on orange blossoms.

At the park, Ramezany's daughters and the other students move confidently about the hives. Kelsey's 6-year-old brother, Benjamin, smokes the bees with burning eucalyptus bark to calm them, as the group moves from hive to hive, searching for queens and examining hexagonal combs.

Even with her veil off, Kelsey is fearless, welcoming bees onto her bare hand. She tells her mother, Caryl Westerberg, the bee is a drone, a male bee hatched from an unfertilized egg without a stinger. In the bee society, it's the females who do all the work.

"How do you know it's a drone?" Westerberg asks.

"Its eyes are connected and it's so fat," Kelsey says.

Westerberg shares her children's interest and comes to participate in the beekeeping. After being chin-high in buzzing bees, Westerberg takes off her bee suit, saying simply, "It's fascinating."

Bee Aware

Demkowski's introduction to bees was not as fascinating as it was fearful. A bee swarm arrived at his Willow Glen home in 2001.

"I was like most people--paranoid," he says.

However, after a little research, Demkowski learned that swarm was how bees propagate new hives, and it is one of the safest times to be around them.

That was the start of "bee madness," he says.

Demkowski talked to area beekeepers and got every book he could lay his hands on. He soon discovered that honeybees are only one of many bee species. San Jose was the first city on the West Coast to have honeybees, which Europeans brought to America in the 1600s. In 1850, honeybees were shipped from the East Coast to pollinate the crops in the area's thriving agriculture businesses, he says.

Even with his education and tolerance toward bees, the swarm that gathered around his home had chosen a poor location. Bees started falling into his pool, forcing Demkowski to hire a man to remove the hive. The removal inadvertently killed the bees.

The demise of the hive, however, was the beginning of Demkowski's infatuation. He noticed his fruits and vegetables were struggling. Demkowski ordered queen bees in the mail, and he rescued two swarms living in the Oak Hill Memorial Park--a skill he learned from another beekeeper--and brought them home.

"As soon as I got the bees in, I got a bumper crop," he says.

Using his hive rescue skills, Demkowski soon collected 200 hives, which he keeps on private properties throughout the Bay Area. Many of his apiaries are on properties larger than 20 acres, where the landowner and Demkowski mutually benefit from the arrangement. The bees pollinate the crops growing on the land. Demkowski, in turn, has a place to keep his hives and shares honey with the landowners.

He has also developed quite a beekeeping reputation. Demkowski has become one of the go-to guys police call when they need hives removed from homes and businesses in San Jose, Gilroy and Morgan Hill.

As his beekeeping expertise grew, his apian interests caught the attention of History San Jose, which wanted better pollination in its vegetable garden. Demkowski offered the park hives and began teaching and selling Willow Glen Honey in the History San Jose store.

"That's when I really started learning about bees," Demkowski says. "You don't really start learning until people start asking questions."

To Demkowski, teaching children about bees is an avocation. He has a business, S.J. Demkowski Construction, but he volunteers a considerable amount of time teaching. The amazed look on a boy's face or a classroom filled with "thank yous" is more than enough payment, he says.

His work at the park has moved to his residence, where all the proceeds from the Willow Glen Honey he sells off his porch--$6 per pound or $15 for 3 pounds--go toward 4-H Club classes at the park. The funds are used for equipment, including bee suits, medication for the hives and new queens.

"You really can't get this kind of honey in the grocery store," he says.

Willow Glen Honey is raw and unfiltered, full of pollens to help combat allergies. The honey is also in its purest form, with antioxidants, trace minerals and vitamins that sugar lacks.

Like fine wine, honey contains the flavor of its source. Willow Glen Honey is so tasty because the bees have plenty of herbs to feast on, Demkowski says. In his own home, the Demkowskis let their oregano and hyssop flower as nourishment for the bees.

Demkowski has also been nourished by becoming a beekeeper. Like his buzzing neighbors, he has learned to stop and smell the flowers.

"They really teach you how to work slowly, gently, not to overact," he says.

He loves the smell of a hive when he opens it up and hears the happy hum of the bees making honey.

"The tension just pours out of me. I don't think about work. That is the ultimate," he says.

For information on Willow Glen Honey, pollination help, or swarm and hive removal, call 408.723.5411. Willow Glen Honey can also be purchased at The Unique Boutique, 1808 Jonathan Ave., on Nov. 9-12, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.