(NewsNation) — A new kind of buzz is supporting more than just barbecues and beach days this summer.
Mead — a drink similar to beer brewed with honey — is gaining in popularity, and the way it’s made could also help fuel the cultivation and preservation of endangered honey bee colonies.
While the popularity is new, the brew is the oldest of alcoholic brews. Its resurgence has pushed expected growth in the global mead market to more than 18% over the next five years, as young consumers increasingly turn to low-alcohol or non-alcoholic drinks such as seltzers and ciders.
“It’s just — it’s delicious,” said Greg Fischer, who runs a meadery on the South Side of Chicago called Wild Blossom.
Yet the drink is also labor intensive. It takes about three pounds of honey to make a gallon of mead, so many brewers also cultivate their own bee hives as well.
“Bees are super important to the environment,” Fischer said. “And right now beekeepers are the ones that are keeping them alive.”
Fischer would know. He’s raised bees since childhood and has more than 100 hives producing honey around the Chicago area.
“To produce one bottle of mead, the bees will pollinate over 2 million flowers. … that can turn up to 20 to 40 million new seeds or more food,” he said. “The production of this liquid produces more green, more light in the environment.”
Mead production — or “hard honey” as he’s renamed it for the Whole Foods crowd — looks similar to producing beer. Large steel vats hold a mixture of honey, water and yeast.
Yet mead is distinct from other similar products in two ways. There’s no boiling, using significantly less energy to produce, and the flavor comes from what flowers the bees pollinated.
“(If) I get honey in Ohio versus honey in Illinois, it’s gonna be different,” Fischer said.
Raising honey bees has become increasingly difficult in recent decades, impacted by a perfect storm of climate change, wider-spread pesticide use in agricultural areas and a deadlier species of mites infesting hives.
Independent beekeepers and private companies are the front line of defense for the honey bee, helping colonies reproduce in a way they can’t in nature anymore. And that matters, according to bee scientist Noah Wilson-Rich, because what’s happening to them is likely an indication of other important bees and insects in the ecosystem.
It also means everyday people need to get involved.
“That can be planting a flower, that can be getting a nesting site for pollinators,” said Wilson-Rich, who started Best Bees, a company that cultivates honey bee colonies on commercial buildings to fund research.
“Whether it’s supporting a meadery, or a local beekeeper, or a national, large-scale, beekeeping service,” he added, “that’s the future.”