SWEET LOVE

Drizzle it over biscuits, use it to sweeten a cup of tea, or just sneak a spoonful out of the jar every now and then—there’s nothing like Oklahoma honey.

- BEN LUSCHEN

THE BUZZ OF several thousand bees unites in a choral hum. Tiny dark specks whirl in and out of view, pelting against their guests’ baggy cotton jumpsuits like a windless dust storm.

For the bees, these boxed hives in rural Coweta are home. For married couple Greg and Shelly Hannaford, the founders of Hannaford Honey and Tulsa Urban Bee Co., this is a workplace. Beneath the July sun, already potent in mid-morning, the couple lifts the boxes heavy with frames of dripping honeycomb onto the back of Greg’s pickup truck for later extraction.

Your humble correspondent, eager to appear brave but not at all eager to be stung, stands a couple of safe paces behind the Hannafords. The caution only goes so far, as a bee plunges its stinger into my left arm. Despite the bee suit’s thick cotton layer, I feel a muffled but sharp tingling sensation. Choking back mild pain, I ask Shelly how many times she’s been stung.

“Today or in my life?” she asks.

Her answer is twice today—so far. The Hannafords have been pulling honey full-time since 2012. After nine years, a single sting hardly qualifies as a noteworthy event.

This is step one in the Hannafords’ honey-pulling and extraction process. Like the hives themselves, the bee business in Oklahoma is a swirl of interconnected actors—bees and keepers; flowers and honey; buyers and suppliers. The swarm bends, breaks, and reforms in unexpected ways. Shelly was pulled into the business by her husband, who’s had a lifelong fascination with the pollinators.

“He loves the bees, and I love him,” she says.