John Bailey’s world revolves around honey. Well, maybe more so how it’s created than the final product.

You might have seen Bailey, 60, selling his various size bottles and jars of honey as well as some pure beeswax candles every Saturday morning at the Kankakee Farmers’ Market in downtown Kankakee.

“Initially, I just thought it was cool what the [bees] did and seeing what they do and learning how they do it,” he said. “I’m still learning new stuff all the time. The method that I’m doing now I started in ‘89 or ‘90, and it’s all based on their pheromones.”

Bailey, of Kankakee, got his start on a farm back in 1973 as a 10-year-old. His, dad, Perry, found some abandoned bee hives in some woods behind their house. Perry got stung something fierce, but he came away with the honey.

“Back then, he said, ‘Man, we’ve got to learn how to do this,’” Bailey said. “So that day was Sept. 23, 1973. My mom [Dorothy] actually wrote it on the calendar. … I thought it was the coolest thing.”

The following spring, his dad tracked down some bee equipment from a company in Kentucky, and that got the family started. The farm was in Altorf in Bourbonnais Township near the Kankakee River State Park.

“I’ve still got bees out there now,” Bailey said.

HONEY CENTRAL

Bailey learned his craft by trial and error, and several bee stings, as a youth, and 50 years later he’s arguably the leading beekeeper in the greater Kankakee area.

“So this was pretty much just a hobby [in the beginning],” he said.

But Bailey’s bee empire has grown to where he has 24 hives scattered across the area, and it consumes much of his time. He hasn’t worked a regular job since 2008. He harvests about 200 pounds of honey per hive every season.

“The more hives I have, the more difficult it is to maintain that average,” he said. “Because last year I had 10 that produce 220 [pounds] or more, but then two of them died right off the bat. You don’t know what happens there. And then I lost two more because skunks ate them. That’s another deal. They have natural predators, too.”

Bailey’s house on South Wildwood Avenue in Kankakee is Honey Central, where the honey is retrieved from the honeycomb frames that are pulled from the hives and dumped into a huge vat, or centrifuge, in his garage. The honey is spun in the centrifuge, strained and then poured into 5-gallon containers that actually weigh approximately 60 pounds each. There are dozens of cases of mason jars waiting to be filled.

Bailey then distributes the honey into mason jars of 4, 8, 12, 16 and 32 ounces as well as the bear-shaped squeeze bottles that he hawks at not only the farmers’ market in Kankakee but three up north in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on Chicago’s north side.

The bears are in 8- and 12-ounce “squeezes” that are quite popular with market-goers. He even sells the bears in sets or flights.

“That’s actually been a good seller,” Bailey said.

LEARNING MORE

Bailey thought he knew all there was about beekeeping until he connected with the Kankakee River Valley Beekeepers Association in 2008.

“So I thought I’d go,” he said. “Because at that point, I had been keeping bees for 35 years and never met another beekeeper. … So everything I learned, I learned on my own — observation, trial and error, failure, success, whatever.

“And then I went and fortunately, for one time in my life, I just shut up and listened. Because I tell you I’ve learned a lot from the people that were there. Because while I knew a lot about bees, these people are more in tune with what’s new.”

He met a woman at the beekeepers association who convinced him to do a market in Chicago. Bailey hesitated at first, but it turned out to be a great marketing move.

“I went to her little [market] in Chicago in October of ‘08, and I thought, ‘Man, this has got potential,’” he said. “So I started doing the markets.”

He didn’t start selling his honey at the Kankakee Farmers’ Market until 2017, when the current beekeeper quit doing the local market. He was asked to set up his table in Kankakee, and the rest is history.

“I went, and I’m telling you I haven’t missed any,” Bailey said. “I mean, it’s the best market I’ve ever attended. Period. Like double [the others].”

Selling his honey and candles at the Kankakee site and three others in Chicago is enough to keep Bailey busy.

“I like the people that run them,” he said. “It’s no-nonsense kind of stuff. [The Chicago markets] are not huge markets like [Kankakee]. They’re all smaller than [Kankakee] by attendance and number of vendors.”

The markets in Chicago are on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Bailey will sell 140-150 pounds of honey on a good day at the Kankakee Farmers’ Market.

During the spring months of the market when it’s still cool outside, honey sales are swift. Sales slow down in the hot summer months of July and August, but business picks back up in September and October.

“Chill mornings, that’s when I sell a lot of honey,” he said. “That first cold morning, I better have the truck loaded because people, I don’t know, [honey] gives them that cozy feeling.”

SEASONAL

Bee season runs from spring until mid- to late September, and Bailey buys his standing order of approximately 30 packages of bees from a vendor in California. There are 9,000 bees per package, so Bailey starts the season with 270,000 bees. Only a small percentage of bees survive the harsh Midwest winters, normally about 10%.

Once the season starts, Bailey is collecting the honey from his bee hives, which have three or four boxes that contain 9-by-16-inch honeycomb frames that collect the honey. Each box contains 10 frames, and will gather six pounds of honey per frame when full — so more than 60 pounds of honey per box. He checks each hive every three or four weeks.

He also makes candles out of beeswax that is double-boiled and then poured into homemade molds of various shapes and sizes. Candle sales are about 10% of his gross sales.

How long does Bailey envision he’ll continue beekeeping?

“Until I can’t,” he said. “Which who knows on this scale.”

Bailey has endured several heart surgeries due to aneurysms on his heart caused by a childhood illness. He’s not slowing down anytime soon.

“I do have fun with [the markets] when I see how much these people like this stuff,” he said.

Each bee hive has a queen bee, and a queen bee can produce 2,000 eggs per day that can produce more bees.

Scout bees are the honey bees that you might see in your backyard or garden. The scout bees locate flowers, or trees that have flowers, that can be a source of nectar.

The scout bees fly back to the hive and communicate through a dance with the forager bees who then go out and collect the nectar.

The forager bees collect the nectar through their hollow proboscis [straw-like tongues] and store it in their stomachs, where the nectar starts to break down. The foragers fly back to the hive and regurgitate it to worker bees [mouth to mouth] so they can go back and collect more. The nectar from the worker bees is then regurgitated into chambers in the honeycomb, producing the honey.

The honey is then collected by the beekeepers, and the harvest is produced into jars or bottles of honey.

Bees have a life expectancy of six weeks.