Honey Like You've Never Had

This summer, the East Lansing Farmers' Market has been featuring a product I've never had before, but I've become addicted to: dark honey, produced as a byproduct of processing beeswax. Beekeeper Dale Woods runs Applegarth Honey. Slogan: "we serve the queen." He's been appearing weekly on Sundays, 10 am - 2 pm, in Valley Court Park.

Dale's operation is located in Fowlerville, Michigan, and he has sold his wares at many of the markets in the area, including Allen Street, Merdian, Mason, Chelsea, and the take-your-life-in-your-own-hands drive-through farmers' market of St. John's. He offers traditional light honey that tastes beautifully buttery and fresh, as well as the darker variety that tastes to me more rough and wild. I love it on my granola and in my tea.

Dale explained to me how the dark honey is produced. The honey in the combs is covered with a thin coat of wax. The beekeeper cuts the surface layer of the wax off to get the honey out. If he heats that capping, he'll get beeswax floating to the surface of the heated vessel. At the bottom of the heated vessel rests a dark layer of honey.

Dale says that most beekeepers treat the dark honey almost like it is waste, sometimes selling it to hunters for traps. He used to give it to his brother, until he realized people like it so much they'd pay good money for it. Now his brother gets the light honey. When I was at the market this week, Dale had only one jar of the dark honey left by 1 o'clock.

I asked Dale why he's had no candles at the start of this year, and he said it had just been too darned hot to make candles. Since the weather has cooled, he's got candles for sale. Beeswax candles are the best -- they give off very little smoke and last a long time.

Dale maintains about forty hives, and his beehives generally stay put on his land. (Once in a while he will help out a farm.) When his bees head out, they feed mostly on the local wildflowers. Dale explained that, although you'll see marketers claiming that their honey is made from some particular type of flower, in fact, unless you're going to strap a camera to the top of every bee, you can't really know precisely what it is they're feeding on.

Generally a honey marketed as being from a certain flower is really just labeled according to what it tastes like the bees probably farmed. You'll see "clover honey," but there really isn't enough clover out there nowadays to account for all that clover honey. It's just called that because it tastes like what people think "clover honey" tastes like.

Dale can't remember how long he's been beekeeping. He says his daughter has calculated it out at about 32-35 years. His hives have not been effected by Colony Collapse Disorder. Dale told me that stationery beekeepers like him have generally been much less affected. The malady is mostly effecting commercial pollinators.

If you'd like to taste some of Dale's honey for free, head down to the East Lansing Farmers' Market next Sunday, 10 am - 2 pm. Look for the guy in sunglasses with lots of jars of honey.