Auroran has sweet success at Vegas Honey Show

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Chuck Lorence, of Aurora, puts on his hat before tending to his bees at an area forest preserve last summer. | Brian Powers~Sun-Times Media

Updated: March 4, 2012 8:04AM

To Charles Lorence, honey is worth gold. And with his prize-winning honey selling for over $100 a jar, it’s easy to see why.

Lorence, a beekeeper for the last 40 years, recently brought home several ribbons and plaques from this year’s American Honey Show in Las Vegas, including a “Best in Show” blue ribbon.

Lorence’s Honey Bee Haven chunk honey impressed the judges this year — almost his 10th year exhibiting in the show. Lorence took care to place the honeycomb just right in the jar, and then filled each cylinder-shaped jar with the perfect amount of light-colored honey.

“I go through all the jars and make sure there are no imperfections,” Lorence said.

Not one air bubble is acceptable, Lorence said. He spends about an hour packing each jar in preparation for competition.

The precision-packed honey sold at the show for $125. Lorence doesn’t sell chunk honey in stores. He said it is an antiquated way to pack honey, but it looks pretty.

Lorence, 69, lives on Aurora’s West Side, and currently maintains 30 hives. He’s classified as a “sideliner” or small-scale beekeeper: He’s more than a hobbyist, but has fewer than the 300 hives required of a commercial beekeeper.

It wasn’t too long ago that Lorence was pollinating orchards with his hives. His bees pollinated local tree orchards, pumpkin patches, and strawberry fields. But he sold many of his hives about two years ago.

“We either needed to get bigger, or downsize,” said Lorence’s wife, Karen, who assists with the honey business.

“We were too successful,” she said.

A good year

Lorence keeps half of his hives west of town on a piece of untouched forest preserve property off of Densmore Road near Prestbury. He covers them for the winter, but the bees have freedom to come and go out of holes in the insulated black cover.

The mild winter has been good for the bees. Harsh winters can put stress on bees, forcing them to stay in their hives. But this unseasonably warm winter has provided optimal days with temperatures well above freezing for the bees to fly out of the hives and exercise their wings.

Bees typically stay in their hives during most of the winter, and use their honey for fuel.

“Everything was good this year,” said Lorence, who collected an extra batch of honey due to the warm fall days before covering the hives for the season, a task he usually does in October.

“It’s a great winter so far,” he said.

Upcoming harvest

Lorence will uncover the hives at the end of March, and he’ll start harvesting honey until the following fall. The hives produce about 3,000 to 4,000 pounds of honey a year. He keeps the additional hives near La Crosse, Wis., where they have a second home with an attached “honey house.”

The Lorences package all of their Honey Bee Haven honey, and sell it to various local stores, including Prisco’s Fine Foods in Aurora and Soup to Nuts in Geneva.

The Lorences are conducting a day-long class on beginning beekeeping at the Chicago Botanic Garden on Feb. 18. Learn more at www.chicagobotanic.org.

“I like to pass the word on, because it’s kind of a lost craft,” Lorence said.