At the end of a hard day, Tim Celeski likes to unwind with thousands of bees.

"Beekeeping is relaxing," he said. "If you are very quiet, very slow and very easygoing."

Celeski keeps four honeybee hives at his home in the Admiral District, where his bees have access to the West Duwamish greenbelt.

A friend lets him keep a fifth hive in a yard in Fauntleroy.

It is legal to keep bees in Seattle so long as they don't bother the neighbors, Celeski said. Four hives is the city limit on lots smaller than 10,000 square feet. The hives also must be kept at least 25 feet from the property line, according to the Seattle Municipal Code.

"I'm an urban beekeeper," Celeski said.

It's a hobby for Celeski, whose 25-year career as a graphic artist later turned into a new occupation in fine woodworking. These days Celeski spends most of his time designing, building and selling high-end arts and crafts-style outdoor furniture.

Celeski's apiarian hobby, which started about eight years ago, has grown beyond a pastime. His family and friends can consume only so much honey. Celeski was compelled to set up a small business called West Seattle Honey to sell most of the 300 to 500 pounds of honey his bees produce every year. Bottles of West Seattle Honey can be found on the shelves of Husky Deli, the honey's only retail seller.

How did he get involved in beekeeping?

"I loved honey and I've always found bees interesting," he said.

He thought becoming an apiarist would be complicated until he got involved in the Puget Sound Beekeepers Association. There are about 115 beekeepers in the group, most of whom are hobby apiarists like Celeski. They share information, advice and tips.

About 40 percent of the members live in Seattle, said Cary Therriault, club secretary. They include former Seattle Mayor Wes Uhlmann, who keeps beehives on Queen Anne.

"Beekeeping is not learned from books or on the Internet," Celeski said. "You need others to teach you."

There are only two or three other beekeepers in West Seattle, he added.

The first batch of West Seattle honey comes in about mid-April, when the maple trees bloom. If it's a cold spring, there's less honey, Celeski said.

The second honey wave happens around the end of June, when the bees collect pollen from blooming blackberry vines.

Later in summer he gathers "wildflower" honey, which is from the nectar of West Seattle home gardens as well as blackberry blossoms.

The fourth type of honey is Celeski's favorite, which he calls Admiral Amber. It's darker than the other honeys and is popular among his fellow beekeepers.

Celeski produces raw honey, which means it hasn't been heated and pasteurized. Raw honey includes bits of pollen that heighten the flavor, he said. And honey should be slathered onto a warm biscuit because heat rounds out the flavor even more, he said.

Apiarists work with European honeybees. Mason bees, which are popular with gardeners, are pollinators. Mason bees help plants reproduce by spreading pollen from flower to flower, but they don't make honey. Same for bumblebees, which are native pollinators.

Beekeeping is much like other types of farming, Celeski said. The size of the harvest is determined by many uncontrollable factors such as weather, temperature, drought and disease. One year he got just 27 pounds, but this past summer was a bountiful harvest of more than 500 pounds.

"With beekeeping, you are rolling the dice," he said.

About 90 percent of so-called of native honeybees (called wild bees) have been killed during the past two decades due to a parasite called the varroa mite, Celeski said.

West Seattle Honey comes in flavors. That is possible because honey bees tend to gather nectar from one type of flower when they are foraging.

"Honeybees are obsessive and will eat only one thing once they get started," Celeski said. If they are after blackberry blossoms, that's the only kind of nectar they will gather until the blossoms fade, he said.

Some local beekeepers even ship their bees to California when the almond trees are in blossom.

Beehives are built to exacting measurements that are now standardized worldwide. They are in wooden boxes with no top or bottom. Each hive contains 10 "frames," into which a manmade sheet of wax with the honeycomb pattern embossed on it is placed is placed. The bees follow the pattern by building wax tubes according to the preset pattern. When it's time to harvest the honey, the equally spaced frames are removed and placed into an extractor, a cylindrical device that spins to allow centrifugal force to separate the honey from the honeycomb.

Besides honey, other apiary products include candles, creams, lotions, balms and soaps.

Each beehive is supposed to be registered with the Washington State Department of Agriculture, which issues a registration number for each hive. But the department does not know how many beehives there are in Washington.

"I would not say every hive is registered," said Brad White, manager of the Department of Agriculture's pest program.

Department of Agriculture inspectors used to check beehives all over the state for diseases. The department also passed along information about new scientific developments. However, in 2000, the Washington Legislature withdrew state government's involvement in beekeeping, White said. The state no longer keeps track of trends in Washington's beekeeping industry.

The main threats to honeybees in West Seattle are the loss of native plants and the use of pesticides, Celeski said.

Tim St. Clair can be contacted at tstclair@westseattleherald.com or 932-0300.