I’ve always been interested in beekeeping, but always as a topic, never enough to actually go out and do it. William Ong did, and has derived a lot of joy from it.

I met and interviewed William Ong a few years ago. I’ve had this in my hard drive for a while, and at one point, even thought that I had lost it. I’m glad to have found the interview again, and am posting the resulting piece here.

I meet William Ong in his four storey townhouse in the middle of one of the busiest areas of Quezon city. He used to work in construction but is retired now, choosing to spend his time as a real estate agent, a weekend farmer, and a beekeeper. “I just wanted something to pass my time rather than doing nothing, so beekeeping seemed to be a good prospect,” he says.

His daughter found an urban bee farm in Quezon City that offered courses, and Ong spent five Saturdays learning the trade. That was in 2006. “I was expecting that there would be other students, but it came out that I was the only one, so one on one talaga,” he says. “We would have theory in the morning and after lunch, the actual handling of the bees.” The rest of the week was spent reading books and articles and preparing questions for the next meeting.

One month after completing the course, Ong bought two European honeybee nucleus hives–starter kits–from Ilog Maria, the country’s most well-known bee farm, in Tagaytay. He converted the second and third floor balconies of his home into an apiary. “I started with only two hives, then expanded to around seven to eight.”

What started as a personal project soon became a side business, with news of it traveling by word of mouth “Once people taste my honey, almost every year tatawag yan, hwag mo akong kakalimutan.”

“In the afternoon, usually around 3 o’clock, you will already see a lot of bees outside,” he says, launching into a mini lecture on the life span and cycle of the  composition of honey, and how a queen is made. “The first three days of their lives, the larvae are fed royal jelly. If it is determined that they will make that particular larva into a queen, they will continue to feed it royal jelly. The queen will only take royal jelly, no other food. If they are going to be a worker bee, they will feed it a combination of honey, water, and pollen, and maybe some other substances,” he says.

He talks about colony collapse disorder (CCD), the phenomenon where the majority of worker bees leave a healthy queen and colony for no apparent reason, one whose continuous occurrence has been alarming scientists for almost a decade. “So for the past how many years… the bees are disappearing, they still do not know the cause. Initially, they thought it was the emergence of so many cell sites. They thought that the radiation emitted by these cell sites confuse the bees so they don’t know how to go back home. Later, they believed that it’s very likely pesticides, which I believe plays a very large part. Pesticides purpose is to kill the insects that goes to the plant. If bees collect nectar and pollen from flowers, kung may bagong application of pesticides, madaming namamatay na bees.”

He talks about how honey is made. “Honey comes from nectar. The moisture content of nectar is quite high–maybe 60-70%. Once it becomes cured honey, the moisture content should be about 18% or less,” he says.

“The bees that go out to get nectar, on the way home, when they put the nectar in the stomach, it mixes with an enzyme. Upon reaching the hive, they pass it to other house bees who also swallow the nectar and mix it with their own enzymes before putting it in the comb.

“So honey isn’t simply just nectar.”

When Ong is interested in something, his fascination reaches near obsessiveness. He must learn everything he can about it. He is not afraid of research. He bought books and poured over articles, websites, and videos dedicated to beekeeping. He credits a considerable chunk of his education to YouTube. “I don’t know if you’ve read, but in the States right now, they are encouraging people to have rooftop beehives because they know the importance of bees as pollinators. 80% of the food production in the US is pollinated by bees,” he says. “Of course, I was also convinced with the benefits of honey, that’s why thinking na, okay, this is going to be a product where people are going to benefit from consuming it, and also if I have this at home or in a farm, I don’t have to leave the farm.”

Honey harvest season in the Philippines is March to June. The bees produce honey year round, but not in the excess for human consumption outside those months. “How much honey are you able to harvest? It would depend on how strong your colony is,” Ong says. “Bees have to be strong so they won’t cannibalize each other and can repel predators like wasps and ants.”

One hive can yield up to 50 kilos of honey. “Sabi nga nila, if you do not have back problems, sooner or later, you will,” Ong jokes.

I ask to see his bees. His face falls, but just for a bit. “Nawala yung dalawang queen ko dito kasi inatake ng mga ants from the tree,” he says. “Siguro kung kukuha ako ng honey ng mga 9am, siguro 7am ako lumabas, nagulat ako, yung pader, puno ng ants, ang lalaki, inattack talaga sila.”

Fire ants from a nearby tree had gained access to the hives via a stray branch that reached onto the balcony. Both his queens perished, and the colony was in too much shock to create new ones to replace them. “Kunwari nadali yung queen mo, maari itong mga worker bees, for the next four or five days, traumatized yun, eh. Can you imagine, four or five ants, hinihila sila, kinukuha sila nang parang pagkain? Maaring wala sa utak nila na we should produce a queen. Kasi when something went wrong with the queen, malalaman na kaagad ng hive. It’s either kailangan gumawa na sila ng their own queen. They can make their own queen from day old larva. E kung wala silang makuha na day old larva? Wala.”

Still, when I ask to take a picture, he smiles for the camera.

As of the interview, he was currently on the waitlist to get new queens from UP Los Banos, the only institution allowed to import bees. He misses beekeeping. “If you look at it as a hobby, masarap ang beekeeping. You learn, you enjoy, you keep yourself busy, you earn,” he says. “Noon, madalas nakaupo lang ako dito sa harap ng hive, inoobserve ko. Either nakaupo lang ako tumitingin sa bees coming in and going out, you can see them coming in na may dalang pollen, different colors.”

But even so, he has mixed feelings about his future as a beekeeper, and about bees in general. “Unless gumanda yung situation natin, maybe within a year or so, hopefully may makita silang remedy or actual cause of the disappearing bees, otherwise, pag magstart ulit ako, di ko rin masyadong mapaprami, it will just be a hobby, sayang din.”