West County's mobile honey dealer
You may have seen Russian River Honey's tent set up along the roadside in various places in west county. Here's the buzz about his biz.
I ran into Antonio Gutierrez Jr. when I saw his mobile honey van parked near Forestville’s downtown park. I’d seen him parked there before and in a couple of other places around West County — on Occidental Road north of Sebastopol and south of town on Bloomfield.
Gutierrez, a former computer repairperson, traded bytes for bees three and a half years ago. He’d worked with bees as a hobby and part-time for seven years before that.
Most of his hives (30 of them) are in his backyard in Forestville, but he’s also got hives scattered around West County in people’s backyards.
“I have three or four other locations in Sebastopol in people’s yards. If they give the space that I can put the hives in, I give them honey,” he said, noting that he’s always looking for more hive locations.
“We also do hive maintenance, and we’re just starting our commercial maintenance for corporations that want hives on their corporate property,” he said.
Eventually, he’d like to become a pollinator for large orchards.
Gutierrez learned about beekeeping by training as an apprentice with another local beekeeper.
“Beekeeper Michael Turner trained me in hive maintenance…me and him would go to Marin County, and I would train like an apprentice. I’d get paid just to do my labor and learn, and that’s how I got the skills to be a good beekeeper. Then I learned more as I met more beekeepers.”
And yes, in this job, he does get stung now and then.
“If I’m too aggressive, they’ll sting me,” he said. “Bees give you warning signs. If you don’t listen to the warning, then they’ll sting you. The warning is coming around your face,” he said, “and when that happens, you know, hey, it’s time to go.”
He’s philosophical about the stings.
“If you think about it, what are you doing? You’re messing up their house, right?” he said with a shrug. “And they have guard bees that come out—so that’s what they do.”
Though smoking a hive does calm the bees down, he tries not to do that.
“I try not to smoke them. I don’t want the honey to get that smoked taste. So I try to just deal with them, you know, on a one-on-one kind of basis. We have a kind of understanding. I’m gonna go in, but I go in slowly, and I go in when they’re pretty much really busy getting food.”
He said bees are more aggressive in winter when there’s less food in the environment.
“We don’t take all their honey from them. We leave honey for them. We leave pollen for them,” he said.
Gutierrez said the taste of his honey changes over the year as the bees find different kinds of flowers blooming in different seasons. He calls what he does “micro-beekeeping.”
Of course, I bought some honey from him. It’s delicious—bright, clear and fruity—like all the sweetness of spring and summer condensed into a jar. It’s comforting on these dark fall days—when comfort in the world at large is a little hard to come by.
Where to find him: On most Saturdays, you can find him set up at 1295 Bloomfield Road, Sebastopol, and on Sundays, he’s in downtown Forestville. For specific dates, see his Russian River Honey Facebook page.
