Ballard Beekeeper in Running for AMD Visionary of the Year Award

(H/t MyBallard) "With an army of bees and a determination to increase pollination in Seattle, Corky Luster is helping to stave off the drop in the honeybee population. What Luster didn’t count on: that customers would go crazy over his honey." That's the lead-in for Corky Luster's entry in the AMD Visionary of the Year Awards. He's a finalist in the Foodie category, and you can watch a video and vote for him here.

The prize is $20,000, which Corky says he'd like to use to hire interns, teach beekeeping, and grow his bee empire beyond Ballard and even Seattle, into neighboring counties.

Interns is probably step number one. It seems like every time I visit Ballard, I run into Corky. It's not that surprising--the Ballard Bee Co. has some 60 hives hidden in backyards all over Ballard, making one of Corky's days look like a very inclusive walking map of the area. "Keeping the Bee in Ballard" is the slogan.

The last two times I was in Ballard, I ran into him at Domanico Cellars and I ran into Corky on the roof of Bastille. Part of the success of the BBC, as it's known, is that you can "host" two or three hives in some out-of-the-way spot in your yard, Corky will do all the bee-looking-after, and at the end of the season, you get a 22-oz. jar of honey. (You can also try their rent-a-hive plan.)