Beekeepers today are faced with an overwhelming number of challenges. Between pests, disease, and environmental factors it gets harder every year to keep a colony of bees alive and healthy. Most of the commercial beekeepers today are in an “all-in” game and feel that they cannot risk losing their bees by not treating them with chemicals for various pests.

In contrast, I have come to the conclusion that getting back to the simple and basic way that my grandfather and great grandfather maintained bees is the best long term solution.

Beekeeping in Chama, New Mexico

The first thing I noticed as a kid was the fact that in larger commercial beekeeping operation it is all about the amount of honey you can produce. I worked in the extracting room (where the honey is removed from the comb) as a child and fondly remember seeing many different colors of honey on various frames. I would always taste them before loading them into the extractor and try and guess the floral source from which they came. Later, after work, I would describe the color and taste to my uncle, and tell him what I thought it was, eager for his confirmation. It was then that I had the idea of keeping all of the honeys separate, which we painstakingly do today.

Our varietal honeys are born out of timing and careful placement of hives. While we obviously can’t control where the bees forage, we can put them within close proximity of certain blooming plants. In addition we produce several different honeys within a particular area as well. Since not all plants bloom at the same time we can remove honey from the hives prior to a second or third bloom of a different plant.

Every year’s crop is different. Different annual climates will make different plants bloom. We produce our light clover honey in abundance, but all of our other honeys change every year. We take the time (unlike most beekeepers) to keep the floral sources separate. So while we may only have 4,000 units of one kind of honey, we have multiple different varieties of honey and something new is always around the corner with the coming season.

We consider ourselves to be migratory beekeepers. We move the bees at different times of the year to keep them in areas with good forage. There have been some critics recently who claim that moving the bees is stressful to them and a cause of recent die offs. However, in 20 plus years of working the bees, I have never seen ill effects from moving bees unless done improperly.

Below are some pictures from two weeks ago in the mountain valley of Chama, New Mexico. Just across the Colorado border. We were supering the bees with more boxes because they had made so much honey.  The plant in the foreground is called Vetch or Loco Weed.  It is a good plant for bees in the spring. It was just finishing blooming. We use to make surplus honey from the Vetch but the dry condition have made the plant more rare and now the bees keep that first honey they make.

There is an old steam train that goes from Antonito, Colorado to Chama. It’s called the Cumbres Toltec Railroad. It goes over Cumbres/La Manga Pass one of the most beautiful passes in Colorado. I really enjoy the trip to Chama to work bees. We always see tons of wildlife and seeing the picturesque train chuggin up the pass is almost surreal.

You may have heard the talk around town lately. People dropping quips and phrases about “granularized,” “crystallized,” or “set” honey. Or, at least that’s the type of talk that happens around our booth at the farmers market (come visit us if you’re around Denver! Cherry Creek on Saturdays and City Park and Stapleton on Sundays). But even if your not the busy bee in the honey circle, we bet that if you’ve ever bought raw honey you’ve seen your honey in a “set” state (see below left).

Tamarisk Honey

So what is granulalized honey?

Raw honey will solidify overtime. The texture becomes grainy and thick when the natural sugars found in honey crystalize. And depending on the flower source, honey will have different proportions of glucose which will cause the honey to set faster. For example, we have noticed that mesquite honey tends to granulate much faster than our other honeys.

What does this mean for honey eaters?

One. We exploit this property of honey to make a wonderful creamy, whipped or spun honey (ie our White Honey, and look out for a post on our White Honey).

Two. You can gently re-heat the honey so that it returns to its liquid state. Use caution here. Avoid microwaving or boiling the honey. Hot temperatures will destroy the raw honey’s natural nutritional punch. We recommend heating a pan of water on the stove top, bringing it to a boil, removing it from the burner, and letting it sit a few minutes. After the water has cooled some, then put your jar of honey into the warm water. You may have to do this a few times to get the honey back to its liquid state. Be patient, it’s worth it! Remember honey does not go bad.

Three. Embrace the change in texture and enjoy it! Now you can eat the same honey but with a completely different texture. Once honey becomes solid, some of us cut it with a knife and eat it like candy.

Whatever you decide, we hope you enjoy the honeys. Let us know what your favorite types of honey are, and if you have any “set” honey stories to share.

Today Grampa’s Gourmet Honey was featured on the Edible Front Range Magazine’s blog!

We’ve been covered in the media before, but this is really the first article we’ve seen that truly captures what we are all about!

We had a visitor from the Edible Front Range Magazine Blog!

It was great having Kat Ethington and her husband visit us in Alamosa. We walked her through the end-to-end process of honey making: starting with a exciting visit (people did get stung!) to some of our honey hives where we picked up a few frames of honey. We then went back to the honey house and extracted the honey and sent everyone home with a jar of fresh, raw Colorado Clover honey!

Kat, who is a freelance photographer, also posted even more photos from the trip on her own photoblog.

Here are a couple of them:

Lots of pictures were taken that day...

Brent, explaining how bees cap honey.

You may have noticed that for the last few days we’ve had a new link on our website – to our online store!

You can now order our honey online, by the case. We’re thinking about expanding the store in the future to include single jars to order (as well as comb honey and pollen), but for now we’ve only got the logistics figured out for shipping cases.

And speaking of shipping, the price of every case already includes shipping.

A case has twelve 11.5oz jars of honey in it.

You have a choice of the following honeys

• Clover Honey
• Tamarisk Honey
• Desert Wild Flower Honey
• Chamiso Honey
• White Honey

You can also order a case of Mixed Honey, and we’ll choose a selection of seasonal honeys to allow you to sample them all.

Packing Honey Jars for Shipping

I thought I’d share some pictures from the farmer’s market:

Our simple honey sign and prices

Grant (that's me!) and Jess with the honey.

We are happy offer a new honey starting today – Chamiso Honey!

Chamiso aka Rabbit Brush

Chamiso Brush aka Rabbit Brush is an evergreen brush prevalent throughout the South West. The brush is as tough as the landscape that it inhabits. Native Americans often used the flowers of the Chamiso to make tea for curing various illnesses including dizziness, diarrhea and lack of focus.

The healing properties of the Chamiso brush can be felt in its honey. According to legend the nectar (and therefore the honey) from Chamiso is said to help one maintain focus on details while still seeing the larger picture of the project at hand.

This honey will make you stand up and take notice. If you look closely as you pour the honey you will see the striking resemblance in color that the blossom of the plant and the honey share.

This honey was made in the fall of 2009 in Southern Colorado. We have pulled it out of reserve for the first time.

Bee on Chamiso Flowers (pic via Dave Beaudette)

Bees will fly up to 3 miles from the hive so it is difficult to keep them from comming in contact with some pesticides when they are places around cultivated areas. We try to place our hives on farms and Ranches that use older farming and ranching practices as apposed to “modern agriculture”.

Since we are migratory, that is we haul the bees south for the winter, the bees are placed in the southern desert of New Mexico where there is absolutely no agriculture. All of our spring honey and desert (tamarisk), and wildflower honeys are completely pesticide free.

I get a lot of questions about our honey – and most of them require the expertise of our beekeeper, Brent. To help answer all of your questions, we’ve set up a new page, called “Ask the Beekeeper” where you can easily send Brent a direct question.