Beekeepers sweeten harvest with lesson at Glide Memorial Church
With morning services in full swing seven floors below, two beekeepers prepare a pair of hives and 70,000 bees for the annual honey harvest on the roof of Glide Memorial Church. Workshop attendees watch as Koski and Bouffard, wearing their bee suits, carefully pull frames full of honey from the two hives. All will be bottled and sold to congregants who share coffee and snacks during social hour after church services. Proceeds go directly back into the hives and Glide's Graze the Roof garden, which not only produces food, but also is used as a educational and community building tool. Koski, 69, who retired after 39 years of teaching high school science in San Francisco, doesn't eat a lot of honey - just a bit in his morning coffee, and sometimes on his yogurt. The framed combs collected on the Glide roof are brought down to a room two stories below, where Koski shows workshop students how to remove the honey. Koski isn't a member of the Glide congregation, but for five years, he says, volunteering with the Graze the Roof program has been one of the most valuable uses of his time.