If you ask Ted Dennard what was his first big break in the honey business, he answers "God knows. There have been at least a thousand people who have contributed to the success of Savannah Bee."

This isn't waffling; he apparently hasn't thought about it and, what's more, doesn't seem to care. He's far more interested in time, space, and applied organic chemistry: When will the Tupelos on that creek bloom? Are the bees in this hive crowded? Can the crew get those frames clean before the next varietal comes into bloom? These are the questions that matter in the intricate and exhausting business of making honey.

Old Roy

Dennard first got interested in honey when he met an old beekeeper out in the boondocks south of Savannah named Roy Hightower details. Ted starting learning the mysteries of the trade, and the young man was hooked.

"Once you get into bees you find out how amazing they are," he says in his soft Georgia accent. "The wonder of them."

The wonder never left. Honey has been a major part of his life ever since. He kept bees in high school. He kept bees at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenessee, majoring in religious philosophy. This may have been an economic detour. But "it really did give me a foundation for making decisions about everything," Dennard says. He has traveled the world to see bees making medicinal manuka honey in New Zealand, rubber honey in Vietnam, logwood honey in Jamaica, heather honey in Ireland, and the famous tilleul lavendar honey of France.

"They've basically followed me, or I them, ever since I met old Roy," he says. "I'm not kiddin'." Until recently, though, it seemed more like Fate than a business plan. "I never wanted to do this for the money," says Dennard, "A) because I never thought I could make any, and B), because I didn't want to adulterate my passion."

Takeoff

His attitude started to change in 1998. He'd been back from Jamaica for a few years, teaching a course in Experiential Learning for the Savannah Board of Education, when he started selling some jars of Tupelo honey at a high-end antique store called One Fish Two Fish. People responded to the purity and richness of Dennard's honey, and the sweet word started to spread.

"I was bottling honey in the kitchen then," he recalls. When four other Savannah stores wanted to sell his honey, he had to move the operation into the garage. Then he "just started growing, growing, growing," until one day, he was forced to ask himself the ultimate question: To bee or not to bee?

The answer was obvious. "I decided I just couldn't ignore it, so I quit my job in January of 2002, mortgaged the house, and put all the money into the business." He expanded the honeymaking "plant" into an old classroom at the Oatland Island Wildlife Preserve where he used to teach. A former national retirement home for railroad engineers, the facility offered Ted 800 square feet of elbow room and all the mountain lions, forest bison, and alligators a man could wish for.

Along with space, though, he needed more cash, and decided to apply for a loan of $5,000 to buy beehives-and got another break. He met a remarkable woman at the local Sea Island Bank branch named Becky Fowler, and "she just said 'Yes,'" he says. You can still hear the disbelief in his voice.

The Big Boys

He caught an even bigger break at the San Francisco Food Show in 2003. A sales rep from Williams-Sonoma, the fancy food catalog powerhouse, came up to the booth and said "We love your stuff; we want to pick it up." And just like that, Savannah Bee Honey started reaching a national market. Williams-Sonoma was followed by Dean & DeLuca, Nieman-Marcus, Bloomingdale's, and a host of others.

Still expanding rapidly, the company recently leased a 6,000 square foot warehouse close to downtown. When they first moved in, "we took up one little corner, and I thought 'We'll never use all this space.'" Now they're "bustin' at the seams again." They've moved the office space up into the attic, their homeless forklift "gets in everybody's way," and they're so crowded they "have to move one thing to be able to move anything else."

The operation looks a lot different than when Ted made honey in the kitchen or garage and spent his time lugging hives all over the South in an old pickup. But the passion for bees hasn't changed a bit.

"I just love it," he says. "I can't imagine doing anything else."