FOLLOW THE HONEY: ALL OF YOUR BEESWAX

In case you missed it (don’t feel bad, so did we), last Friday was the third National Honey Bee Day.

“When it comes to bees and honey, it’s a never ending story,” explains Mary Canning, owner and operator of Follow the Honey, a new boutique devoted to all things buzz, which opened on National Honey Bee Day in Harvard Square. “Our store, at heart, is all about those stories.”

Canning, a graduate of Emerson College and a 20-year Cantebridgian, spent the better part of her career at WGBH honing her story-telling.

“I think of (Follow the Honey) as a lens through which bees help us discover the world--in terms of gender, race, class, and the environment. Bees seem to be this generation’s canary in the coal mine.”

During Canning’s first husband’s fight against bone cancer, she met a beekeeper, planting the idea for this boutique. “After spending so much time in clinics where chemo and suffering dominated, being around bees and honey was so life-giving and affirming. Survivors need compassion, patience and sweetness. In my case, bees and honey helped me.”

On a trek to South India, Canning learned that “beekeeping and cultivating honey products like salves and creams, is a way women and girls in developing regions can earn a living. At the same time, these women can be local and care for children if need be.

“Honey can dignify and liberate people around the world.”

“There is a bounty of ecological honey, with social mission backing, in developing countries,” explains Corrina Steward, who works with Canning. “We have honey that contributes to the protection of rainforests, biosphere reserves, and endangered ecosystems like the “cerrado” of Brazil.

Follow the Honey will hold future events, “taking full advantage of the remarkable beekeepers and honey sommeliers in the area, who can speak to both the palate and the mind,” Canning continues. “We hope to invoke a curiosity and thinking response to products--who made them, how and where--making a connection between commerce and cost.” Specifically, the shop houses a flat screen wired up to connect shoppers with experts (via Skype) on the nutritional, beauty and medicinal benefits of honey bee products “without any carbon footprint.”

Canning is also collaborating with an ethics professor from Boston University, who will launch a business centered around “Fair Trade Receipt,” providing transparency of source so customers can learn and make better educated decisions about the products before they buy.

With her husband and daughter, the Canning family has their own small bee farm in the protected woodlands of the Quabbin Reservoir. “We aim to have our first harvest of honey next fall,” she says.

FOLLOW THE HONEY

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