Tracy Renkin, journalist

First published in the TasWeekend magazine (The Hobart Mercury)

When thousands of bees beat their wings up and down in unison it creates a calming hum that puts Swansea horticulturalist Rob Barker into a peaceful trance. The only way to really experience that euphoria, says this down-to-earth bee keeper, is to get in nice and close. “The really cool thing about bees is their hum,” says Barker. “Their little wings are beating so fast they make a sound that just draws you in and before you know it, you are in your own little world. Time stands still when I’m with the bees.”

Barker is crazy about bees. When he’s telling you about his hives his eyes open wider and light up in excitement. He’s constantly marvelling at the magic bees can weave and delving deeper into their secret world which, he says, is not yet fully understood. They instantly know the exact time to perfectly seal the honeycomb caps filled up with their liquid gold. How on earth do they do it? “Even as a kid, I was fascinated with insects,” says Barker. “I’ve always loved the small guys. They do a lot of work behind the scenes. They are there all around us and we don’t give them the credit they deserve.”

Barker’s Wild Hives apiary is based at his three-hectare Swansea property with impressive views out to the dramatic pink granite peaks of the Hazards. He produces small batches of jars filled with nothing but raw honey. Barker and his partner Michaela both work with the honey and juggle parenting their two daughters Melody, 4, and Joanie 2 who both start the day with honey. Honey is their livelihood and Barker says was one of the first words his youngest toddler muttered a few months ago. His 35 hives of European honey bees (Apis mellifera) are scattered up and down the coast from Rocky Hills to Freycinet. His loyal customers drive up to the road-side stall on the Tasman Highway out the front of his property, select a hand numbered jar and pop their money in an honesty-box.

About seven years ago Barker was tilling his vegetable garden when a massive swarm of bees came out of nowhere and instantly surrounded him. “There were bees everywhere,” Barker recalls. “Thousands of them buzzing in my ears and all around me. The noise was crazy. And I shat myself and ran to the shed and watched them from behind the fly screen door.” Those same bees are still residing in a Peppermint Eucalyptus tree overlooking his vegetables. The relocation of that particular swarm was the first stepping stone of his bee-keeping journey. Not long after, he found another four wild hives on his property and together those five hives changed his life. He sometimes wonders if they are descendants of the first European honey bees brought into Tasmania from England in 1831 and gifted to Governor George Arthur to put in the government gardens.

Barker’s in-built response to flee from the first swarm of bees, he says, was triggered from incorrect advice his father had always drummed into him as a kid: ‘to run away from a swarm of bees because they will sting you’. But, Barker says, bees are the calmest when they are in a swarm and searching for a new home with bellies full of honey.

If you are calm around bees, he says, then bees are calm around you.

It’s sweet pearls of wisdom like that, that Barker shares with eager, yet often nervous, Saffire Freycinet guests who can now experience being a bee keeper as part of their stay at Tasmania’s famous luxury resort. Just like its iconic oyster farm experience that has prompted international guests as far away as New York and Oman to head straight to Tasmania’s East Coast for their first taste of Australia, the bee keeper experience is all about leaving guests with an unforgettable connection to place. It is set in the picturesque, natural surroundings of the Wild Hives apiary, looking out to the famous Hazards rock formations that were formed 60 million years ago. Since launching its exclusive partnership with Wild Hives in December, dozens of Saffire guests have already signed up for the apiary tour to hear all about how bees work together and to sample the honey that’s still warm, straight from the hive and tastes just like the native flowers all around them.

Wild Hive honey changes flavour with the seasons and is determined by what the bees are foraging on at that time. The nectar from the native Freycinet peninsula vegetation gives it a truly unique taste. Because his honey is raw and untreated Barker says it is brimming with medicinal benefits. Right now, his honey tastes like the sweet-smelling, spindly tick bush flowers that are bursting in bloom all over his property. It also has a hint of the waxy tea tree flowers the bees are using to finish capping off their honeycomb. Indigenous people have sucked the sweet tasing nectar from those two blooms for tens of thousands of years to reap their healing qualities: assisting with aching muscles and bones and healings cuts and bruises and just for their general health and wellbeing.

Barker says he still has to pinch himself that someone as talented as Saffire head chef Iain Todd is interested in using his honey. He’s been awe-struck, he admits, by Todd’s culinary creations for years. “He’s the holy man of the place (Saffire Freycinet resort) you know - and I’m just so lucky he wants to use my honey,” Barker says. But when you ask in the Saffire kitchen it’s the chef himself who thinks he’s the lucky one. Todd can’t get enough of the Wild Hive honey. The well respected, fifth-generation Tasmanian chef is passionate about using ingredients that are locally produced. You’ll find honey on the breakfast table, he says and in evening cocktails too. His team uses at lot of honey - it goes in sauces, dressings, desserts, cakes and glazes. “We use honey carefully to lift our dishes,” Todd says. When his honey stores are running low he just bangs out a text to Barker: ‘I need more honey.’

Todd says Wild Hives is up there with the best honey he’s ever tasted. ‘To put it simply, Rob’s honey is delicious,” Todd says. “His passion for his bees is infectious and once you’ve met him that excitement that he communicates just makes his honey even more delicious.” Todd says the honey has a terrior in the same way that wine does. “The honey that comes from Saffire’s hives is the distilled flavour of that beautiful landscape,” he says. His kitchen has its own bee box supplied by Barker that is dripping with raw honey and whole honeycomb pieces sealed in soft, delicate virgin wax. It is perfect for creating tasty Tasmanian-tasting creations for his often fussy guests who are used to dining in the best restaurants around the world. Some guests have already told Barker his honey is by far the best they’ve ever tasted.

As they get cosy in their canvas deck chairs, with their apiarist suits resting on their laps, the tour guests hear all about how a hive functions and how bees forage outside the hive. Then they dress up in their pristine white bee suits and walk down the hill looking a bit like designer astronauts. It can be a daunting trek when you are on your way to a hive buzzing with bees knowing there’s just a bit of mesh between you and a thousands stings. But wearing a bee keeper suit makes you feel bullet proof according to Barker. “It’s a bit of a mind bender,” he says. “They go through a mad rollercoaster of emotions. But my bees are calm so they have to retrain their way of thinking.

“It’s so nice to see people’s reactions to the bees and the honey. Of course they are anxious at first but then I open up a box of bees and pass around the honey frames and they get to look at them really up close. They are still going through all these emotions - and right at the end I pull out a frame with beautifully capped honey and it’s still warm - it’s the temperature of the hive -and we trudge back up the hill and take off our hoods and our gloves. We dip our fingers in the honey, break the cell capping and warm honey just oozes out. It’s just pure and good. It’s the way bees eat honey. I look around and the guests are just beaming and they just want to go back for more. When you taste honey straight from the hive, it’s just bloody beautiful. You can’t do that anywhere else - it’s a totally Tasmanian thing.”