How To: The World's Best Tasting Honey

May I have your attention please? The following is not the real Jeff Fox review. If your beehives have more insulation than your house, you might be a beekeeper. If you have a love -hate relationship with hay fever season, You might be a beekeeper. If you cried like a baby when your favorite colony swarmed, you might be a beekeeper. I can't wait

for you to hear today's episode because we're going to have a conversation with someone whose bees produce the world's best tasting honey. Together we'll learn how she does it, where she does it, and how you can improve your honey.

But first, here's something a little weird and interesting from the world of honey bees and beekeeping. Have you ever heard of purple honey? In the Sandhills region of North Carolina, Between the capital of Raleigh and Charlotte, visitors may not even realize what a rare ecological niche that they have stepped into. The region is one of the last homes for unique flora and fauna like the southern hognose snake and the Carolina

gopher frog, both of which are endangered. But what it's also known for is something that university researchers, foodies, and conspiracy theorists all scratch their heads over. It's a rare and coveted honey in a deep shade of aubergine purple, and no one knows for sure what gives it that color, that hue. In this area, if the conditions are exactly right and the timing is perfect, beekeepers will visit their hives and find not just frames brimming with golden honey, but sometimes

even honey with a deep violet glow. According to Paige Burns, the Richmond County Extension Director, it's true, nobody knows what causes purple honey. According to her, it's speculated that it's the alkalinity of the soil changing the honey's color as it changes hydrangeas from blue to pink. Another thought is that it's wild berries surrounding the bee's territory. And the idea that probably sparks the most debate is that it's the deep violet flower of the invasive

kudzu vine. Beekeepers in the area have reported finding the beautiful purple honey in their hives for years, but even so, its appearance is so sporadic and at the whim of chance that it continues to be a surprise when it does appear. Purple honey is most likely to arise under drought -like conditions, and it's believed that blue -black huckleberries that grow on shrubs rooted in thirst -tolerant clay feed the bees that can't locate

traditional, more water -dependent blooms. Okay, I don't have the answers for you, but if you're in North Carolina and can answer the purple honey mystery, please get a hold of me and we'll get you on the show. In the meantime, I would love to try a jar. I'd like to welcome to the show

today our super special guest, Virginia Webb. How are you, Virginia? Doing great today, Eric. Thank you so much. I'm so honored to be with your show today. Thank you for inviting me. The big thing that we're going to learn today is about Virginia. Because she has the world's best tasting honey Now that's not from her. That's

from not from me. That's from real live judges Would you tell us a little bit about that first and then we'll find out where you are and a little bit more about you The Center for honeybee research

in Asheville, North Carolina has sponsored the black jar contest Which is actually a tasting contest where they solicit honey from around the world and it truly is a global international honey contest where you send in honeys from your local hives. It's judged in several different batches because they get thousands of entries.

They'll go through several elimination periods where they're going to finalize that last 40 or 50 jars of honey where they have specially trained judges who know what to look for when it comes to the taste of honey. And they go through them. They're going to be looking for the flavor of the area that it's from. They're going to look for the flour. Certainly, honey is the soul of the flour. That's what they want to taste when they taste a jar of honey. They could be

creamed honey or liquid honey. No infused honey or comb honey is allowed in the competition. but they eliminate it down to about 40 or 50 jars of honey and from that a panel of judges and I'm not sure how many exactly were in it this year, but I think it's about eight to ten judges. They have a scoring sheet that they go through and they look for the special taste of honey and the overall best tasting honey. The best tasting honey is not the only award they

give. They actually give a number of awards out during the judging contest. It's funny. I want

to congratulate you, but shouldn't I really be congratulating your bees? Absolutely. They're those girls that are out there working in the field. They're the ones who deserve all the credit and trust me I treat them as good as I can making sure they're healthy. I maintain You know, my apiaries, I have six of them here in the Northeast Georgia mountains. I keep the grass down. I make sure that the mite levels are very low. I have bear fences up here. You know, bears are native

to North America, honey bees are not. So I definitely keep those up and I just make sure they're happy girls while they're up here. That's what it's all about, I guess. I mean, there's the whole happy cow slogan. If your bees are happy, maybe that adds to the flavor. I think it does. They just want to work that much more for you. I don't know. I think it does too. It's a wonderful partnership we have with our bees. Can you tell us a little

bit about what they're foraging on that is making that honey so special? Well here in northeast Georgia I'm able to collect two different crops of honey. I harvest in the springtime honey, which is the clover, the locust, the blackberry, the tulip poplar, apple trees, blueberries, all of the flowers that bloom in that springtime. I've taken all of that honey off by the first of June and I'm going to be extracting that out

and that's what I finished doing today. So when my bees Right now we're getting ready for the sour wood to bloom. I've put on dry combs, which means the combs are fresh and they're dry. There's no other honey in there. And I want to get the sour wood as pure as I possibly can. It's a little bit of an art trying to determine when the sour wood is going to bloom, because sour wood trees, which is a native tree to North America, it depends

on the weather and the rainfall. Sourwood likes a wet spring and a dry summer, and it's looking like we could have another good year this year for sourwood. So I've started putting on, and actually all of my bees already have at least one super of dry comb on them. The sourwood is just beginning to bloom in the lower elevations. Sourwood does much better in higher elevations. So probably the middle of next week, I'll be checking all my bees and see if they're ready

for a second super. Can I plant sourwood trees around here? You're in Utah? Yeah, I don't know if they'd grow. You may be able to get an ornamental tree. You know, the sourwood tree is known by several different names. If you go to a nursery, you'll find the sourwood tree listed as the Appalachian lily tree or the lily of the valley tree. So they are available for sale. Yeah, but would they live in a colder climate? I don't know. You talked about high elevations. How cold does

it get? We have snow. The range of sourwood is generally from North Georgia through southern Pennsylvania and mainly in the mountain section. There's great sourwood locations in Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia. The Shenandoah Valley is an excellent area for sourwood and even up to West Virginia and a little bit of southern Pennsylvania. By the way, I tried sour wood honey for the first time recently. One of your neighbors there in Georgia sent me a jar. It was fantastic.

I'm not quite sure how to describe it. I tasted it and I'm like, wait a minute, is it is it sweet or is it sour? Is it there is kind of a sour something to it? I don't know. How would you explain it? The whole palette of it? I certainly would not consider it sour. If it's sour, it may have something mixed with it because up here there's virtually no other nectar producing flowers blooming except for a little clover, which there's everywhere, and then a little bit of sumac. Sumac

can sour the honey a little bit. I try to make sure that I'm in areas that do not have sumac trees. That's that a way I can get the pure sour with that I can. But it has a very calming flavor to it. It's almost a buttery flavor to it with a little bit of creaminess to it. It feels very good on the flat part of your tongue and the back of your tongue. I don't have a very refined palate. I have a feeling the sour part just entered into my brain because of the term sour wood.

So I don't know. But anyway, it was super delicious. That's all I know. Hey, I want to hear about

some of your credentials, because I wrote some down the other day. You have three master beekeeper certifications? That's correct. I've been very blessed. The University of Georgia, the University of Florida, and then Eastern Agricultural Society. I think that I'm the only person in the United States to have three master beekeeping certifications, and I'm working on my fourth, but it won't happen this year. I hope that next year then I'll have

the fourth one. And then I also read that your honey has been served in the White House, the Georgia governor's mansion, the United Nations, like cordon bleu, probably in heaven somewhere. It's quite a compliment. Yeah, funny that you should say that when you go to my honey house, the aroma of honey from the extractor is just fills the air. My dad once told me that he doesn't know what heaven looks like, but he certainly

knows what heaven smells like. It's going to smell like a honey house with that fresh harvest of honey being extracted out that just absolutely fills the air. And I've always loved that quote from my dad. I'm going to quote him on that. That is a good one. So one of the other things that I was curious about, it sounds like you know a lot about honey judging as well. Have you been a Honey Judge? I've been a Honey Judge

for nearly 50 years. Okay. I'm very fortunate to have worked with some absolutely wonderful judges in the past. W .O. Kennedy and Mr. Leslie Little from Tennessee back in the mid -1970s. I first trained as a Honey Judge there. I've also been certified in North Carolina and in Maryland. But I've also recently, within the last 20 years, become a part of the Welsh honey judging program. Although I don't judge that way anymore, I think it's too subjective. There's

too many variables in there. I do still judge. I've judged at the American Beekeeping Federation. And also, I'm a senior judge at the World Beekeeping Federation, or Appamundia, which hosts the World Honey Show every two years. And you're headed to Copenhagen this year? I am. I'm going and... in September and you should be there. This is the place to be on this planet for a bee meeting in 2025. 10 ,000 beekeepers will be there. 350 to 400 vendors, you know, that are just fabulous

from all over the world. I think there'll be beekeepers represented on every continent except Antarctica. So it's a great meeting. It's a great place to be with beekeepers. You have manufacturers. You have honey sellers. You have equipment. makers. You have hobbyist beekeepers up to people who have tens of thousands of hives that will be there. The scientific program is absolutely the

best one in the world. Dr. Jeff Pettis, formerly from the Beltsville Bee Lab, he is the president of Appamundia and he is absolutely doing a fantastic job in making sure we're going to have a wonderful Appamundia in September. It's being hosted by the Scandinavian Beekeeping Associations of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, I believe. And they have been working on this for four years to make sure that they welcome the world beekeepers to this program. And I will add Copenhagen is a beautiful city.

If you have not been there, you will love it. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you. Lots of people have entered honey competitions. And they're going to say, Virginia, what is the secret? What can I do? Because my bees are just as good as everybody else's bees. Every beekeeper lives in a different area. And they have different flowers that are blooming, that they have different honey sources. It's really, you know, you just need to harvest your very best honey. That's

all it is. The best honey in the world, the very best honey that you can find in the world is the honey that comes from your own beehives. Quick break to thank our presenting sponsor, Man Lake. Whether you're a beekeeper or not, you know that nutrition is key for healthy honey bees, native bees, and other pollinators. The Man Lake app is a great resource for determining pollinator friendly plants that thrive in your area. And its plant identification feature is

super helpful and fun. When I see a plant covered in bees, I fire up the app on my phone, I find out what that plant is, and then I can put them in my own yard. The bees love it. If you haven't already downloaded the Man Lake app, give it a try today. Oh, and by the way, it's free. You'll never taste anything better than what those girls in your backyard are making. That's the best honey you can eat. Now, certainly I was very blessed, and this is my second time winning best

tasting honey in the world. It's not my first, it's my second, and I'm the only one to have won two times. I was very blessed with a wonderful harvest last year, and I was able to enter. But there were some other great prizes that were also awarded, including honey from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Greece, Spain. Try to remember the other ones, but there was about five or six other countries that were represented on that final showbench

with honey that was awarded. And remember again, it's not just the top prize, they give other prizes too. European honey, I think South Pacific honey, and then they have regions in America that they also give awards to. How long have you been keeping bees? I've been keeping bees a long time. My father gave me my first hives in 1963. I was able to enjoy 4 -H when I was in high school, and I was the first state winner in beekeeping at the state competition, and then

I went on to nationals. That's where I got my first Scholarship. I also continued working with beekeeping organizations in Tennessee and I was a former Tennessee state honey queen. I did have a few years after college and after just a few years that I wasn't keeping bees, but I have to tell you, it was only a couple of years. I started keeping bees again when I lived in Atlanta, Georgia, downtown Atlanta, Buckhead. I was called the Buckhead Beekeeper for many years. And I

started keeping bees in the urban setting. But then I also bought a farm up in Northeast Georgia, and I kept bees up there for several years. And then I found a man that I really... loved very much Carl Webb, and he was a little older than I was. He had already retired. I was working for a bank at that time. I was an officer with a bank. And keeping bees on the side, my family was always a hobbyist beekeeper, but we did keep

up to about 75 or 80 hives. But we fell in love and got married, and he had a couple hundred hives, but we grew our beekeeping business to about 600 hives. And we kept that for many, many years as a husband and wife operation. He died just a few years ago, but I continue that tradition and I'm loving every minute of it. Again, I'm working in the bees not every single day, but I'm certainly working with my business every day that I can. Well, this show is all about

the love of the honeybees. Just what is it that you love about them? I can tell you've got it. You've got the spark. I can just say honeybee and you start smiling and your cheeks get a little rosy. Well, some things that I've been very proud

of is I've really enjoyed teaching others about bees and beekeeping. I have a couple programs later this year that I'm going to be doing wax programs with and also some mentoring programs. But one thing that I've been very proud of is teaching young people and children about bees and beekeeping. And I have several videos that you can find on YouTube, educational programs about keeping bees and what the honeybee is and how important it is to our agricultural society.

You can also find some videos on there for preparing Honey Show entries, and those are very, very popular. And a lot of people from all over the world contact me every week. I get a little email from someone who said that they watched my videos and really enjoyed learning about how to show honey. Some other things that I've been involved in is that I have worked with the prison program for the state of Georgia, Lee Arendale State Women's Prison. We do have a beekeeping program

there. It is shutting down because they're moving the women to another centralized prison program, but I've been with that for six years. I've also worked with USAID and teaching beekeeping abroad. in Central America, South America, the Caribbean, and in Europe. So I've done some traveling with the beekeeping also. We had somebody else on the show recently from Canada that was talking about doing a beekeeping program with the prison

that's in her area with incarcerated men. And it just sounded like they were having such an amazing experience. And it was really helping with their rehabilitation, with their Oh gee, their emotional focus and state of mind and everything else. What kinds of benefits did you see for the women that you worked with there? You know, prison work is very difficult. It's a vocational program that they offer, along with some other

life skills that women can use. They do welding, carpentry, small engine repairs, mechanics, and cosmetology. So beekeeping was a new program for this prison for women. It's been in the men's programs for a number of years, but this was the first women's prison that we had been able to go through, and that's in conjunction with the Georgia Beekeepers Association. Most of the women that we have that are in this program, they have never been inside a beehive. They don't

know anything about bees or beekeeping. So they're starting from the very, very basics. It's wonderful to see the light in their eyes and talk about what they're doing with the beekeeping program, extracting their own honey, treating the bees for mites. If a swarm happens that they're able to get, they're able to go ahead and capture that swarm. They go through the same process that you and I do. We also have, with the University of Georgia, a master beekeeping program at the

prison systems here in Georgia. And a number of the inmates in Georgia have been able to reach that master beekeeping level. And that's something, too, I'm also very proud of. That's fantastic. What does it do for someone personally, though? Can you give us an example of one person that you saw? And I don't know how well you get to know them. Maybe you don't have a chance to get to know them well enough. I could cry at this

one. We actually wrote about this. Julia Mahood, who heads the program at Lee Arendale, she and I wrote an article for one of the B magazines a few years ago, and about April. I'll just give her first name, April. She is a lifer. She will be up for parole in another five to 10 years. She was the first time offender. When she was incarcerated, her family pretty well cut her off, even though she kept, and she does have

a couple children. They're adults now, but she did keep their name on file if they wanted to visit. So she's always been very sweet, always a helper and everything. But when it comes to visitation days, and that's mostly on Saturdays and holidays, She's one of the individuals that stays in her cell or in her block because she doesn't have a lot of visitors. And then one day at Saturday, the guard came out and said,

April, you have a visitor. And she said, oh, it must be my sister who comes to visit once or twice a year. So she went up to the guard house where they have to go through a screening to get into a visit with family members. and she looked through the window, and that's when she started shaking very bad. It was one of her daughters. She had not seen them since she had been in prison, and she's been in prison more

than 20 years now. And she was just amazed. So when she went into the greeting area where they're allowed to meet with family, the visitation hall there, they have to set on two different, or a table. with one person on each side. And she just says, why are you here? I've written you all these years. I've sent you Christmas cards, birthday cards. I've never heard from you. And I just never understood why you didn't call or why you did not call, why you didn't visit or

send something to me. And her daughter looked at her and said, well, I took a beekeeping class up in Bumpkin County, North Carolina. And they talked about a prison program here in Georgia. And they mentioned Lee Arendale. And you had said in your Christmas letter that you were starting to teach to learn about bees and beekeeping. And I thought I would come and share some of what I've learned with you. That is so awesome. It really is. It melts my heart. It really does.

And we have women in our program that are lifers without and some will come and go, but we do have success stories. And especially in the men's side, we've had a number of very successful people who have gotten out of being incarcerated and they've gone to work with commercial beekeeping organizations. So there is a lot of success there.

Again, I'm very proud to be a part of it and the Georgia Beekeepers Association has been the cornerstone of that organization of helping prisons and the beekeeping program in many of the prisons here in Georgia. I think there's five or six that we're now in. That's very cool. All right,

I want to shift gears a little bit in the last few minutes that we have here and ask something. I very often ask beekeepers if you had advice for a brand new beekeeper, what would it be? But I want to do something a little bit different with you if you don't mind. And that is I have met some beekeepers over the last few years that after their first or second year or third year of having bees die and then maybe die again,

they just give up. So if someone is maybe in that situation or getting close to it, what advice do you have for them? You know, they put in all the money for the equipment they have, they bought the suits, the smoker, they've painted their hives, they're really pretty, and they get through that first winter and come January, February, the bees are gone. How disappointing that is. I just have to tell them, please, first of all, you need to be a part of a local beekeeping club.

You need to find out what's going on in your area. The next thing is you need to remember you have to check for mites. Mite loads are very much the reason why a third of the bees are dying worldwide every year. We need beekeepers. It is so important that we have honey bees. I tell people all the time, it doesn't matter if you live in an urban setting or a rural setting.

You can be able to keep bees. Now, there may be exceptions where you live in a pud or an HOA that doesn't allow it, but you may be able to find a farmer or a neighbor who allows you to keep bees. It's so important. And when you go to that beekeeping club, talk to the leadership of that club. Tell them your struggles. See if you can find a mentor. That would be the best thing to happen with the bees. I have a number of people that I mentor with the beekeeping,

and it's really important. It's important also that we have a healthy beekeeping industry. You know, someone once told me that Einstein said that if the bees die, mankind would die in four years. Well, that's not true. Maybe Fred and Einstein said it, but it certainly wasn't Albert. We have a number of fruits, excuse me, vegetables that need no vector or beneficial insect to live. Wheat. corn, rice, and barley need no beneficial

insect to produce food. But look how dull our plates would be without those beautiful vegetables, fruits, nuts, and lagoons, without the honeybee. I tell people all the time, you know, how important honeybee is to our agricultural industry because we cannot be a free and prosperous country if our food source is controlled by someone else. After you pass dirt, water, and sunshine, the next most important thing we have to grow food, to feed 8 billion people on this planet is pollination.

Keeping a healthy beekeeping industry also keeps a healthy agricultural industry. That's a great answer. I'd also love to add to that, if you don't mind. Part of what I love about beekeeping is that it's not easy. There is so much to learn and to keep learning and you think you know it and then you need to keep learning because something changes. We've all heard the old saying, ask a question to 10 beekeepers and you'll get 11 different answers. There's a lot of variations

of that too. I find that even with myself. I can ask myself the same question and get five different answers. Beekeeping is not that easy, but the challenge is part of what's so great about it. And there are a lot of success stories, and I'm sorry that people lose their bees, but you need to keep those bees. We need those bees in urban, suburban, and rural settings. It's so important to maintain. Even small beekeepers

are very valuable. I want to encourage people, if they do lose their bees, many times I'll help them get a hive started again in the springtime, either through a swarm. or I may do a split that I don't need, or I could easily just do a split from a hive and let them have another hive to get started again with. And I really am enjoying doing that for a number of beekeepers here in Northeast Georgia. You are the sweetest thing. All right. This is my favorite time. I get to

ask you, can you tell us a wild and crazy beekeeping story that you've had? Oh, my. You've probably had a million of them, but pick a couple. Yeah, I've had one to where I've accidentally backed the truck into a little marshy area and it's loaded with bees and it's dark and it's... wet and it's cold and it's, yeah, I've had done that only a couple, well, just one time I've done it really, really bad. And we've had to get a

wrecker to come in and pull us out. And we've never had a wrecker had ever come to pull anybody with honey bees on their truck before. So that's a pretty wild story for me. Was the wrecker afraid? No, he wasn't. I had an extra suit. Well, my husband did, too. We had extra equipment on us. But no, he just pulled us out. And thankfully, I was able to back it into the right location the next time. Oh, good. How many hives do you run, by the way? I'm running about 150, 160 hives

right now. That's about all that I as an individual can really handle by myself. I was just going to ask you do all that by yourself. That's a lot. I have a part -time worker who works about 8 to 12 hours a week when needed. Sounds like there's a ton we can learn from you. Give me a link. I'll stick it in the show notes to your YouTube channel. So I've learned a couple of things here today. One is if I ever want to do well in a honey show to enter one that Virginia

Webb is not competing in. I don't enter very many honey shows anymore. I tell you I don't. And it was just a whim that I entered this one this springtime. I was really shocked. I said, I think I'll go ahead and send in an entry. I know that Carl had sent me a link for it. And I said, OK, I'll send a couple entries in. So that's the only reason why I did it. But yeah, you're not going to see my honey and many honey shows anymore. You're welcome to go ahead and

enter. And please do. Do you have any other secrets to making great honey and keeping super happy bees? I just try to make it as pure as possible. I add nothing. I take away nothing. It's just extracted from the honeycomb and just lightly strained. And that's the best honey you can try is your own honey. All right, Virginia. Eric?

Yes. What an honor it has been to be with you this evening. Thank you again for the invitation. Well, thank you. It's been a lot of fun and please keep in touch. Will do. Thanks again for joining us here on Be Love Beekeeping presented by Man Lake. Remember right now to follow or subscribe and share this podcast. Also a quick shout out to V2B Health for their support. Vita's Varroa Control range of products includes Apistan, Apigard, and now Varroxan, Extended Release Oxalic Acid

Strips. Thanks guys. And remember, if you're not just in it for the honey or the money, you're in it for the love. See you next week.