[dropcap size=big]E[/dropcap]verybody knows the Honey Man. Victor Jaramillo Soriano has been selling jars of honey, bee pollen, and royal jelly outside his home in El Sereno for 46 years. At 97, he is quite possibly the oldest beekeeper in L.A. and keeps alive a tradition that has been in his family for over 300 years. Growing up in Tepetongo, a small town in southwest Zacatecas, Soriano started working with bees when he was three years old.
“My first job was to ring a little bell when they started to swarm," Soriano said of his childhood. "When the hives get too big, the colonies leave in droves, and we’d catch them and put them in bee boxes to start a new colony.”
Soriano came to the U.S. in 1943 as a Bracero, a program that allowed Mexican citizens to take temporary agriculture work in the U.S. He harvested apples, oranges, pears, apricots, and peaches in Chico and other parts of Central California. In 1946, he moved to Lincoln Heights and eventually met up with his brother in El Sereno. He purchased cheap plots of land in the area, including one dotted with nopales that watched over Our Lady of Guadalupe Church like La Virgin herself. During this time, the same time when you can ride a red car trolley down Huntington Drive to downtown L.A. for five cents, Soriano birthed his bee yards. Though legalized in 2015, Soriano still has many secret spots in the neighborhood where he keeps bees, his front yard being the most accessible.
Located on Huntington Drive, across the street from Veteran’s Monument Park, where the last tents from a once-bustling homeless encampment are pitched, Soriano’s honey is sold in recycled glass jars that sit on a metal cart shaded by two ficus trees. A framed fluorescent green poster with “Honey Bee Miel De Abeja” painted in hot pink letters is nailed to one of the trees. The El Sereno Branch Library and an old-school mariscos food truck are his neighbors. Driving or walking eastbound on the major thoroughfare that weaves from Lincoln Heights to Irwindale is the only way to access his goods, including honey, bee pollen, royal jelly, and wax. His best seller is the locally sourced amber honey that sells for anywhere from $5 to $100 (the $50 Kerr mason jars are collector’s items that date back to WWII), depending on the jar size, but royal jelly is perhaps the fountain of youth.