A DATE WITH THE BEES

Emilia Arnold is a valued member of our service team. Below she talks about her recent visit with Corky Luster, our rooftop bee curator.

After helping me suit up in a big, white jacket with attached beekeeper's veil ("You look like Kenny, from South Park!") Corky Luster, owner of the Ballard Bee Company, introduced me to the more than 50,000 bees of the two busy hives on Bastille's rooftop.

Corky takes apart the hive so we can see its inner workings, calming the bees down with smoke as he goes.

He places a docile drone, a male bee, in my hand. The drones live to eat and make conquests, Corky says. "They're basically Italian boys," he adds, with a laugh.

But really, these bees are Ballard bees through and through. Like Bastille's owners, James Weiman and Deming Maclise, the bees like to keep it local. They collect nectar within a five mile radius of their hive, and they especially love the blackberry bushes near the neighboring railroad tracks.

Their honey is destined for the Bastille dining room, just a few floors below the hives. Having the bees at Bastille is all part of the restaurant's focus on using existing spaces in an innovative way to add true local flavor to the menu.

Corky scrapes some fresh honey from inside the hive and gives me a taste. So far, that local flavor is delicate and floral and delicious.

Our queen bee, Marie Antoinette, and her workers are busily making the honey that will soon appear on Bastille's menu. Harvested honey just needs a quick strain and then Corky hands it off to Head Chef Shannon Galusha.

Shannon's got some big plans for the honey, which will likely land in everything from entrées to cocktails. For the summer, he's talking about hibiscus honey iced tea, a goat cheese, honey and Charente melon salad and honeycomb bars for the plateau au chocolat. And the rooftop honey will be oozing its way into even more dishes come fall.

But if a date with bees doesn't appeal to you so much, don't worry! You won't find Bastille's bees hanging around the patio (which opens May 10) trying to get into your soda. Hornets and wasps go after trash and sugar, Corky says, but honeybees have a more sophisticated diet. They eat water, nectar and honey.

And they turn those simple ingredients into more delicious honey, and lucky for us the bees don't seem to mind sharing. With Corky keeping the bees buzzing upstairs, and Shannon hard at work downstairs, it's sure to be a pretty sweet summer at Bastille.