I love raw honey (honey that is straight from the bee hive without adding heat). It’s a comforting food.

I enjoy warming it up in milk for my kids as an after-school treat, spooning oversized dollops onto the center of a piping hot bowl of oatmeal. And, of course, peanut butter spread with that ooey gooey rich honey on thick-cut bread is like manna. It’s no wonder they found honey in Egyptian tombs!

I’m a sucker for those big Mason jars with homespun labels at farmers markets that say Blackberry or Wildflower honey. That means that if honey-bee hives are located by a whole bunch of blackberry bushes, the pollen the bees used to make honey is likely to be sourced from those flowers and thus have the essence of blackberries. Pasteurization boils all those notes away.

Once upon a time, long ago, Paul and I drove to San Francisco for a little vacation (before kids) and in the middle of a wooded wonderland on the side of a country road, we found a checkered table with amber-colored jars filled to the brim with rich honey.  Near the honey was a handcrafted wooden box with a slit at the top and a sign in swirly script that read:

Honor Policy: each jar is $7.

In the past few years there has been a resurgence of people going back to nature.  Whether it’s growing a garden, composting, going green, drinking organic milk, or eating raw honey, people are looking to live more simple lives.

As a result, people are getting into bees. You can see the telltale signs in our neighborhoods, generally two large wooden boxes stacked on top of each other.

People are also taking note of an alarming disease that has been affecting the honey bee called Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD that has wreaked havoc on the honey bees.

There is no definitive answer about what is causing honey bees to abandon their hives, leaving the queens and babies unattended. But leading scientists believe that pesticides and lack of food for the bees is causing the demise of hives around the world.

My 13-year-old daughter Sophie wanted to become a beekeeper because “bees are cool! And they need our help!”

I was game, but a little wary.  For all of my life I have loved everything about honey, except for the bees for no other reason than I held a grudge from when I was 10 and got stung between my flip flops.  But Sophie was right: the bees need our help.

So I was excited to talk to Brian Overman, longtime Renton Hill resident who’s been keeping bees for the last five years.

Brian lives at the tippy top of Renton Hill where the view is spectacular from a cozy rambler built by his parents in 1948. Brian’s yard is beautiful as well as strategic, home to all sorts of bee-friendly plants but mostly flowers to help provide food for his hives and incent them to forage close to home.

“I grew up here on Renton Hill,” Brian told me, his voice filled with a sweet nostalgia. He moved back to his childhood home on Renton Hill 13 years ago after his mother passed away.

“I have loved this place, the hill and my home, for most of the 64 years I have been here.”

Brian’s parents were one of the first families to build on the hill.

“I attended Henry Ford Elementary school and walked home up and down Renton Hill every day, not quite the story of riding a horse 20 miles through the snow to get to school but nevertheless a long uphill walk. I attended Renton High School back when Clarence Williams was our star ball player.”

Brian’s interest in bees came from his background in farming, woodworking and a love of the natural world.

When the Colony Collapse Disorder became public he built his own hives.

“After the first year I was able to actually harvest my first jars of honey from my own honey bees! This was huge! Actually producing a product from my own efforts, well honestly the bees produced the honey but they don’t talk much!”

Brian also set up a hive for one neighbor on the hill and plans to fill it later in the summer with bees from one of the two colonies Brian had just restocked.  When one of his new hives “splits” Brian will capture a new queen and takes a few frames of baby bees to his neighbor to begin a new colony.

Each hive generally supports about 20,000 to 40,000 bees in summertime.

Like his bees, Brian has been busy!

We toured his cabinet-making workshop, viewing frames filled with honey from a previous season. We also were able to see his latest project: building glass observation hives he intends to install inside his home and be able to watch the hives’ activity from the comfort of the couch like living art.

“Beekeeping is a constant learning process.  I love it!  Watching and learning. They are an amazing little society! Humans could learn a lot!” Brian said, handing me a jar of his raw honey.

“Even when CCD (colony collapse disorder) left me with empty hives three out of four winters, making it necessary to begin with a new colony of bees the following spring, I never quit!  Our efforts in our own backyards and those of friends and family are very important to the big picture.”

“Yum!” I said, dipping my finger back into the jar for a second time.

“I can see where this is going,” Brian said. “You kids better get in there before your mom gets it all,” Brian said with a grin, handing each of my kids a jar of his honey.

Brian often thinks about selling his honey at the Renton Farmers Market with his niece. But mostly he enjoys giving it away to family and friends.