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.