Our Bees(ness)

SINGLE ESTATE HONEY (from Big Sky Country, where the deer and the antelope really do play)

Most supermarket honey is a mixture of various honeys of indiscernible origin.  To cut costs, corporate packers blend domestic honey with bulk imports. (Despite the fact that, in recent years, U.S. Customs busted foreign exporters for “honey laundering,” relabeling banned Chinese honey–contaminated with chloramphenicol, with a new country of origin.)  The resulting mishmash is pasteurized, producing a standardized honey taste, and bottled.  Often in plastic bears with a spout for a hat….

Ours is raw, unfiltered honey–-each jar a single-estate bottling from a single harvest, offering a true taste of terroir. Every summer, Brian’s bees gather nectar from fields of open-range alfalfa in southeastern Montana, and transform it into velvety ambrosia.  In rare years, sweet yellow clover comes into bloom, and we separately harvest this varietal.  We bottle our honey by hand, in glass jars that preserve its taste and purity.  No plastic bears, ever.

One of Big Sky’s groupies, Maye, age 74, says it tastes like the honey from her grandmother’s garden.  Which truly, is all we aspire to.