Syrupy chunks of honeycomb spilled into a bucket as Noel Patterson busily moved among beehives on a friend’s land on the northwest side of Tucson.
When Patterson started keeping bees six years ago under the tutelage of two local veteran apiarists, it was a “backyard hobby,” he said. But in the last two years, his hobby “has gotten a little out of control,” and he now runs Dos Manos Apiaries, so named because he works on more than 40 hives spread throughout Tucson with “just my two hands.”
Thanks to a business arrangement in which local restaurants sponsor hives, Patterson’s honey ends up on sandwiches and in coffee served at Café Passe, in the honey latte at Exo Roast Co., or mixed up in cocktails at the Good Oak Bar, along with menu items at a half-dozen other local eateries.
As he checked his top-bar hives, which use honeycombs hanging from removable wooden slats and produce honey from flowers that bloom at different points of the year, Patterson explained how his day job as a wine salesman at Quench Fine Wines led to the creation of his honey business.
“Just sharing things with friends and talking with people who are into food, I would bring honey in when I harvested it from my back yard and eventually somebody asked if they could use the honey in their restaurant,” he said.
“This idea evolved that the only way for me to produce enough honey to support a restaurant would be if I started a new hive,” he said. “But I didn’t have the money to start a new hive, so it grew into this idea of a restaurant paying the cost to start a new hive.”
The business model is simple: Local eateries sponsor a hive by putting up about $300 for equipment and bees in exchange for a local source of honey. Patterson then sells them honey as he harvests it from the hives.
So far this year, he has produced about 33 gallons.
The ultimate goal is to have a hive dedicated to each restaurant, but Patterson will have to wait a year or two before his new hives start producing.
Patterson’s locally sourced honey fit neatly into the business philosophy of the Good Oak Bar, which buys all its ingredients from Arizona, and goes through at least one 4-pint jar of Dos Manos honey each month, said bar manager Kassie Killebrew.
Patterson is a wine distributor for the Good Oak, and when management heard he was producing honey, “it was a natural progression,” she said.
“For Noel to be producing honey down the street from us, it just makes sense and it’s a perfect fit,” she said.
Sabine Blaese, owner of Café Passe, was part of the initial conversations as the hive-sponsoring idea germinated. She was one of the first business owners to buy Patterson’s honey.
Café Passe uses the honey as a coffee sweetener, on sandwiches and in recipes, but the honey itself is only one part of why she buys from Patterson.
“He doesn’t just deliver a product; he educates,” Blaese said.
Patterson is quick to explain how the honey is produced and the causes of bee colony collapse, she said. She also visited his beehives and came away amazed by the “intimate society” inside the hives.
In addition to Dos Manos honey, Blaese buys bread and bagels baked in Tucson, as well as locally roasted coffee.
“There’s a network of people doing good things in the community, and we want to support that network,” said Exo Roast Co. owner Doug Smith, adding that the café also buys products from local vendors such as the Iskashitaa Refugee Network and Desert Tortoise Botanicals.
Each week, Exo Roast Co. goes through about a pint of Dos Manos honey, he said, and would use even more if Patterson could produce it.
But despite his passion for beekeeping and his honey’s popularity, Patterson said he likely won’t make beekeeping his full-time job anytime soon.
“If somebody wanted to pay me a lot of money, then sure,” he said, “but I’ve never met a rich beekeeper.”
