Episode 212 - The Gift of Local Raw Unfiltered Honey

​Today's episode learn about how an almost 100 year old company is bringing local regional honey to the masses. And find out how you can give the gift of raw unfiltered honey, to members of your hive this holiday season.

🎧 Listen

You can listen to this podcast episode below or listen on any of these podcast players - Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts. If you would prefer to read the text, you will find a transcript below.

Jump to:

• 🎧 Listen
• 📜 Read
• ❔ What is Local Hive Honey?
• 🍯 Raw & Unfiltered Honey vs. Processed Honey
• 🐝 Where Does Organic Honey Come From?
• 🗺️ Where in the US is Most Honey Produced?
• 🌎 Where is Most Honey in the US From?
• 👨‍🌾 How Does Local Hive Support Local Beekeepers?
• 🍊 What Varietal Honeys are Offered?
• 🧪 How Local Hive Tests Their Honey
• 🏆 Favorite Honey
• 🛒 Where to Buy Local Hive Honey

🎁 Want to give the gift of 100% raw, unfiltered, local U.S. honey this holiday season. Check out the Gift Boxes they offer. They have 7 curated gift boxes offering that include 3-16 oz bottles of honey, one honey dipper, one wildflower seed packet, one sugar-to-honey conversion chart, one koozie, and a recipe card featuring of the honeys in your box. Order by 12/18 for it to arrive by Christmas, December 25th.

📜 Read

Here is a transcript of the interview with Cale from Local Hive Honey.

Eric: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Eat Shop Waste Not podcast. Today is probably gonna be the sweetest one we've ever done. Um, today we're talking honey and I got a fellow honey lover here with me today from Local Hive Honey. Um, Cale Nelson is here to talk honey with me. So welcome to the podcast.

Cale: Yeah, thanks. Appreciate you having me.

Eric: All right. So for those who have not heard of Local Hive Honey before, can you give us a background on the company and we'll get into talking about how you guys are different from maybe other honeys you'll find in the store?

❔ What is Local Hive Honey?

Cale: Yeah, sure. Um, so Local Hive Honey, we've been in business for, actually next year is going to be our 100 years in the honey business. So we're celebrating our 100 year anniversary next year. And what we do is raw unfiltered honey, uh, raw unfiltered local honey, but on a national basis. So we've got 23 varietals of local honey that we sell across the U.S. specific to each region of the country, and we only sell raw unfiltered honey.

🍯 Raw & Unfiltered Honey vs. Processed Honey

Raw and unfiltered honey versus processed honey is there's a big difference. People probably don't know when they buy honey on the shelf that there's so many differences between what you can buy between a raw and unfiltered versus an organic versus a processed honey.

If you look at the packaging and you see where it states raw and unfiltered, what that means is It's been gently heated to the point to where it doesn't kill any vitamins and minerals and antioxidants and more importantly pollen, which you get from bees. That's what you get in a raw and unfiltered product.

So if it doesn't say raw and unfiltered, um, it's most likely processed. And what that means in a processed honey is they heat the honey up above a certain temperature to where it kills all the nutritional benefits in honey. So there's no vitamins, no minerals, no antioxidants, uh, and no pollen, uh, when it's been processed or overheated.

🐝 Where Does Organic Honey Come From?

So another difference, I guess, in Local Hive Honey is, like I mentioned before, we only do local honey. Uh, we don't do an organic honey because all organic honey is foreign sourced.

There's no such thing as an organic US honey. It all comes primarily from Brazil, a little bit from Argentina as well, but most of it's coming from Brazil.

And the reason for that is you can't tell if a bee is going to fly from an organic farm to a non organic farm because bees can travel, you know, several miles. So, you know, the USDA won't give certification on an organic honey from the U. S. for that reason. They say that the whole rainforest in Brazil is not sprayed with pesticides.

Therefore, it is considered organic, so the majority of your organic honey is going to be foreign sourced. And so it's a very unique thing that a lot of people don't know when they're buying organic, you know, you always think organics better for you. So I have to buy organic because it's not sprayed with pesticides, but don't necessarily know in this instance, in the honey category, it's all coming from a foreign country.

🗺️ Where in the US is Most Honey Produced?

So, when you kind of look across the U.S. There's a few different areas that produce the majority of the honey.

A lot of honey is coming from the North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana area. So think more wide open spaces, less, you know, um, building less, you know, population density, you're going to have more beehives, uh, and more floral sources for bees to pollinate from. So Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, as well as California, Texas and Florida, that's going to be, you know, your big largest honey production areas.

Yeah, just kind of some interesting information there about the differences between honey and what makes us unique and the differences between the segmentation of the process versus organic and raw and unfiltered.

Eric: Yeah. I appreciate you sharing about that with Brazil. I've heard this before, you know, because in the US obviously you can't stop a bee from going somewhere. It's not like you could put like a electric fence to keep your dog from going somewhere, you know, it doesn't work with bees that way. They're going to go where they want to go. Um, so it was interesting that, in Brazil, that the rainforest and stuff, they consider that to be organic.

So, thanks for sharing that, but I didn't, I didn't know that piece of it, that's why Brazil was able to use that terminology still for that.

🌎 Where is Most Honey in the US From?

Cale: Yeah, you know, another unique thing is, a quick fact is, the reason we only do local raw and unfiltered honey. We don't source any foreign honey. It's kind of against kind of our company positioning is to source any sort of foreign honey for our brand Local Hive as 75 percent of the honey in the U. S. is foreign sourced.

You know a lot of people probably don't know that, but 75 percent of the honey you consume is all from other countries. Only 25 percent is actually coming from the U.S. So it's very important for us to support U.S. beekeepers and only buy honey from the U.S.

And I, and I can get into the reasons why it's so important to us, but just another quick fact there around sourcing from, you know, what's from the U. S. versus other places.

Eric: Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes you can see, if you look over different packages of honey, you'll see like some will list like multiple places for the source and, you know, any of those are, you know, you're getting kind of like a mix of everything, you know, whether it's raw or not raw or, you know, that you're still getting kind of a very generic taste. And I think, you know, that's missing on honey. It's like, well, I think one of the unique things about hone is that there's just so many different flavors and nuances. And like, you know, I think it's one of the coolest foods in the world. You know, it's so amazing that the bees collect pollen from one source.

It tastes different from another source. I have always been fascinated about that. At first I was kind of skeptical. I'm like, oh, it can't possibly taste different. You, you know, until I, until I started tasting different variety of honeys, I'm like, yep, it does, you know, it definitely tastes different.

And I was like immediately hooked once I gave it a chance and I was like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. So unique.

Cale: Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

👨‍🌾 How Does Local Hive Support Local Beekeepers?

Eric: One of your big things, as you talked about already here is, you know, supporting those local beekeepers. So maybe, you know, go into some more details on how you guys focus on that.

Cale: Yeah, so, I mean, you got to, we think about it in terms of this way, you know, supporting local American beekeepers is important just from a pollination perspective. Uh, if you don't have U. S. beekeepers, you don't, you know, provide them with an outlet to sell their honey, um, then you're going to have less bees, which means you're going to have less pollination.

Which means you're gonna have less fruits and nuts and vegetables and oils that you see at a lot of your grocery stores today. And that's all from the benefit of pollination and bees. And it's important for us to have an outlet for beekeepers to sell their products or to sell their honey, because we want to make sure that we're protecting agriculture and making sure that you've got plentiful crops in terms of what I had mentioned around nuts and fruits and vegetables and oils.

And not only that, um. You know, for us, it allows us to work with a lot of different local beekeepers across the U S. I mean, we work with about 200 local beekeepers, you know, all across in every single state, for the most part, or the majority of states where we're working with local beekeepers and we're buying directly from these beekeepers, we've known them for, you know, many, many years in the beekeeping industry, it's often passed down from one generation to another within a family. And we've got relationships that date back 50 plus years where we've been working with a certain family for, you know, 50 years because, you know, a hundred year old company, we've had those relationships passed on, uh, just like, you know, they've passed on that, that business to their sons and daughters.

So, that's what makes us unique, is that when you're buying from local beekeepers and you've known them for a long time, you know, you get a really good quality product versus buying on the open market or on the spot market based on a price through a honey broker who's going out and sourcing it based on saying, hey, I need you to find me honey for this price. And they go and buy it from wherever they can get it. It's a little bit different for us in the fact that we know these beekeepers and we've been working with them for a long time, and it leads to a pretty good quality product. And like I said, it's very important for us to support those local beekeepers in different communities.

Um, just because of the impact it has on agriculture across the U. S.

Eric: Being able to be the pollinators out to be able to support the other crops is, you know, it's all, it's all part of the big system, um, working together and, you know, I really you're appreciate you guys focusing on those local people. Having those relationships here and being a support for those, you know, small businesses, small families, um. That is, you know, that's what I really admire about what your company is doing. And giving that, you know, some, maybe some small beekeeper in Colorado, for example, you know, when, wouldn't have their honey is being distributed as a part of something bigger than they could possibly do themselves. You're kind of giving them that taste that a little bit, their hard work is kind of being, you know, pushed beyond what it normally could have been, which is, you know, a really cool thing for them, I believe.

Cale: Yeah, and you know, we've also we've seen some of our competition kind of go to a foreign source product or a blended product product of U. S. and Brazil or product of U. S. and Argentina, you know, there's an economic benefit to buy honey from other countries. It's a significantly cheaper than it is to buy honey in the U.S.

So, you know, we've always stayed true to supporting those local American beekeepers, even though it does come at a premium. We have to pay a premium price. Pricing has gone up significantly for U.S. Honey. Yeah. But we've never sacrificed our positioning around, you know, moving to blended product that's sourced from multiple countries.

It's always a hundred percent U. S. and it's always supporting those local beekeepers. And that's very important to us because we've seen a lot of people move away from that positioning.

Eric: Yeah, I agree. You see that a lot in other industries too. It's like. As you've seen, like, you know, I've seen, you know, companies that were just like, we had a blend from just this place and now we're collecting from all over the world and mixing that together, or, you know. Orange juice, trying to find a hundred percent Florida orange juice, forget it, unless you're buying Florida grown oranges yourself and juicing them, you know, you go into any grocery store in this country and you're going to be hard pressed to find any orange juice, that is 100 percent Florida, but there is no brand major brand that does that anymore at all. They're all having to mix. They've had their economic challenges and stuff. Sure. Um, but so it's, you know, good to kind of see that you guys are committed to, we're going to stick with this. We're going to stick with this.

Even when it's, I'm sure challenging at times and tempting to kind of like, let's go the cheaper route. You guys want to keep your a hundred year old roots. Um, so that is, you know, definitely admirable.

🍊 What Varietal Honeys are Offered?

Eric: So we're going to go down and talk about, you know, you guys have a bunch of different, you know, you do kind of a lot of varieties of different honeys.

You have like different kind of blends that are quite regional here. And then you have your more kind of like even more smaller, different types of blends under your harvest reserve series. So, so, you know, we're looking at a beekeeper that's trying to harvest a particular varietal honey.

Like what, what kind of things does that look like? And what does that process look like for those? Maybe we don't know about like, what do you do like a specific varietal?

Cale: Yeah. So we first start off with the availability of honey produced in a certain state or region. So where we can procure enough honey on a state specific basis, we'll have a state specific varietal. Um, in a state like California, we even have multiple varietals. So we've got local SoCal honey for Southern California, a local NorCal honey for Northern California, California.

And then, uh, we also have some other state specific varietals because there's enough honey production in those states, a local Utah honey, Colorado honey, Florida honey, Texas honey, but there are some parts of the country where you can't procure enough honey on a state specific level to support.

You know, the retailers where we have distribution, um, being the number, you know, 2 honey brand in the U.S. and the conventional channel and number 1 brand and the natural channel, you know, we've got a lot of retailers to service. So, uh, and supply our honey with, and sometimes we can't procure enough honey because the state doesn't have enough production to do, for instance, an Arkansas honey, or a Connecticut honey.

Or doesn't allow enough honey production to do that. So we've got regional specific varietals. We'll do a local Midwest honey where we're using honey from several states in the Midwest or a Great Lakes honey where we're using honey from Great Lakes states or a New England honey where we're using honey from You know, states throughout New England.

So where we can procure enough honey on a state specific level based on availability, we definitely do that where we can't, it's always a regional specific varietal. We also have some national varietals where we're doing a clover honey and a wildflower honey and an orange blossom honey, which is just from orange blossom, obviously coming from orange blossom, mostly from Florida and California.

A clover is coming from clover floral sources, mostly in the Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota area, and then a wildflowers just from several wildflower sources across the U.S. So we've got a few different areas, the local, the state specific varietals, the regional specific varietals, and then your more national and we recently launched a new line called harvest reserve, which is only for our website.

Only they're super unique, small batch, limited varietals of honey that we can't really get our hands on a lot because there's not a lot available. Um. For instance, we did a Washington raspberry honey where a beekeeper was putting, beehives on raspberry fields and the bees were collecting raspberry nectar from the fields to create a raspberry honey.

There's no flavoring in the honey. It's just due to the fact that bees are pollinating primarily off a raspberry and it creates a raspberry flavor. We also have an Oregon blackberry where they're doing the same thing. And in Oregon with blackberries, we've done a California citrus item where it's all off of citrus groves, grapefruit, lime, lemon, orange in California.

We did a California citrus. So we've got some unique. Uh, what we call Harvest Reserve items on our website that are, that are super hyper local, even more so than the state varietals. So those are the different areas, um, you know, of our portfolio of products.

We have 23 unique varietals of honey. When you go on www.localhivehoney.com you can see all those unique varietals we offer, and when you go to your local grocery store, you can, you know, see those items for Local Hive that are on the shelf. A local item specific to that area. And then probably a clover and a wildflower. Um, what's unique about the differences between one honey to the next is going to be the flavor you're going to get.

We like to say honey is like wine. Uh, every source is going to taste different. It's going to have a different flavor, a different color, depending on what bees are pollinating off of in California. For instance, Southern California, it's going to be made up of citrus and sage, whereas in the northwest, that's going to be berries.

Whereas in Texas, it's going to be tallow crop. Whereas in Florida, it's going to be citrus and Brazilian pepper or what that means. It's going to create a unique flavor based upon those floral sources. Bees are pollinating from and create a different color as well. So some slight nuances, obviously, between what you get in different varietals of honey that people may not know.

Eric: It is just so amazing, even just if you look at your blends, like right now I have the, I have a Northeast blend that I got in a Utah blend and there's still, you know, there's still that subtle difference between, between the two different types. Um, cause you know, Utah. Versus if you're up in New England, I mean, it's not even, it's completely different plants, different weather, everything, you know, it's, it's quite a contrast. So you're going to get that. And as you mentioned too, that you have a Northern California and Southern, you're going to have definite differences there. Um, so it's really fun to do that here. To taste a different one ones.

🧪 How Local Hive Tests Their Honey

Cale: Yeah, definitely. And to answer a little bit more about your question, just around, how do we make up our different blends of honey? You know, we go through some different testing around ensuring that what we're putting in the bottle is representative of that area.

And we do quite a bit of tests before we'll buy a load of honey from a beekeeper. We'll get a sample in from that beekeeper and then we'll test that sample and do a pollen analysis. Kind of like, it's kind of like a DNA test. Really, it's, it's kind of crazy. You can, you can test the honey for the different pollen attributes of the honey.

So when you test it, it'll say it's X percent clover, X percent sage, X percent citrus. And then we've got a custom blend based upon the varietal that we're selling that is made up of certain percentages of floral sources specific to that region. So you can do a pollen analysis test, which is what we do on the front end before we buy honey that goes into the batch of that we're making of that particular varietal to ensure it's representative of that region.

And then we do a 2nd layer of testing when we get the honey in from the beekeeper we will test random barrels that are coming off the truck for the same attributes we test in the sample to make sure that the pollen analysis in the sample matches to the pollen analysis in the drums of honey we're taking off of the truck and then we do a 3rd level of testing with finished goods after we bottle to ensure that the barrels match the sample that matched what's in the bottle at the end of the production runs. We've got a few different layers of testing that kind of, you know, give you the authenticity of that honey being from that specific area.

Eric: And I think that's super important. Because it is not very easy to just look at a barrel of honey and know it has the correct composition. So you have to go through and do those tests. It is really important. You guys ever have like a situation where, you know, something comes and it's just not, pollen wise, it's not up to a certain standard you are trying to hit if it's going to be like too low in pollen. I believe you say, oh, we're not going to use this.

Cale: Yeah, I mean, sometimes, for instance we have a wildflower honey too, which is just made up of multiple wildflowers. So if we do buy, if the honey is good quality and it's got good flavor, but the pollen doesn't necessarily match up to, for instance, what a SoCal honey would be, you know, we might use it for our wildflower blend or, you know, say it's got a lot of clover and not necessarily the pollen associated with one particular area, we may use it for a clover batch that we have in our clover varietal. So, um, we have come across run across some situations where the pollen analysis doesn't match kind of what we were expecting. And sometimes, you know, it's very hard to control.

I mean, beekeepers don't know where bees are flying. It's not like they have GPS locators on all of them. You know, figuring out what plants and flowers they're pollinating off of. So, um, you know, hey know what floral sources are around the area and they can give their best guess of what they believe it is.

But sometimes it, you know, with it being an agricultural product, it's hard to predict. It's not, it's not an exact science.

Eric: So from year to year, it's going to change based upon, you know, some years and you can see some years might be better for a certain floral source. I mean, you know, I'm a big fruit person, so I'm always looking in the fruit industry and you know, there's up and down years, some years you're gonna have more citrus blossoms, there's gonna be more blooms. And some years there's gonna be less blossoms. Things are gonna happen here, so that, you know, that's obviously gonna affect what you're gonna end up in the final product. So that's, you know, so it's good to see that you guys are testing that honey to kind of see. Because again, you know, it's not gonna be exact thing that's gonna stay the same year to year, or, you know, timing in the year makes a big difference too, of course. When honey is being harvested, because, you know, throughout the different times of of the year, we're gonna have different things that are going to be blooming at certain points.

So, you know, that's, you know, it's really interesting to see. I love that you're, you know, looking at the honey and saying, okay, like this one here is kind of high in the clover. Let's put it with the clover, you know, so you're still kind of staying into your like integrity of like, I want to have a honey that really represents that region.

Cale: The other thing is, it's interesting is that weather is such a big component of a bloom of, you know, just different honeys being, um, having a lot of, uh, bloom associated in certain parts of the area with a varietal and sometimes, you know, The rain could affect the honey flow in terms of too much rain or could be not enough rain or the rain to come at the wrong time.

And it's right during the process of honey production. And if it rains too much, you might have a bad year or if it rains not enough. You could have a bad year. So, you know, the weather has to line up pretty perfectly with the, the, the honey flow around production timing around harvesting season, not production around harvesting season is very important.

So, you know, 2 weeks on on a bad weather cycle could really affect the harvesting season for honey. So, you know, being agriculture, it's hard to predict. Obviously, the weather is hard to predict and, and it definitely has an impact on what's harvested. So it's pretty interesting.

🏆 Favorite Honey

Eric: Well, before I let you go, this has all been wonderful, great information here. Um, so I wanted to know from your personal tastes, uh, what are some of your favorite honeys?

Cale: So, you know, I really like the unique harvest reserve. I wish we could offer them, you know, to a larger audience of people there. They're only on our website because they're very unique and we don't run that many bottles of them.

But I really like the Washington Raspberry a lot. I think that's a very unique flavor. Same with the Oregon Blackberry, it is a very unique flavor. but of our core varietals, some of the ones I like are, I like the Colorado a lot. It's kind of a milder, sweeter, flavor profile. Uh, it's got, it's got a lot of alfalfa and clover floral source in our Colorado honey, but it's a very, you know, mild, sweet flavor. I like the Colorado. I like the orange blossom honey. I like citrus honeys in general. So the orange blossom one is pretty good. Same with the SoCal one. Um, I also like the Florida. You get your citrus element, but you get a little bit of spice, a hint of spice in with some citrus due to the Brazilian peppers, that you're getting in conjunction with the citrus creates a unique kind of bolder citrus flavor you would get in Florida.

So those are probably my favorite ones if I had to pick, you know, five or six.

Eric: It is hard to pick for sure. There's so many. Yeah. If you're getting true, unfiltered honey, it's hard to find ones that are bad. My wife does not like the really dark ones, like the, the buckwheat or the, or, or chestnut, like those, those I like them though.

And those are really good for baking, but yeah, it's, it's going to have a nice kind of balance there. Like, I think some honeys are better for serving at the table for just putting your things here. Some of the more like potent, you know, flavored ones, stronger flavor ones are great for baking, you know, and it, and it's fun to like me and my kids, we love having like honey tasting parties. Uh, we love just to bust out a bunch of honeys here. Just, just taste them and just, you know, and teach the kids about, differences of like textures and aromas and flavors and you kind of build their palates. That's something I love doing with my kids.

Cale: Yeah, no, that is a lot of fun. We do a lot of that around the office too. And some people are really, really good at picking up on the nuances of flavor and some people not so much. So it just, you know, as you taste a lot of them, you become better at it, but you know, uh, it's definitely interesting to do.

One spectrum to the other. So some, something super light, like a, um, like a, like a clover honey versus something super dark, like a Texas honey, which is very bold and dark. And when you taste one side by side of those two types from one extreme to the other, you can definitely tell the difference.

🛒 Where to Buy Local Hive Honey

Eric: Right. Well, thank you again for coming on today here. And guys, if you want to give their honey a try, um, go head over to Local Hive honey. It's www.localhivehoney.com. Yeah, so check it out here. And you know, it makes a great Christmas gift. They have some great three packs you can get, um, with some different honeys in there.

Um, and you can, as I said, it makes this one of those kind of, kind of fun gifts. If you've got a foodie in your family, then don't know what to get them. Um, it's much better than getting socks. So get some honey. All right. Thanks for coming on.

Cale: All right. I really appreciate it. Thank you.