BLOOMINGTON - A group of South Koreans enjoyed a sweet taste of McLean County agriculture this week at a bee farm in south Bloomington.

Tom Elston, owner of Amber Bee Co., explained beekeeping and honey production to a group of 20 biology teachers from South Korea who were eager to learn and sample the product Tuesday afternoon.

"It's honey of Illinois," Baik Inyoung said. "We want to try it."

She'll take three bottles of her special purchase home to share with family and friends, as will others who bought as many as 30 jars.

The international group arrived July 9 and will stay at Illinois State University for a month as a cultural experience and to learn more about biology and science, said Do-Yong Park, ISU assistant professor of science education.

It's the first time ISU has hosted the group, whose other activities include a visit to the Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab near Chicago, Park said.

But this day, they saw firsthand a colony of bees and how honey is made.

"Beekeeping is a dying art, and we depend on honey bees for our food source through pollination," Elston said. "They pollinate one-third of all the food we eat in the U.S."

Unlike beekeepers in other parts of the nation, Illinois beekeepers haven't had a problem with losing bees to colony collapse disorder, Elston said.

"The bees are doing really well for me this summer," Elston said.

As bees flew freely a few feet in front of the group, Elston, also a Normal firefighter, explained each beehive has one colony of bees with one queen bee; hundred of drones or male bees; and tens of thousands of worker or female bees. About 60,000 bees call a single colony home, and the six stacked boxes contain 30 pounds of honey each, he said. He has 80 hives in five locations around the county.

The bees collect nectar or pollen from flowers as they also pollinate the crops, Elston said. Each floral source has a different honey flavor, making for 300 flavors in the U.S.

Elston produces about 100 different flavors, but he has five major flower sources, including soybeans, clovers and golden rods. His honey is sold at the Garlic Press in Normal and Common Ground in downtown Bloomington.

Inside the honey house, Elston showed off a wooden frame that is the start of a honeycomb. Bees do the work to make the honeycomb from pure beeswax, and three pounds of honey is on one frame, he said.

It's then Elson's job to take the honey out.

First, he scraps off the top layer of beeswax with an electric knife. Then, he places the honey frame into an extractor machine that spins and removes the honey. Filtered honey is pumped into tanks, and from there, Elston can bottle the honey or put it in buckets for storage.

Participant Sungsoo Ahn said the personal visit will help him teach his students back home.

"I can tell my students vividly because I saw it directly," he said.

Elston, who has 35 years of beekeeping experience, gives tours for young children a couple times a summer, but he's never hosted an international group before - let alone two different groups in two days.

A group from Turkmenistan and Tajikistan in Central Asia also visited his farm Wednesday afternoon. The group of veterinarians was traveling the U.S. as part of a United States Department of Agriculture program and wanted to learn about beekeeping, too, Elston said.

"I'm really happy, excited to do this," Elston said. "I think it's a way of sharing knowledge, my way, or sharing world peace, I guess."