Bee Necessity!

Nature’s Sweetest Treat is an Essential Ingredient for Pastry Chef David Guas

Honey is an ingredient highly favored by pastry chefs who want to use a natural sweetener, and the thick golden liquid has long been an essential element in David Guas’ desserts. His passion for the pure, concentrated sugar component in his cooking has committed Guas to being part of the solution in preserving the honey bees and making their critical pollination work sustainable.

Pastry chef David Guas will be the on-air host for Season 4, Episode 11 of the James Beard Award winning series Chefs A 'Field:  Disappearing Act: Imagining the World Without Bees, sponsored by Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Beginning November 14, 2009 (actual air date varies by station), viewers can tune into their local PBS channel to view Guas and his two boys on an exploration of many of the farms in the northeast that oversee honey bee colonies and are an integral part of the crop-pollinating process in the U.S.  It will raise awareness that over the last three winters, more than one in three honey bee colonies in the U.S. has mysteriously disappeared. Guas will present golden sweet desserts and showcase the produce grown based on crops that the bees pollinate.

On his off-time and not for best in show, Guas recently did some hive talkin’ and lent a hand to beekeeper Jeff Stoner of Stoner Apiaries, whom Guas buys his honey from in Mercersberg, Pennsylvania.  Guas gets involved in the late spring and early summer with harvesting, extracting, and bottling. Then he returns in early fall to aid in treating Stoner’s hives for mites and feeding the colonies with sugar water (heavy syrup) to get them through the winter.

Next time you are buying a jar of this pure precious sunshine (which, thanks to its preservative qualities, requires no additives,) spare a thought for the bee colony which has flown over thousands of miles just to produce 8 ounces. Follow along with pastry chef David Guas and bee the difference and help save the honey bees.