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A field of meadowfoam in full bloom is a treat for the senses. The white, knee-high flowers are loaded with pollen, which fills the air with the smell of sweet and rosy vanilla. Walk through the flowers, and the fine yellow dust covers your shoes. Stick out your tongue, and you can taste the flowers themselves.
But that’s just for a few weeks in the early summer. Buy a jar of Warren Kester’s all-natural meadowfoam honey, and you can taste that field anytime you like. Warren is the chief beekeeper of W.C. Kester Apiaries, a third-generation family business based in Rickreall.
With a little help from his father and two brothers, Warren manages 350 bee colonies in portable wooden hives, placed in fields around the Willamette Valley. Some are near blooming meadowfoam, while others feed on the blossoms of blackberries, crimson clover or fireweed. Each varietal honey, from a given field in a given year, has its own distinct flavor profile.
“We don’t mix it all together and call it honey,” Warren said. “It’s a natural product, and we don’t add anything to it, pasteurize it, or overprocess it. We just extract it, strain it and jar it.”
Then they sell it, to excited consumers at farmers’ markets in Salem and Newport. The W.C. Kester booth also offers beeswax candles, hand-made from vintage molds shaped like pine cones and asparagus bunches. The third leg of their business is commercial pollination services, which take Kester hives to the California almond fields in February, the Oregon cherry trees in the spring, and the Willamette Valley vegetable fields in the early summer.
The Kesters have been beekeepers since 1941, when Warren’s grandfather first started selling honey from his porch in Rickreall. Today, W.C. Kester bees are found in “bee yards” all over the Willamette Valley, and Warren hopes to expand to 400 hives by the end of the summer. In spite of national concern over bee colony collapse, the Kester bees are holding their own.
Free-roaming bees can’t be classified as organic, because their food source can’t be controlled. They also suffer from mites and diseases, which must be treated with targeted doses of miticide and antibiotics, Warren said. But as a whole they are staying healthy.
“We try to keep them in places where they have a diverse diet, because that is thought to be a big part of (colony collapse). Bees weren’t designed to eat just one type of pollen or one type of nectar. If all they have is meadowfoam pollen, then they don’t get the trace minerals they would get in mustard or dandelions,” Warren said. “That’s why we keep them on the fields while they’re blooming, then extract the honey, then move them to a new source. It’s good for our business, and it keeps them healthy.”
Warren brings all-natural varietal honeys and beeswax candles to the Newport Farmers’ Market every Saturday. For more information on W.C. Kester Apiaries, call 503-363-5357.
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