The Sweet World of Joe’s Honey

Four generations of beekeepers help this family business thrive

By Rachel Trachten  |  Photos by Zach Pine

 

 

Rain poured down in sheets as a fierce gust of winter wind lifted the Joe’s Honey booth right off the ground one Saturday at the Hayward Farmers’ Market. Miguel Angel Gutiérrez reached up to grab one of the bars under the canopy and held on tight. “I started to float,” said the quick-thinking 13-year-old, recounting the fun of leaving the ground and saving the day.

Miguel Angel’s grandfather, José Gutiérrez, the Joe behind the family business, has been working with bees for most of his 72 years. “I remember I was maybe four or five years. I helped my father put the swarm in the box and pull honey. I also helped him blow smoke into the boxes with a smoker he built himself,” says Joe, who grew up in the Mexican state of Jalisco in a family of subsistence farmers. At age seven, he caught his first swarm because his dad was away in Guadalajara. “I tied a box onto the guamuchil tree and held onto the rope. My brother shook the tree, but instead of most bees falling in the box, they fell on us, and I got stung over 20 times. We got lucky because the queen bee fell into the box, so all the bees followed her in.”

Joe was interested in the bees, unlike most of his siblings, who were either fearful or allergic. When the bees swarmed and his father called for help, Joe banged two pieces of metal together to create a noise and vibration that calmed them.

Now it’s Joe’s younger family members, including 17 grandchildren and 12 great-grands, who are the helpers. Joe’s son, grandsons, and great-grandkids work with the family beehives in six East Bay cities and unincorporated areas, and even the little ones put on bee suits and gather honey.

 

 

Pollen, Propolis, and Royal Jelly

Each Saturday at the farmers’ market, the kids chat with customers, offer honey samples, and make sales. Joe’s granddaughter Joanna Contreras checks jars to make sure they have the new logo, which was designed by grandson Jalen Gomez, a high school senior soon headed to art school. Joanna brings breakfast to fuel family members helping at the market. Another granddaughter, Veronica Solorio, teaches customers about bee products, interacting with regulars like Bob Riblett, who says that Joe’s bee products have eased his breathing allergies.

“A lot of folks know just about honey, but they don’t know about all the other cool products like pollen and propolis and royal jelly that we as humans can consume for our own health,” Veronica says.

Royal jelly is a bee secretion used for symptoms of menopause. Propolis is an antibacterial and antifungal product used to cover wounds and to ward off colds and sore throats.

 

 

Honey in the Joe’s Family Kitchens

Family members each have favorite ways to use their honey. Grandson Mario Contreras gets energy for his workouts from a protein-packed mixture of plain yogurt, honey, cinnamon, chia seeds, nut butter, and berries. He recommends honey on pancakes and in coffee as well as in camotes, a Mexican candied sweet potato dish. Granddaughter Veronica says her husband likes to experiment with his barbecue sauce, using honey from the family’s Fairview hives one season, then switching to their Hayward honey for the flavor change that comes with pollen foraged from different flowers. She also recommends one of her grandfather’s favorite snacks: a mix of honey with fresh walnuts. The younger kids like to drizzle honey on pizza crusts or pour it into the center nooks of strawberries.

Back to Beekeeping

Joe came to the United States in 1975, bringing carpentry and reupholstery skills he learned in Mexico. He and his wife, Manuela, a talented seamstress, earned a living in the reupholstery business and eventually opened their own shop, which they passed on to their grandson Victor.

It was Joe’s son Mario who drew Joe back to beekeeping. Mario suffered badly from hay fever, which his mother treated with bee pollen sent from Mexico. But she wasn’t satisfied with the quality of this pollen and believed that local pollen would be better. Around the same time, one of Joe’s nephews offered to give Joe a beehive, and Joe found a way to share this hive with one of his grandsons.

“It was my younger brother’s eighth birthday,” says Joe’s grandson Julio Contreras. “My grandfather shows up in his van with the beehive and tells my brother Victor, ‘I have a really great surprise and present for you.’”

Joe installed the hive close to his upholstery shop, adding more bees over time. Julio says they kept just enough hives so they could enjoy the honey and take pollen to help with allergies. “Then we started giving some of it away and more folks started asking for it.”

 

 

At the Hayward Community Garden

Meanwhile, Joe and Mario were also busy growing squash, beans, corn, tomatoes, chayote, and nopales. “Wherever there was any piece of soil that was even remotely possible to grow in, my grandfather and my father were continuing their traditions as farmers growing food,” says Julio. In the mid 1990s, they found better soil by renting a plot at the Hayward Community Garden and became the first members to have beehives there. Julio went on to study agroecology at UC Berkeley.

The family’s connection to the community garden lasted more than 20 years, as Joe and Mario taught other gardeners to keep bees. They also joined the garden’s board of directors, where they built a friendship with fellow board member Sandy Frost, a longtime anti-hunger activist who has led gleaning projects for decades. Frost got the permits and insurance needed to sell produce from the garden at the Hayward Farmers’ Market.

Julio recalls the garden as a place where plants from around the world were grown and 17 languages were spoken. His family would bring their own and other gardeners’ extra produce to the farmers’ market, especially crops like collard greens, chayote, and nopales that local supermarkets weren’t selling. “We then transitioned to saying, ‘Hey, why don’t we bring our local honey and honey products?’” says Julio. And that’s how they started Joe’s Honey in 2008.

Joe began sharing his bee knowledge throughout the community, attending meetings of the Alameda County Beekeepers Association and teaching at local elementary schools and fairs. Joe started hearing from gardeners who were noticing a decrease in pollination (likely related to pesticides harming the bees) and wondering if having hives on their properties would reverse the trend. Should they set up their own hive? It happened at that time that Joe’s family needed to relocate their main bee yard away from its location near a factory that installs solar panels since the bees were causing a problem by regularly dropping their waste on the solar panels as they flew back to the hive. Moving the hives to multiple gardeners’ sites turned out to be a win-win solution.

Relationships with 100 Customers

Customers approaching the Joe’s Honey farmers’ market tent can count on an enthusiastic welcome. One-on-one relationships are what it’s all about. But when a representative from Trader Joe’s offered to buy all their bee pollen, Joe refused the offer, even though it was a lucrative one.

“I love collecting honey and pollen to help people heal,” he says. “My dad taught me that it’s better to build relationships with 100 customers instead of selling to one or two large vendors.”

Likewise, the business thrives because so many family members are involved, each bringing their own skills and talents. “My grandfather says everyone has put in their pinch of help,” says Julio. “Everyone has contributed.” ♦

Find Joe’s Honey on Saturdays from 9 to 1 at the Hayward Farmers’ Market or @joeshoney510 on Instagram.

 

Writer Rachel Trachten and photographer Zach Pine thoroughly enjoyed meeting Joe and his family at the Hayward Farmers’ Market. They left the market damp from the rain, but happy, with plenty of honey in tow. Read Rachel’s stories at clippings.me/users/rachel_trachten and learn about Zach’s environmental art projects at zpcreatewithnature.com and sandglobes.org.