We have a very convenient pickup option for our local customers! Select "Pickup in store" when you're checking out and you will receive instructions on how to pickup your order. If you have any more questions please send us a text at 540 308 6162. You can call us too but it's often easier for us to get back to you promptly with a text. We're often in areas with bad cell reception!

We ship orders Monday through Friday and sometimes on Saturday. If you order early in the day we will often be able to ship that same business day. Orders placed later in the day will typically be shipped the next business day. We're a small business and will most likely not ship orders on the day of major holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. If there are any issues with fulfilling your order we will let you know!

Sorry! We do not currently ship overseas.

Crystallized honey has NOT gone bad. It simply needs to be gently warmed to reach a free flowing liquid state again.

Crystallization essentially does not occur over 77° F or below 41° F. Honey will crystallize most readily around 55° F.  

Some honey will crystalize very quickly and some will take years. Some honey will get very hard and some will crystallize to a soft and creamy consistency. It all depends on the natural chemical makeup of a particular honey.

We recommend not exposing your honey to temperatures much above 100° F. Don’t microwave it! The inside of your car on a sunny day, even in winter, can get surprisingly warm and can be a great spot to rewarm honey. On a hot day you CAN overheat the honey if you leave it in your car. If you happen to have a warm room, greenhouse, a bread proofer, etc. that can be set for around 90°, that would be ideal. You can also set a jar in a warm bowl of water until the crystals melt. 

NO! Even the most sophisticated tests such as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy are not foolproof when it comes to detecting adulteration in honey. Take our word for it, at home testing methods are useless. This is why buying honey from trusted sources in the USA is so important.

Imported honey changes hands so many times in the importation process that there are ample opportunities and incentives for shady businesses to sell adulterated honey for higher profits.

They have minimal risk of being held responsible for such adulteration because they can blame it on the middlemen if they ever get caught!

Over 70% of the honey consumed in the USA is imported. Much of that honey is cut with sophisticated sugar syrups and can pass incredibly vigorous testing protocols.

Mixing honey with cheap syrups is BIG business and generates hundreds of millions of dollars in profits every year. This seriously harms honest American honey producers who can't compete with the low prices of this fraudulent product. Many American beekeepers have gone out of business because they can't get a reasonable price for their honey.

Big honey packing companies know all of this, yet they continue to sell imported honey because they know they can get away with it. It's very profitable and they don't care that their products are GARBAGE and harm the American beekeeper.

Always look for the FINE PRINT on the labels and lids of jars at the grocery store!

No we are not certified organic for honey production and neither is anyone else in Virginia. Last we checked, there were only a handful of American organic honey producers and they are in isolated parts of Hawaii.

Many people (hobby beekeepers are the most guilty here!) don't understand what organic means in terms of honey.

Organic does NOT mean all natural, pure, high quality, or from treatment free bees.

In this context, organic means a product has met certain standards for organic production as set forth in the National Organic Program under USDA.

The tricky part about getting honey certified as organic is that a developed set of organic production standards for honey does not actually exist. Currently there are some recommendations that have not been codified.

Other challenges for organic honey production include the very nature of honey bees. They can forage over many square miles so it is difficult to control what they use to produce honey.

If you've been buying "organic" honey, we encourage you to take out your reading glasses and hunt for the very fine print on the labels and lids of your honey jars. You may be shocked to see where your honey is actually coming from!

We have hives on multiple bee yards throughout Orange County, Virginia.

At this point our bees are mutts. We started with mostly Russian bees and a few Italian colonies.

Unlike with most livestock, it's very difficult to say exactly who is breeding with who when it comes to bees! The queens mate sometimes miles away from the hive with male bees from the surrounding area.

We select for traits such a productivity and mite/virus resistance. Some tools we use for this include mite washes and UBeeO testing.