Why, why, why, after six years and over 300 interviews, do I continue to mess with Up in Your Business? Every time I think, “Okay, it may be time for me to stop interviewing successful people” I have another interesting guest and learn something new.
That is what happened (again) on my last show with Jeremy Bemis of Bemis Tree Farm and Bemis Honey Bee Farm.
Jeremy is the epitome of a farmer: tall, unassuming, knowledgeable, and hardworking. Like many successful endeavors, his beekeeping business came out of necessity; he needed some pollinators for his farmland.
Bee Business
Son Gray, my cohost, really should have been the interviewer for this show … and kind of was. He knew a lot about bees from his hobby as a weekend and community gardener. While Gray used the correct vocabulary and asked the best questions, we learned about:
- Bee colony hierarchy
- Bee pollen regurgitation
- Wildflower, orange blossom, clover, and the other names of honey flavors (including the grotesque process of aphid honey)
- How bees make new bees and especially new queens
- How many bees it takes to make a jar of honey
- That the business of bees is multilayered. Honey production is the most obvious, but there is wholesale, retail, bees wax for candles and cosmetics, supplying bees for farmers, bee lessons, and the one I had never heard of: bee renting; honeybees are rented and trucked all over the US to pollinate crops of all kinds.
Why We Should Keep the Cameras Rolling
Some of my favorite parts of the interview are after it is over, when Gray and I are chit-chatting with the guest(s). Seems like there is always something I wish we had captured on air. After the Bemis show, Jeremy told us that Fischer Honey, founded in 1935, buys surplus honey from across the US to bottle in their North Little Rock plant. I found that interesting.
This is No Joke
You can ask my staff: after every show I say, “I think that was my favorite interview so far.” For which they roll their eyes as to say, “Here we go again.”
Stay tuned. My interview with Jeremy Bemis will be posted on our YouTube channel and air on KABF and The Answer next week (March 31st).
And mark your calendars for April 22nd the annual Bee Day on the Bemis Tree and Bee Farm.
