Yard To Table

Exploring the World of Honey with C. Marina Marchese

• Trevor Crafts and Ellen Scherer Crafts • Season 1 • Episode 9

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In this episode of Yard to Table , Trevor and Ellen Crafts sit down with C. Marina Marchese—a beekeeper, author, and honey sommelier whose journey from artist to honey connoisseur is as inspiring as it is sweet. Marina shares how a single taste of fresh honey from a neighbor’s hive transformed her life, leading her to create Red Bee Honey and found the American Honey Tasting Society (AHTS).

Dive into the fascinating world of honey as Marina teaches Trevor and Ellen the sensory analysis techniques she mastered in Italy. Together, they taste honeys from around the globe, exploring their diverse flavors and stories. Marina also introduces her latest book, The World Atlas of Honey, which profiles over 80 countries and their unique botanical honey sources.

Get ready to savor the art and science behind one of nature’s sweetest creations. Don’t forget to pick up her book and follow Marina and Red Bee Honey on Instagram for more honey-filled adventures!

And to see what's happening with Ellen and Trevor at Stonebrook House follow @stonebrookhouse on Instagram today!

Questions? Ideas? Things you need to say? Message us!

Trevor:

Music. Well, hello Ellen.

Ellen :

Well, hello Trevor.

Trevor:

This is another amazing day here at Stonebrook. It's another amazing day here on yard to table.

Ellen :

Very excited. It's a very sweet day on yard to table.

Trevor:

Sweet day. Yes, I think that that's called foreshadowing. You know, that's the official term for foreshadowing. I like to give little hints. You do. You're a hinter. You're a hint giver. You're in the hinterland. They get, maybe the readers

Ellen :

buzzing, the readers. No wait, I like to give little hints that give the listeners the listen.

Trevor:

There you go. Listeners, because they're listeners. If they're reading the podcast, then that'll be unique. I like to do it again. No, I like it. This is perfect. I'm not I'm not allowing you to get out of that at all. There's no doing it again, because that was awesome

Ellen :

I like to get the listeners buzzing. There you go. Oh, buzzing.

Trevor:

You like to get the listeners buzzing. There's another one, another little hit.

Ellen :

Well, I will say, overall, it has been a really fun journey. This is our sixth, seventh episode,

Trevor:

9th, 10th. We're not sure. I'm not sure.

Ellen :

Well, Trevor, who do we have today?

Trevor:

Today, today, on the sweet, buzzing podcast, yard to table through all of your hints. Well, today, our guest is an author, a neighbor here in Weston. Actually, this community is just incredible and a beekeeper. She is the founder of the A, H, T, S, which, of course, is the American honey tasting society. And she's a member and an instructor for the Italian national register of experts in the sensory analysis of honey.

Ellen :

I am so into this,

Trevor:

I normally don't pause in an intro, but at the same time, that is a very impressive society to be a part of. I can't wait to learn more. I can't I'm very excited. And she received there at that National Register of honey experts in the sensory analysis of honey in Italia, formal training as a honey sensory expert now that, if that wasn't enough, because that's already fantastic. She's the founder of Red Bee honey. She's been on numerous TV shows, everything from on the road with edible nutmeg Weekends at Yankee, Vice TV, Dr Oz, even ABC's The Chew... We are thrilled to have here at the table with us, the one and only Marina Marchese, welcome.

Marina:

Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here.

Trevor:

We are enormously excited to have you here.

Ellen :

I'm thrilled. There's so much in the intro that I want to talk about. I just, I'm buzzing. I said it again,

Trevor:

Our neighbor in Weston. Is that what you wanted to talk about?

Ellen :

I did well, that was the first thing I wanted to say, because we always like to connect how we heard about our guests. And I we first heard about Red Bee honey. And it was because we got a lovely honey sampling kit from my, from my from your dad, from my father in law, and it came with this beautiful wheel and a tasting wheel, and I had never seen anything like that before. The honey was delicious. And we got a book, and we got a book,

Trevor:

and the book was your book, and it was phenomenal. That's

Marina:

awesome. Thank you. You're very glad you enjoyed it.

Ellen :

It was it was great. And of course, then we found out you were from Weston, and that just validated our move, because we're like, there's so many amazing, creative people here, and I'm but I'm afraid, Marina, I'm embarrassed to admit to you that growing up, I was not a fan of honey.

Trevor:

You're going in there already. Well, I figure I just want to be like, let's put all the cards on the table right out of the gate. Yes, yes.

Ellen :

I will say that my experience with honey was mostly the plastic jar that had the beat of the bear shape, that bear shaped honey container. I was not a big fan. And then I tried local honey, and that was a completely different experience. And I understand that your first taste of honey was kind of life changing much more than mine. Can you tell us a little bit about

Marina:

that? Yeah, it's life changing. And yes, we all did grow up with the little plastic Honey Bear, right? I can see him in my head Exactly. And it was in the back end of the cupboard, right? And then it was crystallized and hard and chunky. Couldn't get it out so you threw it away and started with the white sugar, right? The powdered sugar, whatever. So for me personally, I came from the arts, and I lived in the city for a long time. I went to the School of Visual Arts, and I had a pretty good career as an illustrator. Things changed and I came back to connect. Kit, and I connected with the art community here. And through the art community, I met a neighbor who was a beekeeper, and this was back in 2000 so you didn't meet too many beekeepers back then. It was a, you know, I like to remind people, it was before we were talking about organic we were talking about farmers markets. So to meet a beekeeper was a little bit off bee, and they invited me over to visit their bees. And this happened in Weston, so I went over on a beautiful Saturday afternoon and showed up and I was given the bee hat the veil. And how'd you feel about that? Well, Holland blackiston is one of my co authors, who was the person that my neighbor, and he said to me, wahne, bees are very curious creatures. They like to crawl into the nooks and crannies of our clothing, and these are going to stop the bees from stinging our faces. Thank you. Yeah. So, you know, I was really excited, but yet it was a little bit trumpet, you know, yeah. So he smoked the hive, he opened up the bees, and the first thing that struck me was the bees were just ignoring us, like 1000s of bees just crawling on the top of the hive. And I said to him, so why are they not attacking? Because bees attack, right? You're supposed to run and swat and everything. We've been taught that they swarm.

Trevor:

I've seen that episode of Winnie the Pooh where he goes and yeah, as a favorite,

Ellen :

yeah. So he don't get me singing. I'm a little black, rain cloud.

Marina:

So he said to me, honeybees are not native to the US, and my bees are Italian bees. And I said, Italian bees, pedigree bees. And he said, Well, you know, most of the bee species here in the US are Italian bread, but there's many different kinds of species. And that visit ended up with me getting to taste the fresh honey out of the hive, and it was like nothing I had tasted like. My taste buds exploded. It was sublime, full of flavor like not the little plastic bear from the store. So I ended up getting one hive,

Ellen :

I figured, well, so you had that taste, and you're like, I need a hive.

Marina:

I need to have honey every day. I need to have my own honey. But meanwhile, you know, there's a little bit of work that's involved and learning, and I was all in for it. And I figured, you know, it'll be a little hobby I'll do on the weekend. Well, you talk to any beekeeper and it takes over your life, right? So you start one high becomes two, becomes three, becomes 10, and then you're buying all equipment. You're the next thing you know, you're at the bee club, you're on the board, you're going to conferences, you're trading honey with people like and you're like, I gotta start making some money. I gotta start recouping some of this money. So red bee honey was born as a way to sell my honey and to sort of make this business sustainable. So that's really the beginning.

Ellen :

So really changed your life. You went from a taste to a business woman

Marina:

to a honey entrepreneur.

Ellen :

I love that, and

Trevor:

I know that you were on the chew and Clinton Kelly said about you when you appeared on the show, that you turned your backyard beekeeping into a buzzing business, which we're gonna say buzzing a lot our way, good alliteration. But alliterations aside, we've started a lot of businesses, and we're creative producers, and so I love the sort of genesis of, how did you get red be up on its feet? Because it's a big leap to go from just a single hobby business all the way to full production and a brand and a brand tell us, just give me a little of how that all cooked.

Marina:

Yeah, that's a great question. So I discovered something about myself, you know, having a creative background, being an artist and a designer. I was also doing product development. A lot of my art and design was on product. So I had a good understanding. I worked in China for a few years with various companies in manufacturing. So I had this background, and the real aha moment for me was when it came time to design the logo and the branding. I didn't know I can do that. So, you know, and the logo and the design has evolved over time, changed a little bit, but that's when the art and the bees met, and it was really, truly, you know, an experience that they came together for me. And I was always wondering how I'm gonna just leave my art career behind. But no, it they met in that way. So I was able to create the brand over time and learn, you know. How to, you know, design and develop everything. The products

Ellen :

I love that art and the brand and the bees met. I love that.

Trevor:

Our daughter painted a picture of a bee she did a couple of about five months ago. Yeah, work well together. I can tell you that

Marina:

Was it a Red Bee?

Trevor:

It was not a Red Bee. So that means that you have a pretty decent scale in your apiary here, right? Like in town

Ellen :

and Trevor for our listeners, what is an apiary?

Trevor:

That's where the bees live. That's a that's a somebody who has a lot of bees. That's right, yeah,

Marina:

it's a group of beehives. Those wooden boxes that kind of look like file cabinets. Those are beehives. So a group of beehives is an apiary. How many do you have? So right now I have six, which is a lot for me. We, at one point, had about 15. That was insane. But you know, now, four books later and teaching and traveling, I don't really have the time to manage so many bees, but I have to have bees, and I have to have that grounding experience and a connection

Ellen :

I would imagine, right? That's what inspired you. That's the continuous inspiration we get that a lot.

Trevor:

If our listeners out there who love local things, they also love experiencing things in their own backyard. If they wanted to become a beekeeper, oh, I don't know, say like if Trevor, maybe somebody on the other side of the microphone here who's sitting in this chair, not naming any names, also wanted to get bees. What would

Ellen :

is this going to become the chicken conversation? You know what?

Trevor:

Let's just, let me ask the questions that are because everybody has to know. What does it take to become a beekeeper if they're inspired to get bees and somebody wants to start the process and to do it correctly? Yeah?

Marina:

Yeah, that's what I always say, to do it right, takes to it right. So for me, personally, I had a mentor, so I was introduced to bees, and I had somebody to call on those days that I opened up the hive and did an inspection, and thought, Oh, my God, my bees are all dying. What's going on? You know? Because it takes time to learn the behavior and what's going on and what to look for. And I highly recommend joining a B club. And there's B clubs in every city, every state, every country. There's groups of people that join together for educational purposes, and we happen to have one that meets right here in Weston, the backyard, beekeeper,

Trevor:

I'm ready Sign me up. Coach. I am ready

Marina:

Thursday night, Tuesday night. Tuesday we have a meeting. All right,

Ellen :

so that makes sense. So getting a good mentor, really understanding what you need to get into it. Because, you know, I know this isn't a true crime podcast, but I've heard something called counterfeit honey. I know I'm getting down the you do like a true crime. I do love it. So what is counterfeit honey? Is that a thing?

Marina:

Counterfeit honey is honey that's been adulterated. Okay? And

Trevor:

sound good. So it sounds like a crime. Yeah, it's a crime. It's a crime against honey in nature. So

Marina:

So there's a couple different ways that honey can be counterfeited. But what's really fascinating is honey is the third most food suspect to adulteration, after milk and olive oil. Yes, oh yeah. There's a lot of honey fraud out there, so there's a couple different things that can happen. Basically, when you have honey, it's a raw product. It's produced by bees. But if things are added, because a bee only makes a 12th of a teaspoon of honey in their entire life, honey is rare and precious. And all the beekeepers here in the US, we do not make enough honey to meet the demand. And everybody wants local honey. It's not enough honey for everybody to have local honey. It's very, very scarce. So for this reason, we have a lot of imported honey into the US. And if you read the labels, you'll see that it's not only just imported from a country, it's blended from like, three different countries. Like, why? Oh, interesting.

Trevor:

So, like, you'll see, like you said about olive oil, you'll have a blend of Argentinian and Italian and California. And all these things come together exactly,

Marina:

exactly. So there's a couple different things, you know, mislabeling the country of origin, saying it's local us made when it's not adding other sugars to, you know, expand your offerings. So adding, you know, different kinds of syrups, high fructose corn syrup, all of those. Things, believe it or not, you can do that if you declare it on the label. So if you want to say honey and sugar, that's okay, but when they don't declare that on the label, that's fraud. That's, you know, food fraud.

Ellen :

Wow. And so that's really because they're trying to extend this very precious resource, because they're just it's not meeting demand

Marina:

exactly, and it happens with things like manuka honey, which everybody wants. Or there's other honeys that we produce here in the US that are really like national treasures, like sour wood honey, tupelo honey, you know, black locusts, acacia honey. These are really special honeys, but, you know, bees only make a certain amount of it, and you know, there's a lot of other things that go on in the industry, big companies buying up this really good honey and then blending it with like cheap imported honey. So

Ellen :

maybe this is a true crime podcast

Trevor:

into one right now, between what they spray on organic food and and this, it's tough stuff

Ellen :

well, and I think the flavors of it all is the part that is so interesting when we got your kit. And I know Trevor wanted to talk about that a little bit. But do they also in counterfeit honey is flavor added as well? And I want to talk about how we know the difference between that and get into your amazing palette and tasting. So

Marina:

if they add a flavor to it again, they have to declare it on the label. But more than anything else, I think what they're doing is just buying up a lot of cheap honey and blending it to have a certain play flavor profile. But for me and anybody who tastes it side by side with, like, a good quality honey. It's so flat, like it's the plastic bear, yeah, it's, yeah, the flavor. It has no flavor. It's just sweet. So the thing with real, you know, local, you know us, you know good quality honey, is that there's flavor, there's a complexity to flavor, and you don't get that with commercial honey.

Trevor:

I think that's one of the things that was so fascinating about this little sampler box that that my dad got, was that you have this tasting wheel, which I've never seen before. I didn't even know that that existed as a concept that you know, you know wine, and you have the ability to taste different kinds of wines and olive oil, sometimes even you know, but, but to have honey and to have it represented so clearly as a consumer, and have it truly be local, I was absolutely just totally blown away. Because, how do all these different flavors occur? Because you see on the labels, you know, it's wildflower honey or berry honey or orange honey, and you sort of get some of that, but tell us a little more about how those flavors come come to be.

Marina:

So that was what really fascinated me about honey, is that, you know, my honey, every season changed a little bit, you know, flavor, color. And as I met other beekeepers and started traveling and collecting honey, I started to realize, wow, there's a whole world out there. There's all these different flowers, and when bees visit different flowers. They're gathering the nectar, and this is what imparts the flavor. It's really the botanical source. The bee adds some enzymes into it, but also the environment, the soil. You know, it's going back to the whole thing, like wine, like terroir, it's the environment conditions that bring on these different flavors, and that was just so fascinating to me, and I started my next journey, which was the honey journey. So I had collected, at one point, probably 75 jars of honey from travels and friends and people were giving me honey, and I became obsessed, right?

Ellen :

I have this image of, just like the of people, of all the honey collectors and the beekeepers going around with this amazing case, with these vials of just this liquid gold and all these colors, because you said you're exchanging, that's amazing. So,

Marina:

yeah, we're trading honey. And so I had this shelf in my house, right? And honey from all over the world, beautiful labels, colors. And every day I would walk by this beautiful shelf, and I'm like, tasted here and there. I had no words how to describe it. I had no tools in my brain to appreciate it. And I'm like, something's wrong with this picture. So that's when I fell into the next rabbit hole, and I started asking beekeepers that were much more experienced to me. So, you know, I'm a beekeeper, and if my bees are visiting clover, what should my honey taste like? And if my bees are visiting, you know. Linden trees. What should my honey taste like? And it was dismissed. Nobody had any clue, and any knowledge, or even the worst part is they didn't care. And I came back from a foodie background, and I'm thinking, I've got all these honeys here. What do I do with it. So I figured that I would go and learn wine tasting and then transfer it to honey. So I took a job. Oh, that's incredible. That is so cool. I took a job because I wanted to learn how to taste. So I took a job with an Italian Honey Honey importer, wine importer, and I spent like, six weeks with their sommeliers getting trained, and they wanted me to be a salesperson. So I spent six weeks learning vocabulary, how to taste, how to smell, and this whole thing. And I was really thrilled with this, but then they wanted me to go sell, and I'm not a salesperson, so I had to, like, walk away from that, but I wanted the training, and I was still on the hunt, because I figured there had to be a database somewhere that says, When my bees visit clover, that my honey is going to be grassy, like hey, and I'm going to get this cinnamon note, and when my bees visit eucalyptus, it's going to have this animal kind of funkiness and brothy. And I ended up in Italy going to taste wine in Montalcino. So we're driving around, like stopping at these wineries, and we roll into this town and there's a honey festival going on. Oh, how fortune is right. Wow. And there's a sign that says lachita del Miele, which means the honey city, the city of honey. I'm like, No,

Trevor:

this is my place, right?

Marina:

So I walk in, and it's a big honey festival, yeah. And there's beekeepers selling all their honeys on the table, and I walk around, and every honey had the name of the botanical source. And I'm thinking, how do they know that? So I'm walking around more, and there's people doing a honey tasting in the corner, and they had honey lined up in wine glasses like a rainbow. And I had never seen that before. I'd never seen so many honeys lined up by the collar. My eyes popped out of my head and I said, What are you doing? We're doing a honey tasting. And it's like, oh my gosh. This is like, out of this world, right? So I stuck around, and basically what they did is they took each honey container, you know, the wine glass. And they passed it around, and they were telling us the botanical source, like this is Chestnut honey. It should be dark amber in color, and you should smell aromatics and it's Woody, and you should have this Marseille soap smell. And you should everything you wanted, everything I wanted. And they went through 18 honeys, and I thought, Oh my gosh. How do you know this? So I started talking to them, and they said, We have honey school here. It's in Bologna. Of course,

Ellen :

it's Italy. Yeah,

Trevor:

of course, Everything good is Italy. Of course, no accents, one or two. It's a lot of Italy today. We may have to get a couple accents in well,

Marina:

Italy is the leading country in honey discovery, honey literacy, honey tasting. Well, you know, they do wine, they do olive oil. And why not? Makes sense doing honey. So I come back and I'm posting all these pictures of the honey Festival and the honey and somebody reaches out to me in Italy on social media, and it's like, come to honey school. I'm like, Really, when is it so? PS, six months later, I'm on a plane again. Actually, the first class was in Sardinia, and I show up, and there's the guy that was emailing me, he was the teacher. He was the teacher. And I went for four days of honey school, and it was literally everything that I wanted to know. It was tasting, writing, tasting notes, learning the botanical sources, what part of the region it was produced, what season, what the color should be, what the flavor should be, and at the end of the course, you have to be able to identify 18 different honeys, a big test by smell and taste alone, like a Somalian song, right?

Ellen :

Right? I know I'm thinking essence of garden hose, because from song, right? Ever seen that movie? That's incredible. But how validating, because you're like, I knew you had this innate sense that this was going this, this should exist, and there was

Marina:

crazy. Yeah, I'm crazy. You know, these are the crazy things you. These are the Crazy things I do, right? Crazy good. So I ended up just continuing the program. Actually. They were like, I was the first, like, I was the only American there. It was all Italians. It was all in Italian. And they kept saying, Well, why are you here? And I said, Well, I want to learn about honey. And they're like, don't you have honey school back in the US. I'm like, No, not yet, not yet. So PS, I ended up going back, and I completed the program, and I passed the exam, and I became a member, and then I worked 10 years teaching to become like an official teacher. So now I get to travel and teach honey. That's amazing, and taste honey,

Trevor:

best job ever. And so now, listeners, something special is going to happen today on this episode of yard to table. Now, what you can't see, but I can see and I can see it. Ellen can see it, and Marina can see it, is that she has brought us an amazing flight of local honeys for us to try, and we're going to get a little bit of some talent education. Very excited. So So lead us. Lead us. Tell us. This is our first

Marina:

This is your first honey tasting.

Ellen :

This is my first honey tasting, other than the one we did on our own, which I'm sure we did incorrectly now, based on all of this.

Marina:

So the first honey we're gonna start with is a very light this is a linden honey from a basswood tree. They grow all over the East Coast. She's taking notes already. I love it. This is big. So the first thing we do is we look at the color, same as wine, you know, this is the same process. We look at it. The second thing we do is, before we taste, we smell.

Ellen :

So just like wine, you do a little sniff,

Marina:

but what you'll do is you'll smear the honey around the container the same way that a wine swirl Gotcha. And the reason that we do that is because we're moving the molecules around, and we actually experience flavor in our nose. Your tongue can only experience sweet, sour, salt and bitter, but our nose is where we get all the

Ellen :

flavor. And this first honey is what, again,

Marina:

that's a linden honey. It's a summer honey. It's a tree, the basswood tree. It's a

Ellen :

very golden, clear honey.

Trevor:

It has a lot of transparency to it, and there's a lot of bubbles, and it's very easy to it's easy to move around, and it flows as you would expect. What we would all do a traditional honey, and I've just spilled it all over the glass to taste, to taste it, because it's getting sticky here on Yard to Table.

Ellen :

This is where it's good to be a husband and wife team. We can, we can share the tools.

Trevor:

Well, we have plenty of little spoons there. Wow. Well,

Ellen :

I just don't want to wait for it. That was really my thing. Yeah, all right, so I'm taking the Linden.

Marina:

So it's like a delicate honey, very, very light, very light. It's fruity. It's got a little bit of a vegetal note, we call, like a plant based it also has notes of like a minty finish you might find in there.

Ellen :

And is it important where you taste it on your tongue with honey, or you just put it in?

Marina:

Yeah, I would put it on my tongue, and then I let it melt and move all around, and then you add some saliva, because it helps with the tea sting and then inhale. It goes up through your nose to your olfactory bulb. Oh, wow. Also,

Trevor:

there's a, there's a little sparkliness that I'm getting on the palette. It's almost a little. That's, yeah, that's what that word is.

Marina:

But that's the minty ending. Yeah, there's a little, but I like that on the tongue.

Trevor:

It's a little electric finish. That's what that is.

Ellen :

That's delicious. It's very light, but I can, I can taste the mint. I can taste that very much. So it's, yeah,

Trevor:

all right, so that's our first one. Are we going by color? Are we just skipping around? Okay, we're

Marina:

gonna go lightest to dark. All right. And the second honey I brought for you is you're gonna know it's crystallized. And I know we talked about the teddy bear being crystallized,

Ellen :

but is that a bad thing for honey to be crystallized?

Marina:

Crystallization is actually a sign of quality, but it's the quality of the crystals that matter. So okay, this, you can see it's crystallized throughout, almost like peanut butter. But when you see those teddy bears, the they separate, there's always like, liquid with crystals, a little crust, almost, right? Yeah, that, you know, liquid mix with crystals is usually a sign that it's been highly. Heated, okay, definitely heat treated, but it should be even throughout. And this is a sign of quality. This means, really, you know, good quality, honey.

Ellen :

And you can see it for our listeners. You can't see it, but it is a, it is a consistent, you know, crystallization. It's coating that inside of the glass. And it's just a lovely, little creamy, creamy, whitish ivory, ish color. It's like

Trevor:

an ivory, little tan, very calming, very soothing. And when I'm smelling this, I'm getting a little bit of vanilla. I'm getting a little bit of almost like a sandalwood, or like a an oaky Woody,

Marina:

kind of like a hay, dry grass hay. Yeah,

Trevor:

a little bit of a

Ellen :

swirl. It around,

Trevor:

swirled around. I've been swirling this. I'm about to swirl myself.

Ellen :

And the name of this one again, Marina?

Marina:

So this is a clover, honey clover. This is not the clover you get in the grocery store. This is like the sweet clovers.

Trevor:

Holy smokes. That is a very amazing flavor.

Marina:

This one is produced in the Dakotas in the prairies, where there is lots of prairies, land dedicated to growing all kinds of clover for livestock. But the bees pollinate this. And this is nothing like the clover in the store, right? Oh my gosh, not even close. And it has such complexity of flavor, wow. It's like dried grass hay. Got that k 100% almost like sweet tobacco.

Trevor:

Yes, that's, that's what it is. It's like walking into a tobacco store, and you're smelling pipe tobacco, and it's that sweet vegetable, you know, vegetal, grass, what it was, that's what I was looking for. You know, you should think about becoming like a honey sommelier, just because you kind of know what I'm thinking. I'm reading your mind. It's amazing. Wow. Or a psychic, one or the other. I will say that was, I am just very sorry that everyone listening to this podcast cannot be here in the studio with us, because this is a very special good time that we're having, and that almost doesn't taste like honey. No, right? It's so complex that it, you know, it is because there are some of those common notes that you associate with honey, but it is so far away from...

Ellen :

just the way it tastes on your tongue, right consistency, oh, oh, boy, my goodness. Oh, wait, we got another one coming. Can't wait.

Marina:

So this is a little bit darker. You'll notice it's like more in the like, like a caramel. Like, caramel, yeah, this is really special. I don't have a lot of this honey. Oh, I'm excited. But this is, we believe it to be chestnut, which, we had chestnuts here in the US, but the Blight took them out.

Ellen :

Yeah, there were. It was very, very prolific in the in the US. Yeah,

Marina:

we don't have chestnuts, but

Trevor:

Italy does in Yeah, they have a lot of the chest.

Marina:

But this is a US produced one, really, yeah, one of my friends in Pittsburgh, she gave me a sample, and we were trained on Chestnut honey in Italy. This is American Chestnut honey. So you'll notice that, wow, it has such a great nose. It's savory, it's bitter.

Ellen :

So when we're talking about how we know where the bees are going, are the hives in literally a grove of chestnuts? Is that where they're going? Or do we know, because bees travel far, right? So they're tell us a little bit about that.

Marina:

So bees will travel four miles from their hive, but we also have to consider that different flowers are blooming at different cycles and different seasons. So right now, when the chestnuts are blooming primarily, the bees will go to that plant, but when there's other things, you know mixed in, you won't get a honey that is truly chestnut, but this one is really resembles what we were trained on.

Ellen :

It's so interesting because when you said savory, I thought, Oh, mommy, yes. And I thought, No, it can't be savory. Now I have to this the smell alone.

Trevor:

I'm getting that it has smoky notes. You know, we talk a lot on the podcast about aha moments that we have when we're It's banana, by the way, this Chestnut honey is unreal.

Marina:

Its fabulous.

Ellen :

It's dark and Woody, yes, wow, Smokey. It's perfect for spicy the day that we have today. Oh yeah,

Trevor:

it's a little bit rainy, which is a little chilly, very welcome. But even these aha moments that we have, where we where we try something for the first time, like snapping off our fresh asparagus, or right from the garden, what raw asparagus that you've just grown tastes like, and how different that is from what you buy in the store, or brown cherries or whatever this Chestnut honey is absolutely. Be shocking in the best possible way.

Ellen :

I'm just taking it in, right? Honestly, it's so it's so unusual and so delicious and oh, I don't have the words, because I'm not trained, but

Marina:

I think it's delicious, right? It's like nothing you buy in the store.

Ellen :

I've never tasted, never had anything even

Trevor:

remotely close to that. That's

Marina:

crazy. So the last one is Weston honey. Oh, this is my honey. I love it. We love red bee honey. And you can see that...

Trevor:

We eat a lot of red bee honey, by the way,

Marina:

it's super cloudy, yeah. And, you know, I do very minimal straining on this one. So there's, like, pieces of wax in it. There's a lot of foams and everything that's medicine, like that's gonna cure today. You know, the rainy, cold, bitter

Ellen :

while Trevor is sniffing and twisting anybody,

Trevor:

I'm not giving anybody any of this,

Ellen :

he's getting into it, tales of his history.

Trevor:

Oh my god. I'm sorry. I'm like having a moment over here. I know everybody's trying to talk about honey is medicine.

Ellen :

You keep handing these to me without the spoon, because I know, I know you know he's a honey hog,

Trevor:

well documented. Marina, I have to pause this on we're gonna get back to honey as medicine, because it's a fascinating because it's a fascinating, yes, literally millennia people have been using let's give red be its moment. I have to, because I've been buying Red Bee Honey very consistently. Since we've moved to Weston, I have bought our local grocery store Lily's out of Red Bee.

Marina:

Oh, you're the one. They call me and say somebody just came in here and bought a dozen honey

Trevor:

that would be me, because we give them away to people and we eat them ourselves. Where did where this? This is your honey. This tastes fruity. I've never tasted anything like this. This is unbelievable.

Marina:

This is what Weston tastes like, and it's good. Yeah, it tastes good. It's, you know, we have a lot of, there's all of these different,

Ellen :

very fruity, very sweet, but not sweet in a coin way. It's just got a sharpness with the sweet fruitiness. Very fruity. Yeah, we have

Trevor:

candy or something. I can't even use the right words,

Marina:

like brown sugar a little bit. It's a little bit of,

Ellen :

bring it back to Trevor.

Trevor:

This is like, I'm gonna do shots here in a minute. Wow. All right. So while I'm, while I'm scarfing all of this, please, please

Ellen :

Yeah. So we'll talk, talk a little bit about the medicine of it all, the the the health benefits of honey and what people have been looking for through time. Tell us a little bit about honey through the ages. So do

Marina:

yeah, honey originally was used as medicine, and as far back as the Egyptians, they used honey to embalm the mummies and with propolis and beeswax. And it's when well documented that honey has been used topically for wounds and burns, and still is, yeah and internal digestion ulcers. So it's been used, over years, centuries, as a medicine. And I think most people can agree that, you know, having a teaspoon of honey when you have a sore throat is like a cashmere blanket hugging you, right? And it doesn't really cure anything, but it definitely relieves symptoms of allergies and sore throats and sinuses. Sometimes people taste honey with me and their nose starts running, and it's because that activity in the honey, which I'll talk about, the chemical composition of the honey, kind of drains the sinuses, and it helps with allergies. With people,

Ellen :

I've heard that. I've heard about ensuring that it's local, because when we moved to Connecticut, that was one of the things that we looked at, it was we get our local honey to help with allergies. And that's true, right? If it can help you,

Trevor:

you're taking in the bees have processed all of the pollen and the other things that are in the environment, like we were talking about earlier, yeah.

Marina:

And, you know, I don't know what the number is for local, but you really do want to have fresh honey. You know, the freshest that you can get. And local should be fresh, because it's made right there. It has no you know, travel doesn't have to travel to you. But there are some chemical composition properties of honey that are very, very unique, that no other food has. And this gives it these amazing benefits. So one of the things is that honey is very acidic and it has a very, very low pH. And for this reason, a lot of bacteria and pathogens can't survive in the honey environment. Oh, that's interesting, yeah. So very acidic antiseptic. It's antiseptic. And then also the. Adds certain enzymes to it called glucose oxidase, which changes the glucose in the honey to hydrogen peroxide. Oh, wow, for a very short period of time, just a little bit. But this is another benefit of the antibacterial properties. Is this hydrogen peroxide activity because of the bees adding their enzymes. And it also has another property, where it absorbs moisture because it's hygroscopic. It's like 80% sugar and 20% water. So it's always trying to grab moisture. If you leave a jar of honey open over a couple of weeks, it'll absorb all kinds of moisture and smells. It's like a sponge. And when you put honey on a wound and there is bacteria there, it will suffocate it by stealing the moisture that it needs to survive. Interesting. So this hydroscopic quality of the honey, again, another reason that it makes it antibacterial. So there is scientific evidence that honey has these antibacterial properties.

Trevor:

That's amazing, and it tastes ridiculous, right? Because I've you don't want to really taste hydrogen peroxide on its own, because it does not taste as good as this honey. No, do not do it.

Ellen :

You don't taste it. No, you're not going to have that. But can we taste? She just opened something.

Trevor:

What is this piece of magic?

Marina:

This is a honey that when I first tasted it in honey school, that my head exploded because I didn't recognize it as honey.

Trevor:

And I don't have a lot of head to explode left. I've already had my head exploded like four times. I want you to taste this, because she doesn't accuse me of hogging, yeah. Okay.

Marina:

This is a honey that is produced on the island of Sardinia, which, you know, is a Blue Zone, right, yeah, where everything good happens on Sardinia. And this is their honey, their traditional honey that they have produced for hundreds of years from a tree called the strawberry tree, whoa, and it is nothing what you would think of honey like It tastes nothing like what you would recognize

Trevor:

if you told me that I was eating honey. What is that flavor?

Ellen :

It's so bitter, so bitter, yes, but not a it's not un it's not not untasty. That's the work of coming on, tasty.

Marina:

This is the bitterest honey produced on the planet. Wow. And it tastes like, I don't know if you like it or not, but it tastes like licking an ashtray.

Ellen :

What does this pair with?

Marina:

So one of their traditional foods that they produce is called ciedas, and it's actually a huge ravioli that they fry on the top of the stove. And when they take it off, hot, crispy, they put the honey on it. It is a treasure.

Trevor:

It is a it is a very sour flavor. There's I get sort of sour, the bitterness

Ellen :

I get, for sure, and it's so bitter. And if you you don't think that eating an ashtray sounds delicious, but I will tell you smokey. It's smoky again,

Trevor:

let's not actually eat an ashtray the same way you're not actually going to drink hydrogen peroxide. But this is very unique.

Marina:

Yeah, it's it's a curiosity, and it's a little spicy, yes, and do you get, like, a little crispy, green, fresh pepper, like, totally pepper, sliced a pepper, right? Yes, crazy,

Trevor:

I get that's almost a metallic, a little bit of metallic tinge to it. Wow, we're thinking.

Marina:

So I just wanted you to experience bitter, honey,

Ellen :

that's phenomenal. This is such an education. We're kind of going through this, this conversation. We're kind of going through your books. You know, your first book was lessons from an accidental beekeeper, right? And that was sort of that whole journey about honey changed your life. And then you wrote the honey connoisseur, which is about the tasting and developing this incredible palette. And then you, part of the journey was you took all the learning that you had in Italy, and then you created an American Society of tasting. Is that right? And then, and now we're at the World Atlas of honey. So,

Trevor:

yeah, how did the world? I mean, we've just been around the world here at the studio, yeah. But how did that book come together? What was the idea to bring that book to the world the world Atlas? The world Atlas? Yeah,

Marina:

actually, I was asked to write it.

Ellen :

Isn't that amazing?

Trevor:

That's always nice when people say you're amazing. Would you like to do this amazing project?

Ellen :

You're a subject matter expert,

Marina:

exactly. And I, you know, I was flattered. So they basically, you know, outlined what they wanted, 80 countries. Part One would be history, culinary, medicine, a little bit of everything. And then part two would be, let's go around the world and talk about. About the most important honeys, the botanical sources, the bees who make it, the beekeepers, rituals, traditions, cultural aspects of honey. It was a tremendous amount of research, a tremendous amount of information that had to be gathered, and they presented it to me as well. Every topic is only 280 words. And I thought I could do that. 280 words about Iran, you know, South Africa, Australia. I could do that. Wow. You know, it was a lot more than 280 words.

Ellen :

Trevor, can you relate to have struggles with word count? . Yeah, writing journeys,

Trevor:

Sometimes it's hard, blank pages are hard. As an author myself, blank pages are hard. And you think, oh, it's gonna be fine and easy. And then you write something do that, and then your publisher is like, but you know what would be better if you did it totally differently? And I then you say, Sure, let's try it.

Marina:

Yeah. And then they change everything, but it was about a year and a half of research and writing, and I'm thankful for my network of international honey friends and experts and tasters that were very helpful and instrumental in getting me samples of the different honeys and telling me about the, you know, the regions and The botanical sources.

Trevor:

So one of my favorite things in the book was seeing the different ways that bees are kept around the world, because we, for the most part, know the regular wooden boxes and they're stacked. I mean, that's what most people see and experience, but in places like Africa and in Micronesia and all these other places, it's totally different. They're made of reeds and straw, and like all of these other things, it's absolutely fascinating to see how so many different cultures do the same process and keep bees in a different way.

Marina:

Yeah. So the different kinds of hives depends on a few things. It could be the region, if it's a tropical region, it could be how they traditionally were catching wild bees. So there's a lot of different variables in how people kept bees clay pots, but mainly it's because a lot of the countries are very poor. They don't have the access to the traditional Langstroth beehive that everybody sees, but none. Nonetheless, they keep bees, they harvest honey, and you know, they're doing good for the environment well.

Ellen :

And the book is beautiful. So I mean, not only is it full of all the incredible research that you have, and you I mean, from the beginning, just even about what beekeeping is. Again, you do that in a lovely way, and then starting to see just how bees and honey are handled around the world. The pictures are gorgeous. You talk about, like so much of the world, I think this was in this book, or one of your other books about so much of our world's food, in general, is dependent on the honeybees. I can't remember what the percentage was, but it was a big percentage of world food that was dependent on the honey bees. And here at Stone Brook, we are organic. We care about our pollinators in every way possible. We don't use chemicals. How, in your opinion, and obviously, now with this world view that you have, how do we support the bees wherever we live, and create an environment for them to thrive?

Marina:

That's a great question, because a lot of people want to help the bees, but necessarily, they don't want to become a beekeeper, and you don't have to just planting, you know, planting pollinator friendly flowers, whether it's a tree, herbs, plants, you know, any kind of flower that you can plant that's going to provide nectar and pollen throughout the season. So spring, summer, fall, they need to eat all throughout the season. And there are specific flowers that are pollinator friendly. And a lot of the nurseries and garden centers have their little pollinator section, and they're very knowledgeable now, because everybody's on board with this, and the most important thing is this, no mow May and not mowing, and getting away from this mentality of having to have a perfectly green lawn, and realizing that dandelions and clovers are beautiful and are very important sources of nectar and pollen for bees and other pollinators. So, you know, try to fall in love with wildflowers and change the conversation from weed to flower, because weeds tend to be negative. But if you really look at dandelions, they're so beautiful, those beautiful golden heads that pop up in the spring, and so important for them in the early part of the season. They need that to feed their young, so that the colony can grow and become robust and to pollinate for wildlife. You know, they're pollinating plants. And so that there's nuts and seeds and berries for birds and deer. So they are not only providing food for us, but for the wildlife that sustains them.

Ellen :

It's so important that you mention that because I think one of the things that we obviously, we don't, we don't use chemicals on the lawn, we notice the difference in our time going into four years that we've been here this may it's that we have fireflies again. We first moved here, we didn't have fireflies. And I thought, oh, we'll see fireflies at night, and they come back because we're not spraying. We allow Clover to come up.

Trevor:

And we love clover in our lawn. It's beautiful.

Ellen :

And it's some of the first things that come up that the bees get a chance to draw from. And again, that's an education process that we went under. But it's just also beautiful. To your point, it's just so pretty to see the little white flowers and the yellow dandelions and and manage that in a little one that's a little wild, is okay?

Marina:

It's okay. Yeah, we're gonna survive without, you know the MO and blow guys, that's right, but you know, you can walk through your clover in your yard and just watch the pollinators bobbing around. It's so peaceful and grounding. I think, you know that's partly what what beekeeping did is that it connected me to nature and grounded me. And you know, when you're an author and you're busy and you're doing all kinds of things you just want to, like, connect to the ground in the earth, and you know, bees do that

Ellen :

. It really has impacted your relationship with nature, exactly, yeah,

Marina:

in a way that I could never imagine.

Trevor:

Yeah, I love that. A little different than SVA.

Marina:

Well, I did spend time there, and I'm grateful for that experience, because I think it made me who I am today. You know, it added to the whole package 100% so we have honeycomb here.

Ellen :

Oh, Honeycomb.

Trevor:

See, I was seeing that in the middle of this amazing little parade of good, goodness.

Ellen :

And again, you can't see listeners, I'm so sorry, but Marina has made a beautiful plate on a gorgeous piece of wood, some honeycomb. I see cheese. What else is there?

Marina:

There's some walnuts. And you know, the best part about honey is besides tasting it, is eating it with cheeses.

Ellen :

And we wanted to talk about that the foods complimentary foods with honey.

Marina:

Well, honey goes with every food group. Okay? So you can have meat, fish, you can have vegetables, salad dressings, but my favorite is cheese, and I'm going to invite you to take a cracker and spread a little goat cheese on it, yes please, and take a chunk of the honey comb I'm gonna make you wanna thank you. And I brought some walnuts to add a little crunchy texture to it. I'm sold on all of it. And this is lunch.

Ellen :

Oh, I love it. I love it so much. You know, it's interesting you talk about salad dressings again. You know, your education comes with just, I think living here, I never made a salad dressing with honey, and this, you know, now, that's one of our go tos. It's a little lemon, olive oil, honey, some herbs, delicious, fresh. I don't think we've bought a jar of salad dressing.

Marina:

No, I buy nothing.

Ellen :

Should I wait for you to try or should I go for it? Oh, you're too polite.

Marina:

I'm gonna join you. Please do this. Can be breakfast every day. Oh, my goodness. So I love honeycomb with like soft cheeses. Ricotta is my favorite.

Ellen :

Im chewing into the mic. This is an ASMR.

Marina:

Okay, what is ASMR?

Ellen :

Have you seen those videos where people just make a continuous sound sensory experience, which is definitely a sensory experience. Oh, my goodness, sometimes,

Marina:

but right now, it never gets old.

Ellen :

Oh my gosh. With with the goat cheese, wow. So, Marina, you're coming back next week, right? Are you? We're gonna do some more tastings next week.

Marina:

Tomorrow, I'll be back tomorrow with five more honeys that we can taste from different places.

Ellen :

Oh, my goodness, I know I don't know. I want to get through that cabinet of 75 Wow, was it? It must be more than that.

Marina:

Now, well, after my training, I learned about honey. I learned, you know, what good honey was, what bad honey was, I was able to taste them. So I took my training, went to my cabinet, started tasting the honeys. Hey, I'm an expert. Now, right? Started to realize this one is old. This one's crystallized. It has like an incomplete structure, the colors wrong on this. And I learned basically that honey does not get better with age, and that the honeys that were in plastic started to leach in. Oh, wow. I couldn't keep them, and most of them ended up getting. Being tossed. Because, wow, I had had them for three to five years, and at that point for me, it's a little bit old. Honey is best eaten fresh, you know, right out of the hive During the same year or the second year harvest. You know, I was collecting for a while, so I really had to toss them because my palate had already sort of become sophisticated, and I was not enjoying any of them. They were old,

Trevor:

interesting, because I've heard that there is a because it is anaerobic, that it can last forever.

Marina:

It could last forever, and it's it may be edible, but it doesn't taste good, and that's the problem. So, yeah, they found honey in the tombs, and you're not, you're not trying that. Yeah, I'm still, that's my that's on my bucket list, to try to find somebody to get me some of that King Tut honey, the King

Trevor:

Tut business, I would try, and I 100% would try it.

Marina:

But, you know, it's edible. You know, you can still eat it, but it doesn't taste good and it has no more health benefits. You know that 3000 year old honey?

Trevor:

It's, feels like it's an old thing, yeah? But that's, you know? Why not give it a shot?

Ellen :

I like it. Now. We tried this amazing honey from Italy. Are there any other varietals from around the world that you love? Yeah?

Trevor:

What's your favorite? Favorite? Favorite. I didn't know it's like choosing Your Favorite Kid

Ellen :

Italian probably, favorite Italian?

Marina:

or, yeah, I do like Italian honey. And the reason that their honey is good is the reason that all their food is good, and it's because they take care of their environment. They don't use a lot of pesticides, they use traditional methods, and their food is very controlled there. They're very about good food. Don't mess with our food. So their honey is just as good. But I've tasted some really interesting honeys. I actually brought one from New Zealand. Oh, sorry, from Tasmania. This is Leatherwood honey from Tasmania. Wow. And a friend, a new friend that, from his eyes right now, a new friends gave me this, and it is one of the most complex honeys that you'll ever taste. Leather wood. Is that? What we said, leather wood, it tastes like a rain forest where it comes from.

Ellen :

Wow. What notes are you getting there? Oh, that face he just made. It's perplexed.

Marina:

It's everything.

Ellen :

Oh, my gosh.

Marina:

It's musty. It's like dried leaves. It's aromatic. It's floral, like magnolias,

Trevor:

yes. What is that smell that I'm smelling?

Marina:

rainforest,, the tropical rainforest. It's

Ellen :

almost right. It's almost like that moldy layer of leaves. Is that right? Yeah,

Marina:

dampness.

Ellen :

Now that again, that may not sound appetizing, but it is, but it is delicious, right? Ashtrays, moldy leaves.

Trevor:

There's also, like, a liquor, liquor, liqueur, yeah, flavor licorice, yeah,

Marina:

pretty good. You should go to honey school.

Trevor:

I'm there, by the way, whenever it's a next semester, Sign me up. Wow, May at my place. Oh, you got it. We're there. We're there. It's a short drive

Ellen :

that is very interesting.

Marina:

Yeah, very interesting. That's one of my favorites. And somebody gave me some honeydew from Transylvania that is so interesting. It's like sour. And if you don't know what honeydew is, honeydew is When bees gather the secretions of different aphids that live on trees and different plants. So there are aphids that live on these evergreen coniferous trees, and they will suck up all the like resins and this, you know, sweet sucrose saps and things like that. Yeah. And then they'll leave back the secretions droppings, and then the bees will go pick this up, and they make honeydew from it. They make honey from it. It's called honeydew because it involves the aphids or the leaf hoppers and the bees. And it's usually really dark, and sometimes it's got a resin note, but this particular one is really sour, sour honey. People think honey is sweet, but it has a very interesting apple pie kind of savory sour note that I just love.

Trevor:

I think it's I'm 100% blown away by that, because I know that a lot of times ants will do certain things with aphids and that sort of Colony structure, and they'll keep aphids and milk aphids for different kinds of secretions and things like that. For There's honey ants and other other kinds of ants that do that. I had no idea that bees also used in certain societies other species. I thought they were. Exclusively just pollinators.

Marina:

No, they, you know, they work with other insects. And on a whole nother note, you're aware of the spotted lantern fly, this invasive kind of insect looks come off, but yep, for colors, right? So these are also like living on the tree of the Tree of Heaven by Lantus tree, and they're leaving their secretions. And the bees are gathering the spotted lantern secretions and making spotter lantern fly honey. No and beekeepers, beekeepers now in Pennsylvania, and certain parts of New Jersey are flipping out because their honey is now dark and they don't recognize it. Wow, and now it's being tested and studied at the University of Pittsburgh as honeydew from spotted lanternfly.

Ellen :

Whoa. Now, is that not a good thing, or we don't know yet.

Marina:

It's we don't know yet, but it is what it is. And the spotted lantern flies are here. Yeah, they are. They're not going away. Like it or not. They like it. And eventually they will adapt, and there will be predators that will, you know, start the food chain and start eating them. But we now have spotted lantern fly, Honey, do, and there's some beekeepers selling it as doomsday honey.

Trevor:

I love that. I did say that on a previous episode. Why are we call it the lantern flyer, the Tree of Heaven. It's so pretty. There's so nice names. They should be doomsday honey. I'm there. Was

Ellen :

so common for us to bring things from other places. We talk a lot about natives and invasive plants. Our actions have consequences, good and bad, exactly.

Marina:

And Tree of Heaven is invasive, right, right? And I will just say that the honey from Tree of Heaven is delicious. And bees are not native so they're alert, so they do like non native plants, right? Wow. So you know, and I know a lot of people, you know, let's pull out the knot weed. Let's pull out, great, but you must replace it with something that blooms at the same time, because the knotweed, again, we have not weed honey, and if you pull it out, the bees are going to look for sources of nectar at the end of the summer, so you must replant something because they're going to be hungry. Wow. So yeah, our actions have consequences and and

Ellen :

we have to think through the next step. It's not just one step, right? We have to think about what comes next after that. That makes, that makes a lot of sense.

Marina:

Yeah, so, you know, beekeeping really has opened my eyes to, you know, the environment, what's going on, the balance the weather. You know, what's blooming when? And you know, as a beekeeper, you have to be sort of a meteorologist, you have to be, you know, a veterinarian. You have to know behavior, a biologist. You're you're a doctor, if you're using honey as medicine, you know you have to know so many different skills, and it takes years to kind of get them all working together. But beekeepers aren't really interesting people, and that's what I loved about joining the bee club, is that everybody was a wealth of knowledge. Oh, well,

Ellen :

it's been a wealth of knowledge.

Trevor:

It's all working. I'll tell you that it's all working, and we've taken up just, I mean, I'm just, I don't want it to end, I know,

Ellen :

but thank you, Marina. I can't thank you enough. This has been such an education and a joyful experience, and I know that my mind has been blown many times in a good way. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for coming on your table. Thank

Marina:

you for indulging in honey with me.

Ellen :

The best day ever. Charles, ready to keep indulging

Trevor:

that one was I'm buzzing right now. Me, personally, I am buzzed.

Ellen :

It was an educational and epicurean experience. Like all that alliteration,

Trevor:

it was a it was a radical I just, I don't think I'm gonna forget

Ellen :

those flavors. You did really well, by the way you dealt

Trevor:

with with the diagnosis of the varying where it was from. Course, I would love to take her.

Ellen :

Yeah, I would let's go to Dubai. I think that's when the next big one's happening. Yeah, that's

Trevor:

a little further than I thought we were gonna go. But I'm good. I'm 100% good with going

Ellen :

than just going in Weston.

Trevor:

Yes, she's a neighbor. She's live up the road.

Ellen :

That is true. Well, we know you're all going to want to follow Marina to learn more about the amazing world of being a honey sommelier. So you can go to her website, which is honey somalia.com and, of course, follow her on Instagram at honey Somalia, and we'll have all of that information in the show notes. Of course. If

Trevor:

you're lucky enough to live in Fairfield County, Connecticut, you can find Red Bee Honey at local cheese shops, local stores just ask for it. I'm sure that they will be more than happy to get it. And she also ships, Oh, that's right, she ships. So you can go to Red bee.com and you can pick up honey. And you can pick up books there too,

Ellen :

absolutely. And you can also follow Red Bee on Instagram. Oh yeah, it's just@redbee on Instagram. That's right. Well, it's been a very sweet experience for us.

Trevor:

I see what you did there.

Ellen :

Thanks for being with us and having a seat at our table.

Trevor:

Yard to Table is a production of Macrocosm Entertainment. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and for tips and more information, follow us on Instagram@stonebrookhouse.

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Ellen Scherer Crafts

Host
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Trevor Crafts

Host
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Carla Marina Marchese

Guest