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My name is Rob Green, and I believe that you'll find that my honey is the best tasting you can find anywhere. I say this because that's what everyone is saying when they taste Bluffwood Creek honey.

I'm an Advanced Master Gardener and past president of the Master Gardeners Association in Hendricks County, Indiana and started keeping bees, in part, to help with pollination. I am the founding director of the Indiana Beekeeping School, Inc, a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation in Indiana whose purpose is to train beekeepers – and we trained 90 new beekeepers in January 2006 and over 65 in 2008! I'm also the editor of the MIDWEST BEEKEEPER.

 

Bees are incredibly necessary to the agricultural economy, and most wild honeybees have died out from parasites and disease. With state budget cuts, and the DNR no longer restricting bees coming in from hive-beetle infested areas, I'm very concerned about the future of beekeeping in Indiana. I started selling my honey to my friends... and my friends told others... who told others. Now my single hive has become around 40! The hives are currently located in my backyard in rural Hendricks County surrounded by farmland, clover meadows and wildflowers (see photo at right). Some are located at a farm less than a mile away. Each little honeybee works like crazy creating honey. One bee makes about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime! (See the surveillance photo to the right. That's my home in Hendricks County). I had 20 hives there, but pretty soon they'll all be moved to the apiary (honey farm) pictured below>

 

In the summer of 2008, we're moving the bees to a new home about four miles west! The property, shown above, is about 21 acres just outside of Pittsboro, Indiana. The farm, a long held family farm, now belongs to us, and we hope to build a home on it (for people) too. If you'd like to see the property in the latest version of Google Earth, make sure you're up to date then select this link.
 

What's the big deal about pure, raw honey? First of all, most store brand honey contains imported honey. It can contain honey from South America (one country has been cited for dumping tainted honey below cost in the U.S. market and it often contains Nitrofurans). Chinese honey, for a while illegal but still appearing in the USA and Canada, sometimes under the label "organic honey", was banned entirely from Canada and the whole European community because of measurable levels of chloramphenicol – an illegal substance that causes aplastic anemia.

 

Most store brand honey (if it truly originates from the USA or Canada*) is safe, however it has been heated, and therefore has lost most of its flavor. This is actually done on purpose because of the low grade and poorly flavored honey they use in store brands. By heating cheap imported honey from China and South America (which has been described as tasting like it was strained through dirty gym socks) they can knock out most of the objectionable taste. They then blend it with the minimum amount of a domestic honey needed to impart an acceptable flavor. It can still contain organisms including "foulbrood" spores. It is for this reason that when a hive is in trouble, we must never, ever feed the bees honey from a store. There's too much risk of infecting the hive... Look at the label closely... if it doesn't say PRODUCT of USA or PRODUCT of CANADA, it isn't. If it just says PACKED in USA, or USDA GRADE A or CANADA No 1, there's an excellent chance that it came in barrels from somewhere else. And by the way, labels lie too. A honey vendor in Alberta, Canada was charged by the government for mixing the most impure, rankest Chinese honey tainted with a cancer causing drug in his bottle of Pure Alberta Organic Honey.

*What do we mean by truly originates in Canada or the USA? According the to American Honey Producers Association in 2006, Chinese honey which now also contains CIPRO (another banned substance) is showing up at Dollar Stores, Discount Marts and Warehouse Clubs labeled as Product of USA. The fact is, you cannot even trust the labeled country of origin.
 

Companies including Sara Lee and Smuckers have found themselves in possession of cheap bakery grade honey containing cancer causing Chloremphenicol. We documented this news in the state Beekeeping Journal.

If that's not bad enough, some American honey packers have been accused of diluting honey with up to 5% high fructose corn syrup – a sweetener that is used in many products from soft drinks to ketchup which has been linked to childhood obesity – cannot be detected. This cheap corn sweetener costs pennies a pound and is believed by some to be widespread in Amercian honey today.

 

And what's the deal about Raw Honey? Well, first of all, let's get it straight. "Raw" states nothing about the purity of the honey. A beekeeper can be using pesticides in his hives for mites, antibiotics too, even illegal substances, and still call his honey "Raw" if it's never been heated.  So, if you want raw honey, ask the following questions:

 

1. Have you ever used miticides, even organic ones, in your hives? If the answer is yes, have you replaced 100% of your beeswax since the last dosage.
2. Have you ever used antibiotics? If the answer is yes, find out which one.

3. Have you fed your bees High Fructose Corn Syrup as bee feed?

 

And to belabor the point just a little bit longer, why is there a definition issue with the word "raw" as in Raw Honey? Among some local honey producers, they claim raw honey is raw because it wasn't "flash heated."  When pressed, they'll admit to warming or otherwise heating their honey. Let's be real here. Raw meat is not raw if it's been gently heated or slow roasted. The definition of raw honey is honey that has had no heating applied to it, flash, slow or otherwise.

So a forth question to ask is:

 

4. Do you heat your honey in any way, at any time during or after the extraction process?

 

And finally, because many beekeepers are now selling honey from other producers, this means they can't be sure of anything anymore. Honey is a commodity, and you have no idea how many hands it's passed through. If the label on the honey jar says "packed by..." ask question number 5

 

5. Is this honey produced 100% by your own bees?

Is this important? It sure is. There was a time that all honey tasted better than it does now. It was all locally produced, or at least, product of USA or Canada. While we can't make unsubstantiated claims, honey is different from region to region and particularly, country to country. Because it contains microscopic amounts of pollen, some believe that local honey can help with allergies. There's also been published material that suggests that honey contains a whole lot more than carbohydrates (plain ol' sugar). One thing for sure... our honey is local, unprocessed, and completely natural. Today, many beekeepers are out of business. Only diehard lovers of honeybees continue to produce local honey.

 

You can see a new photo below. This was taken in July 2007.  Four honey entries won four blue ribbons, one purple champion ribbon, and one lavender reserve champion ribbon. My honey in my arms (labeled after judging) is liquid, comb, pollen and cinnamon creamed.

Here's a challenge for you. Do a taste comparison. Taste a small amount of store brand honey and then taste Bluffwood Creek honey. If you don't immediately think that our honey tastes better, send it back for a refund!

Read what people say about our honey!

Read what Hendricks County Magazine said about me in May 2007

How does 2008 look for honey?
 

We've all heard the news about the disappearing bees. It's been on tv, radio and in newspapers. In some states, beekeepers are losing up to 80% of their colonies due to something called COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER. The good news is, up till June 11, 2008, there had been no confirmed cases of it in Indiana or Illinois. Now, it's on the official map (information gathered from anonymous questionaires), but the DNR continues to state that not a single case has been confirmed in Indiana.. Michigan isn't sure because the state inspection service was shut down years ago. There are lots of claims there, and yet beekeepers I trust doubt that it's actually ever occurred there. In fact, as recently as July 2008, there's news that not ONE confirmed case has occurred in Kentucky either.

Nonetheless, bee colony survival due to disease and mites is still a big problem. We lost about 1/3  of our beehives last winter, a bit more than the previous two winters. 2007 was one of the better years for honey production (for us) in more than a decade. We had delicious honey, and won blue ribbons and a champion ribbon in July. But with higher demand, and lower supply, we sold out by February 2008.

DIRECTIONS TO TRADERS POINT MARKET
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So starting in March 2008, I started working to rebuild the colonies that didn't survive the winter. Now I have more working colonies than I did last summer. So far it's been a good spring for buildup. And I'm at nearly double our 2007 size. All of this, plus a move to dedicated land... a home for the bees, in Pittsboro, Indiana, about four miles from where I live.

By midsummer 2008, we've had a lot of rain... too much for most people... about an inch or so per week... and the bees are producing honey and not stopping... yet.

Traders Point Organics is on the grounds of the Traders Point Creamery. It's a great market and a full service dairy with a dairy bar. On Fridays, during the market you can typically have supper on the Deck. You can get directions to the Traders Point Market using that form on the right. Market is Friday (May-Oct) from 4 to 8pm. I'm there almost every week. (In the winter, Nov- April, the market is Saturday 9am-noon. Get directions by using the form to the right >>>>>>>

 

DIRECTIONS TO ABUNDANT LIFE MARKET
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We will also sell honey at the Farmer's Market at Abundant Life Church, 92nd and Hague, on Thursday afternoons 4-7.

It's a great market too. Lots of fresh produce and great vendors.  Use the form on the left to get detailed directions.

Our honey is not organic, simply because we cannot assure anyone that all of the nectar was collected from organic gardens.  However, we practice chemical-free and antibiotic-free beekeeping.  And the farmland where the apiary is location is transitioning to organic. That means I do everything I can to make the honey as safe and pure as I can. And that means a great deal as all of the impure honey issues we've seen have had to do with either what the beekeeper used to treat his hives or worse, fraudulent activities such as adding corn syrup to honey to make more money.

Our honey is excellent, wonderfully tasting, and very very pure.

What would you like? Pure honeycomb squares? One pound bottles of light honey? Two and a half pound bottles?  20floz canning jars of chunk honey, where light honey surrounds a big piece of honeycomb? (This won't ship well). And 12oz bears of your choice of light or light amber honey? We have an excellent spring batch of creamed honey. They're all great. Other products? Have you ever tried bee pollen? See the photo at right. Pure beeswax in molds... You can see the honeycomb design and the bar behind in the photo. Beeswax is a natural wax that is used for lubrication around the home. Drawers stuck? Wood sticking to power saw? Screws hard to drive? Beeswax can help. To the right of the photo is our first batches of handcream. This cream contains Apricot Kernel Oil, Beeswax, Vitamin E and just a hint of essential oils. It's a fabulous handcream that you're sure to love. (I've got two unexpected testimonials from men about how this handcream helps fix ingrown hairs. One man, Caucasian, had the hair on his arm. The other man, African American, had a problem with ingrown whiskers and is convinced that our cream solves his problem quickly and reliably. I also got a testimonial about the cream quickly healing up a cold sore.) Also available as a lipbalm in small containers. The lipbalm contains just a hint of honey for those sweet lips. Honey soap and candles are also for sale. In fact we have just a handful of special candle holders too... click here.

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