tasteMAKERS

- [Advertiser] "tasteMAKERS" is brought to you with support from Global Foods Market and Midwest Dairy.

(soft instrumental music) - Doctor, inventor, mom, and now beekeeper, Dr. Marion Pierson is protecting bees and building community one vacant lot at a time.

(bees buzzing) (uplifting music) I'm Cat Neville, and for the past two decades, I've been telling the story of local food.

In that time, American food culture has exploded in tiny towns and big cities from coast to coast.

In "tasteMAKERS," I explore the maker movement and take you along for the journey to meet the makers who define the flavor of American cuisine.

(uplifting music) So we're about to head off and meet the incredible Dr. Marion Pierson, and when we get back, I'm gonna show you a very easy recipe for fried chicken with hot honey.

(soft instrumental music) - We are at the MO Hives main apiary, in the middle of the Blue Hills neighborhood in Kansas City.

Four years ago, when I was thinking about getting into beekeeping, urban beekeeping kept coming back to me.

My husband found an article about Detroit Hives, and it was so interesting, they were converting vacant lots in the middle of Detroit into honeybee farms.

And I was like, that is a cool idea.

I wonder if we could do that here.

Reached out to them, they were super great, and they said absolutely you could.

And it started there.

I was able to connect with a lot of mentors in the area, and I found an already established beekeeper, Brian Reeves, and I said, "Hey Brian, I've got this wild idea to start urban beekeeping on vacant lots."

And he said, "Absolutely, I would love to join you."

And that's how we ended up right here doing this work.

- I ran into Dr. Pierson and she's told me about her idea.

We connected.

She's a medical doctor.

I'm a pharmaceutical sales rep as well.

So we had that in common.

And now we have bees in common as well.

(soft instrumental music) - I am a pediatrician, and so by trade and profession, that is my field of science.

At 17, I started my medical career.

And so now, so many years later, I am well into my medical career as a pediatrician.

And so I am still a full-time business owner of a private practice in pediatrics.

So what I do medically really has also informed this work, because this is sort of a health outreach for me as well.

(uplifting music) The connection between human health and honeybee and pollinator health is a direct one.

First and foremost, one in every three bites of food needs a pollinator for propagation.

And so if we don't have healthy pollinator systems, we don't have healthy food systems.

So there's that basicness.

But also the environment in which the pollinators are able to thrive in or not thrive in so much, it's the same environment that we're in.

So again, what's affecting them is going to affect us, directly or indirectly.

And so that's the health connection.

Community health is an important part of our overall individual health as well.

So taking individual health, community health, and then environmental health, and aligning all of those three things has been just a wonderful sweet spot to be in.

(soft instrumental music) I was so nervous when I first had an encounter with a honeybee hive.

I literally had never experienced anything like it, and my beekeeping mentor, Mr. Willhaus, was looking for people to help out with a honey harvest that was upcoming, and he put me right to work.

So I suited up, and I just remember thinking, this is so crazy, but I have on this amazing super suit, which is what I think my bee suit is.

And we were moving slowly and methodically.

And it was not scary.

It was invigorating and exciting, and I felt like I was really doing something to be useful.

Mr. Willhaus, he's just so good.

He's easy to talk to, calm, just the quintessential mentor.

He helps me truly, not only with advice and guidance, but physically helping us do the work that we would not know how to do if we didn't have a mentor like him.

(soft instrumental music) - I've been beekeeping for over 55 years.

Honeybees are so interesting.

They're a very social bee.

They just work together.

(emphatic instrumental music) And there's nothing better than raw honey.

Dr. Pierson, she's taken a location that was city, deserted basically, and has cleaned them up and taken care of those areas and provided a place for the honeybees.

It's just been amazing what she has done for Kansas City.

(emphatic instrumental music fades) - The MO Hives team installs its apiaries on vacant lots, building green spaces and revitalizing communities.

- The good thing about a vacant lot is it's not maintained.

There's nobody cutting the grass, putting pesticides down.

So it actually is a perfect environment to have bees.

And using the urban core, that's something that's very out of touch with a lot of people.

They see it on TV, read about it, but to see it firsthand in their community is a first.

- We started developing a regular cohort of people that would come every Sunday from 9 to 11, and we just work at the apiary.

For 10 years, the lots where we have our main apiary was just a dumping site.

And for the neighborhood, that just wasn't a form of environmental justice for us.

So we cleaned it every weekend.

We cut down invasive weeds and planted new species, native plants and flowers, and that's how we started as a core group.

From there, we were able to get funding through the Missouri Department of Conservation to actually develop a workforce.

We still have our volunteering experiences every Sunday from 9 to 11, but we also, in the summer have a six week program where, again, we hire students to learn, who wanna learn about this space, we hire them to learn and to work.

- Dr. Pierson, she is educating a lot of young people with how important pollinators are to our society, and I think that's very important throughout the country.

We need a lot more of that.

(soft instrumental music) - [Cat] Marion's helping me put on my bee suit.

- [Marion] Super suit.

- This is a super suit.

I feel like a superwoman.

(Cat laughing) - Green STEM is just nature-based STEM, science, technology, engineering and math.

And we have a lot of students that we've interacted with that are interested in that.

We have one in particular, Cameron, and he is so excited about having a nature-based career.

- I was here before any of this was even built, so- - So you've seen it from the very beginning?

- Yeah, from the very, very beginning.

It was a vacant lot.

So no grass, no anything, but I just came in, put on a bee suit and then jumped right in.

- So you were 10 or 11 when you started.

14 now.

What have you learned over that time?

- I learned that everything is important in the ecosystem.

If one thing dies off, everything is just gonna be completely haywire.

So if the bees or the butterflies die, then the birds die 'cause they don't have anything to eat.

It just keeps going on and on and on.

- It's all connected.

- Yeah, all connected.

- [Cat] Should we go check your hive?

- [Cameron] Of course, let's go.

(light instrumental music) So each hive kind of has their own toolbox.

The hive tool's what we use to get into the hive.

Bees make this sticky substance called propolis.

It's kind of like waterproof in a way to keep it stick down, so it's hard to just take it off.

If we're trying to get to a certain frame, you just brush 'em off kinda light and quickly so that they'll take the hint and move off.

- [Cat] Makes sense.

(light instrumental music) - Bees and hives do have personalities, and we know which ones are gonna be a little bit cantankerous and which ones might be a little bit more mild.

And learning the different moods of the hives is really fun.

Usually when we're in a hive, they're just buzzing along doing their work, unconcerned about what we're doing.

If we do too much or get into some areas that they get protective about, their whole sound changes a bit, and you can start to notice, we're hitting a nerve here, and maybe we need to slow it down, and maybe we need to use a little bit of smoke to disrupt the pheromone communications.

At the end of summer, each cell, each hexagon will be full of honey.

- [Cat] Amazing.

- [Marion] And that'll be the collection time.

- So what is the wax made of?

- The wax is made from a wax gland on the underneath surface of the bees.

- Unbelievable.

- They build these completely perfect hexagons in the absolute dark.

And they say this hexagon is much more space efficient for saving space and storing as much liquid as you can.

- [Cat] They're engineers.

It's amazing to me.

- [Marion] It is absolutely amazing.

And as you see, they've got a lot of wax and propolis that they're just putting down.

Look at this girl with her tongue out.

Can you see her tongue?

- [Cat] Yes I can.

- [Marion] So she's working that wax.

Oh Cameron, that is a really full honey frame.

- [Cameron] Bees can be very heavy.

- [Cat] Wow.

I can imagine.

Look at all the wax, let alone the honey.

So cool.

- [Cameron] I know, I love it.

(bees buzzing) - So from an educational standpoint, when you're talking about bringing, you know, kids like Cameron in to teach them green STEM, it's not just learning beekeeping, you just, your powers of observation, you're like, looking, and you're smelling and you're then problem solving.

So there are so many different ways that kids are learning through being part of this.

- Absolutely.

The green STEM fields, like beekeeping, hopefully are starters.

So they develop some scientific skill sets so that young people, you know, or adults coming to this space, start to really hone those skills and really figure out how do I apply this scientific skill, yes to beekeeping, but how can that be translated into another space?

And again, hopefully they'll continue to be beekeepers.

But a lot of people who experienced the apiary won't ever go back to beekeeping, but they'll have some different skill sets that now are richer and sharper.

- The organization started here in Kansas City, but it quickly expanded to St. Louis, Springfield, and even the governor's mansion in Jefferson City.

- In Kansas City, we have our main apiary, which is six vacant lots here in the middle of the Blue Hills neighborhood.

And we have two hives on top of the vacant Adam's Mark hotel building across from Arrowhead Stadium.

We have over a dozen hives across from the VA hospital on several vacant lots that community builders of Kansas City also owns.

And a hive down at the homeless assistance campus, the Hope Faith Homeless Assistance Campus, where we teach any resident or worker staff member there how to do beekeeping as well.

And then we'll have the hives in St. Louis and Springfield.

We are also the unofficial beekeepers for the state of Missouri, because we have two hives on the governor's mansion property, and that's a fun project.

(upbeat instrumental music) - We have two hives here.

We have one for the governor, one for the first lady.

They've been here for about two years, I believe.

The hives are a little bit different.

I'd say that the first lady's hive is a little bit more, like, calm, whereas the governors can get a little bit defensive on occasion.

I love how the personalities change from hive to hive.

It can be really interesting to see.

But yeah, they're really good couple of hives, bringing in a lot of honey.

It's been really inspiring to see, like, people from the community come in, and, like, wanna help.

Like, it kind of puts like a much more positive spin on how I feel the world is kind of right now.

I feel like people don't have a lot of faith in each other, but being able to see volunteers who wanna work hard, who wanna give back to the earth, who wanna be kind, like, it's really just been beautiful to see.

(bees buzzing) - And now, we're heading over to St. Louis, where co-founder Brian Reeves is in the middle of an installation.

- This is our first install in St. Louis.

We have a vacant lot.

We're gonna place some bees, put some signage up.

Well, we have staff, actually my sister, she lives in the area, and my nephew, I got them into beekeeping when I got into it.

So this gives 'em an opportunity right here in St. Louis to get more experience.

We brought some of our Nature Action Crew members with us too as well.

These are interns from the summer college students.

So they'll help with the installation.

(hammer knocking) - Really, the bees do all the work.

You're just in there making sure that the inside looks good and that they're laying eggs, and, you know, growing.

So this is my son Jordan here with me today.

He goes out there and he pulls the frames up with me and checks them out.

It's just being part of, you know, making sure that these bees are pollinating our communities.

- A lot of people say, "How can I help the bees?

I don't wanna be a beekeeper.

How can I help?"

One thing that you can do is plant pollinator-friendly plants in your yard.

Make sure you don't spray.

Just have the conversation with your neighbors.

Three out of five things that we eat are because of a bee, and if the bees are gone five years, we're gone too as well.

(mellow acoustic music) - Now the fun part, we're going to taste all these honeys.

- We have a variety of honeys here, a variety not only in color, and you can see that variety is obvious, but these have a very broad geographic location.

In fact, the Links Incorporated is another national organization of volunteers, and they had a mission trip to Jamaica, and I was able to go on that mission trip, and one of the zookeepers, the head of the Jamaica Zoo actually collected these.

So we have three from Jamaica, and then we have some honeycomb from Jamaica as well.

And then we have some local honeys from right here in Missouri.

My beekeeper, Mr. Willhaus, has a great honey that we'll sample here.

And then this is from the Pirouette apiary, from a great friend Kathy Misko.

And then we have our little low hives, tiny ones.

We will start with this end.

(light instrumental music) - Oh, that's kind of surprising.

Almost medicinal.

- [Marion] Well, the darker the honey, they say the more medicinal it is.

- This is definitely a unique, almost challenging honey, which I really love.

- So here will be our second specimen.

- It's so completely different.

In looking at the colors, you can see where that would be the case, but it's super light on your palette, where this one has like, a sharpness to it.

This one also is very golden.

Doesn't look that different from the one we just tried.

But I guess looks could be deceiving, huh?

- They can be.

(light instrumental music) - How would you describe that one?

- For me, immediately, it's sweet, but then as I kind of leave it in my mouth a bit, I almost get an orange sensation.

It's like, a mild orange flavor.

Let's try one from the local area.

- [Cat] Yes, for sure.

- [Marion] This is Mr Willhaus's honey.

(light instrumental music) - That tastes like roses to me.

- Isn't that delicious?

It's like nibbling a flower, right?

- It really is.

- Some of these I feel like, oh, I'd put that in a tea, because it's sweet but not so strong that it's gonna overpower the flavor of the tea.

- Yeah.

- But this is delicious on a biscuit.

And this one, the color even is still different from the others.

I feel like it has a cinnamon note to it.

- Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Kind of like baking spices in a way.

- Yes.

- Make some oatmeal cookies with that one.

So this is the governor's mansion honey, right here.

- Here we go.

(light instrumental music) I think this one's more mild.

- That's kind of an all purpose honey.

- [Marion] Right.

- It's coming from the governor's mansion.

You have to find compromise.

You know, this is a very balanced honey.

- Balanced honey, a balanced honey.

I think everybody can be unified around that.

- That's right.

- This is our variety blend.

It's got a deep flavor.

- It sure does.

- I think it has such depth, because this we collected from the wax cappings, so a little bit of probably caramelized sugar kind of dripped into that.

- Oh, lovely.

- This one's a really intense one, which is why we saved it for last.

It smells like honey barbecue wings or something.

- It does.

- [Marion] It tastes like honey barbecue wing.

- How interesting.

I mean, it tastes smoky.

In the barbecue capital of the world, this is a very familiar kind of like aroma and flavor.

It's just odd to have it infused into honey.

- Yes.

(light instrumental music) I love the fact that these were so diverse.

There's not one that I don't like.

- Once you really get into all the complexities of honey, you realize honey isn't just one thing, and that's what makes it really fun to kind of truly explore.

Thank you for doing this.

- Thank you for tasting it with me.

- Yeah, learned a lot.

(soft instrumental music) - The hive mind to me is just a collective work experience, and it's so analogous to the work we're doing here in the community.

The worker bee lives for about three weeks.

She begins working the minute she hatches as an adult bee.

And from the moment she's born until she just can't fly anymore, she's working for a collective, right, the hive, towards an end that she'll never see.

They are turning the very faint and very temporal nectar into a product that will last forever, which is amazing to me that they would be able to convert pollen and nectar into honey, the one food that never spoils.

What is it as a human that we are doing that we may not see the benefit of or reap the benefit of, but that will add to people in the future that we may never meet?

All of us can affect some kind of change.

Everybody doesn't have to start, like, dozens of honeybee hives, but what we do with our lawns and with the water and with the debris and trash and with our climate, all of that can be a help to the survivability for all of our bee populations and bee species.

(uplifting music) We want healthy food systems, and you only have healthy food systems if you have pollinators taking pollen from plant to plant, helping those plants thrive and grow.

So we have to, again, as every member, join in the conversation, whether it's rural or urban, city or suburban, we need to join in the conversation of conservation.

(uplifting music) - All this bee talk has been pretty sweet, but now it's time to get in the kitchen and cook with some of this liquid gold.

(upbeat music) I'm gonna show you how to make a fried chicken dish with hot honey.

It is incredibly easy, and I'm going to make it chicken nugget style, but you can do whole fried breasts, you can do strips.

The idea is that you're using the chicken essentially as a vehicle for the hot honey.

So I just have boneless skinless chicken breasts, and I'm gonna cut them into roughly two inch cubes.

(upbeat music continues) Now, I'm just gonna bread them.

When you're breading chicken, you have your wet ingredients and your dry ingredients.

And so for the wet, it's just whole milk or buttermilk, if you want that tang, and an egg so that it stays sticky.

And then I'm just gonna season it very simply with salt and pepper.

Wet ingredients are ready.

Now, moving on to my dry.

This is just all purpose flour, and I'm seasoning it with ground mustard seed for a little bit of heat, and a tablespoon of paprika.

A good amount of salt.

There we go.

Evenly distributed.

Now, just dredge, shake off the excess, and let it sit.

(upbeat music continues) So my oil is heating up, and when you're frying something, you don't want the oil to be too low, because then it will just absorb into the crust, and if it's too high, then the crust will cook too quickly, and it will leave whatever you're cooking raw.

So you wanna make sure that your oil is at the right temperature before you dunk in your chicken.

(oil sizzling) My chicken nuggets are ready to go.

I'm gonna go ahead and make this hot honey sauce.

And use local honey if you possibly can.

This is chili crisp, and this comes in a lot of different varieties.

This particular one has a lot of flavor to it.

It has peanuts and other good stuff, but you can just pick whichever one you like the best.

I'm just gonna stir that together.

To this, I'm just gonna add one minced garlic clove, just to add a little bit of pungency to kind of play off of the heat and the sweet.

(upbeat music) This is so fun if you're having, like, friends over to watch a sporting event, or if you have some sort of a buffet going on, it's really easy to kind of pile these chicken nuggets on a big platter, serve it with that hot honey on the side, easy.

Now I'm going to top my chicken with some chopped green onion, cilantro, and peanuts.

So there you have it.

Literally the hardest part is waiting for the chicken to fry.

It's just having that patience.

If you're looking for the recipe, just head to the website.

This hits all of the flavor notes.

It is sweet, it is hot, it's crunchy, it's rich, it's delicious.

And in every episode, I pair the dishes that I make with American wine that you may not have heard of.

And I'm pairing this one with a Vidal Blanc.

And it is a hybrid variety, which is what you typically find growing well throughout the majority of the US, and particularly in the Midwest.

It has, like, pineapple notes to it.

It's really crisp and kind of minerally, and it plays really really nicely with all of these extremely complex flavors in this very simple dish.

So thank you for joining me on our honey journey, and I will see you next time.

(upbeat whistling music) Connect with us online at wearetastemakers.com, or through social media on these handles.

(uplifting music) (uplifting music fades) - [Advertiser] "tasteMAKERS" is brought to you with support from Global Foods Market and Midwest Dairy.

(upbeat music)