Dan and Doris Cutter can’t control their employees.
The charges zip about, often straying two miles from their designated work space. But the couple is accustomed to the errant nature of their bees.
“That’s why we call it wildflower honey,” Doris Cutter explained.
Because bees will hone in on whatever happens to bloom, a little of everything floral ends up in the hive. Depending upon field and season, the diet may turn honey sweet on outing, slightly earthy the next.
“We just guess,” she said. “Every year it changes.”
Well, the summer honey now available from Wildcat Bees at local farmers’ markets is evidence of the wisdom beekeepers show when they allow nature to set the rules.
While many commercial honeys sink under the cloying weight of sweetness, Wildcat Bees — a Kelseyville operation — soothes with a tempered caramel note, rich and mellow at the same time, with a trace of loam. The sensation is wonderful, and also transient, easing from the palate like divinity.
What follows is even more remarkable. As the sweetness ebbs, the honey begins to strut its provenance, wherever that might be. The breeze from a meadow drifts over the palate, with hints of blowing wildland grasses and dark soil lurking under the lilting floral note.
“Sometimes when we open the hives you can smell the flowers,” Cutter observed.
And it really doesn’t matter if you can’t pick out one from another when the entire meadow ends up in your spoon.
Dave Faries can be reached at 900-2016
