The Phat Beets Saturday Farmer's Market will be holding a series of Food n' Justice workshops through October, including this week's Beekeeping in the Market with urban bee expert and Queen of Sheba Farms (Beehealthyhoneyshop.com) owner, Khaled Almaghafi. 

Almaghafi, 44, is a fourth generation beekeeper who learned the trade as a child in Yemen. He owns more than 100 hives, primarily located in Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond.

The beekeeping demo will begin at noon on Sept. 4 in the Phat Beets Farmer's Market, 5715 Market St. at the Arlington Medical Center parking lot. 

Next week, Almaghafi will open an expanded Bee Healthy Honey Shop at 2950 Telegraph, designed to look like the interior of a hive, where he offers wild honey varieties and offers tastings daily.

At this Saturday's workshop, he will bring a hive and offer a live demonstration of how to take care of your bees, with an emphasis on how to become an urban beekeeper.

"Many people are scared of bees and think they are the same as yellow jackets - we want to address that fear," Almaghafi said. "We explain to them not to be afraid."

The workshop will discuss the lifecycle of the hive and the problems beekeepers may face. Almaghafi also will discuss the benefits of honey. 

"A lot of people just consider it a regular sweetener," he said. "It's an old remedy and has a lot of medicinal value when it hasn't been processed."

Customers seek him out for raw honey made from local flowers. Jessica and John Williams are new North Oakland residents and try to buy honey at the farmer's market instead of the supermarket.

“We have four kids, some of whom have allergies, so we try to buy local honey to help with that,” Jessica Williams said.

Many natural health enthusiasts believe that eating raw honey made from the nectar of flowers that cause allergies helps build up immunity to local allergens.

This is the second time the couple have bought Queen of Sheba honey.

“I literally scraped out the last of the honey jar this morning,” John Williams said. “Now we're back for more.”

Oakland Local is a media sponsor of the Food n' Justice Workshop Series.