World Atlas of Honey with Marina Marchese (307)

307 - World Atlas of Honey with Marina Marchese

Rob Alfred: Hi. I'm Rob, a beekeeper from Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania. I like to listen to and follow Beekeeping Today Podcast. Welcome to today's show.

Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff: Hey, a quick shout-out to Betterbee and all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that, and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on the website. There, you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 300 past episodes, read episodes' transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each episode, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www.beekeepingtoday.com.

Hey, thanks a lot, Rob Alfred from Bechtelsville, PA. What a great opening. Our pleas and whining have been answered.

Becky: I almost like his opening as much as I liked his email to us. That was just so kind and sweet. You can tell he felt a little bit sorry for us. Greatly appreciated. Love hearing the opening and loved getting that email.

Jeff: Thanks a lot, Rob. Becky, this is going to be a fantastic month. It's the end of the year. It's December. Then we start off the new year in just 30 days or so.

Becky: Are you saying it's almost time to do spring splits?

Jeff: [laughs] Boy, I'd like to think about spring splits. I can't say that very fast. Spring splits. Yes. I'm looking forward to the spring, like all beekeepers. This is when you start getting fired up.

Becky: Exactly. Start making those lists and shopping those sales. Oh my gosh, there are so many conference sales for the different conventions. The beekeeping companies have been putting out all these messages saying, "Hey, if you're going to this convention, you can pick up your stuff here and great prices." Pretty exciting stuff.

Jeff: It is. Save that stocking stuffer money and go to the conventions and pick up your gear. It's a great deal.

Becky: Just a little tricky if you fly there.

[laughter]

Jeff: It's hard stuffing a long Langstroth in the overhead.

Becky: It's a little awkward.

Jeff: Oh, yes, it's a little awkward. "Excuse me, can you move your--" December is a good time. If you need something to do and you want to look forward to spring, I like to take this time to go out to the honey house and just start scraping down everything that I didn't get scraped off before and get all of my equipment ready for the springtime. So come March or April, I'm not running around trying to find things and trying to clean up things at the last minute.

Becky: That is very organized of you.

Jeff: That's what I like to do. It's not what I do, but that's what I like to do.

Becky: Then I like to do that too.

[laughter]

Jeff: Well, folks, we have a great show coming up for you. Today's main guest is Marina Marchese, who is the honey connoisseur. She's been on the show before. She has a new book out, The World Atlas of Honey. She's a great guest. Becky, have you met Marina?

Becky: I have not. No. This is her fourth time on the show. This is pretty impressive.

Jeff: She is fun to have, very knowledgeable about honey, so I look forward to having her on. First, let's hear from Dewey and another audio postcard and a word from our sponsors, and we'll be right back with Marina.

Dr. Dewey Caron: Hi. I am Dr. Dewey Caron. I come to you from Portland, Oregon. I'm happy to present another audio postcard on communication in my continuing series of Beekeeping Today Podcast. Today's topic is honey, also the main topic of this Beekeeping Today Podcast. I've been discussing communication on three levels in these postcards. Bee scientist the beekeeper, beekeeper-to-bee, and bee-to-bee.

Today's communication of bee scientist the beekeeper is from a Penn State study headed by Gabriela Quinlan in the Center of Pollination Research of Christine Grozinger's lab. The bottom line conclusion, climate conditions and soil productivity; the ability of soil to support crops based on its physical, chemical, and biological properties are some of the most important factors in estimating honey yields.

Honey, that delicious and unique product only available from honeybees by definition has been positioned alongside wine, coffee, tea, chocolate, and some other products as highly influenced by terroir. Terroir is a French term used in regional marketing of wine. The terroir recognizes the area where the grapes are grown. What is meant by terroir? A working definition is the characteristic taste and flavor imparted to a commodity, such as wine, by the environment in which it is produced.

The major factors of environment commonly identified are soil, sunlight, and climate. Why would honey have terroir? For beekeepers, it is obvious to include honey because honey is processed nectar from flowers or, in some instances, the waste of plant-sucking insects like aphids. Think of the forest honey of southern Germany or Turkey, for example. The flowers our bees use for honey sources are directly influenced by sunlight, soil, and climate. Think artesian honey. Your honey is particular to your apiary site.

The honey from your neighbor is not necessarily exactly the same as the honey produced by your bees. How do we know this? Maybe your local beekeeping club this fall has organized a honey tasting at one of the fall meetings. Could you not sense that all 20, 30, or however many honey samples were available for tasting were different? Some were fruity, some robust, some woodsy, some spicy, but weren't they all distinct? That is terroir.

The flowers your bees visited are different due to their environment. Like wines, the subtle differences are due to environmental considerations. The Penn State study I referred to was a meta-analysis of data gathered by other researchers. The analysis used hierarchical partitioning, which is just simply in levels, five decades of state-level data to parse the most important environmental factors leading to variation in honey yields across the US.

We know honey yields across the US unfortunately have decreased appreciatively since the 1990s. Some of this decrease in yields can be attributed to shifts in climate, land use, and particularly large-scale pesticide applications. Climatic conditions and soil productivity were among the most important variables they found in this study for estimating honey yields, with states in warm or cool regions with productive soils having the highest honey yields per colony.

Important factors were change in herbicide use, land use; such as the increase in intensive agriculture, reduction in land conservation programs, et cetera; and annual weather abnormalities. Fascinating stuff in this publication. It is referenced in the end notes. I recommend you look it over whether you produce or like or dislike what your bees produce.

Check out the University of Delaware press release cited in notes of UD's art and design professor Aaron Terry's printmaking class. Yes, print-making. His class members created and submitted unique designs for the 2024 UD Honey Jar Label. The design of a student, Michaela Miller, a senior fine arts major, was the one that won this competition and is currently on the jars that are sold at the UD creamery.

Hey, have you seriously looked at your honey label and the message it conveys to customers? Is terroir a part of it? If not, why not? Now on to beekeeper-to-bee communication. We are well aware that our bees need sufficient capped honey stores to survive winter. The amount varies where you keep your bees, but as a general rule of thumb, it's recommended that the uppermost box for those using two boxes for their bees to rear brood be full or nearly so in the fall as the bees are put to bed.

This applies if we use medium-depth, 5-frame nucs, or 8 or 10 full-depth frame boxes. The bees will move upward as the winter progresses, using the honey in the top box to generate the heat via muscular activity. For top bar and longitudinal boxes, it is prudent to arrange all the honey frames on one end of the brood area so bees may move horizontally in one direction to keep in contact with their honey stores, especially for boxes where bees have stored honey, both to the right and left of the brood area, which is a normal condition for the bees.

Our communication to our bees is to leave sufficient stores for the bees. This might mean transferring full or nearly full frames of capped honey to colonies, especially for colonies that have too few winter stores, from those that have some to spare, or to leave supers on colonies with too few resources, or, and this is really telling our bees, to feed our bees a heavy sugar syrup at the top of the colony.

This can be ripened and stored in enough time to ripen and stores the honey before winter weather closes in on our apiaries. Additionally, we should insulate the top, so moisture does not accumulate on the underside of the covers, leaving a sugar cube or fondant sugar poured on the undercover that bees can't access in an emergency. A just-in-case situation. The bees use all of the stores before forage conditions improve come spring. Our communication to our bees, we're saying, by providing enough winter stores, so that you have the chance to survive whatever our winter weather may bring.

If you want to see a little bit more on this, I'd recommend my textbook, Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping.It's in the chapters on fall and also on honey. Finally, bee-to-bee communication. One curious bee behavior is heater bees. Heater bees, as described by Jürgen Tautz in his 2008 book, The Buzz about Bees, is a really fascinating behavior. He was one of the earliest to demonstrate that some individual bees are able to raise their body temperatures about 10 degrees centigrade higher than normal bees by using very rapid muscle contractions.

This behavior is performed during winter and early spring. Each of these heater bees presses its thorax against the top of a developing cap pupae, or the heater bee goes into an empty cell where developing pupae's surround that one empty cell. In this latter situation, after warming their abdomens, the heater bee climbs headfirst into the empty cell with those developing bees around it. The heater bees can remain in a cell for about 30 minutes, or until their bodies drop back to the normal ambient temperature of the hive.

The heater bee tucked down in one of the empty cells is even more effective at distributing heat to the developing pupae than just to the top capping of the pupae. Tautz maintains worker bees can assess the state of the hive, determine what type of bees are most needed, and then produce those types. It turns out that, if they elevate the temperature higher, forager bees will develop, bees that will develop through their foraging stage more rapidly. If the temperature is above the ambient temperature, but not as high as in the first instances, nurse bees will develop, nurse bees being reared at a little bit lower temperature.

Heater bees are ensuring that come spring there are bees to do the work. As of course, all those older age bees die. What is fascinating, how do they determine which pupae to heat? That's a mystery. It has to be fantastic level of bee-to-bee communication. In that notes, I also have referenced the honeybee sweet, which Rusty Barlow discusses, heater bees, as well as reference to the Tautz book. That concludes this postcard for Beekeeping Today Podcast.

I hope your bees are doing well so far. Winter is kind, so most of all your colonies survive. Best to you and your bees. May I also add, happy holidays, and may the food and drink be abundant, and include lots of different things with honey. Best wishes to all.

[music]

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Jeff: Thanks a lot to our sponsors sitting across this great big virtual Beekeeping Today Podcast table. Stretching all the way from Connecticut through Minnesota to Washington State is Marina Marchese. You know her as the honey connoisseur. She's been with us several times before. Marina, thank you for joining us. Welcome back to the show.

Marina Marchese: Thank you, Jeff and Becky. I'm really excited to speak with you again.

Becky: Thanks so much for being here, Marina.

Jeff: Marina, for those who may not know you, or may know your name, but maybe not really know who you are, can you just give us a quick bio about your background who you are, how you got interested in bees and/or honey, and then we will delve into all those other subjects that you are an expert on?

Marina: I began beekeeping about 25 years ago. Like most people, I really had not any knowledge about bees. I met a neighbor who happened to have bees and invited me over to their house to meet their honeybees. At the time, I was a little bit nervous about that, but I was intrigued to learn more. That visit ended with me tasting the honey out of the hive fresh while we're in the apiary. It was like nothing I had ever tasted before.

I started my first hive. Like any beekeeper you ask, you fall into this rabbit hole. You join your bee club, and you meet other bee friends, and before you know it, you're going to conferences, you're making your honey. It really takes over your life in a great way. Then I really became intrigued with honey, and all of the honeys that I had collected from friends and other beekeepers we were trading, and travels. At one point, I must have had 75 jars of honey on a shelf here. I think all beekeepers do that. We have our little honey collection.

I would look at them every day and the beautiful labels and the colors. I had no words or no tools or knowledge of how to talk about them, how to describe them, even just how to appreciate them, just besides putting it on my toast or my tea or whatever. I was searching for information about all of these honeys, maybe a database, how beekeepers can know what the botanical source of their honey was.

I had done some work with Kim. I wrote a few articles for the magazine at the time. I was really surprised to see that there wasn't any information for beekeepers to really know what the botanical source of their honey was. I thought we have experts in wine and chocolate and cheese, and they go through a special training to really learn how to identify what kind of wine, what kind of grapes, maybe the region.

I thought that honey should be on that same level because we have all of these different flowers, botanical sources and regions, and we have hundreds and even thousands of different honeys that bees are making from these different flowers. These are the honeys that I had been collecting. I had stumbled upon a program in Italy back in 2012 when I was visiting. I ended up at a honey festival with beekeepers selling their honey. I ended up walking into honey tasting. They had all these honeys lined up, beautiful wine glasses, different colors, and they were passing them around, and they were talking about them the way we would talk about wine.

They were talking about the botanical source, the region, the season that it was produced. Most importantly, they knew the botanical source, and they had established what the smell and the flavor and the color should be for that particular honey. I thought, "This is exactly what we need in the US. This is what I want to know." I ended up going to Italy over a period of three years to do this honey school, honey class and learning about tasting honey and botanical sources. I had written some articles about my journey and my experience in Italy. Now I'm actually an official teacher for the organization. It's called the Italian National Register of Honey Experts. It's a long name.

I felt so passionate about this, that to bring this information to the US to help beekeepers to know their honey and to be able to start the process of identifying the botanical sources. The program goes beyond that. It goes into learning about crystallization, the structures, different kind of problems, and we call them defects, things that happen to honey that shouldn't happen, maybe overusing the smoke while you're doing the harvest, or an inspection or overusing varroa treatments that are highly aromatic. It's a little bit more than just honey-tasting. I'm basically a honey educator at this point.

Jeff: So many beekeepers focus on the management of honeybees and the biology of honeybees. That's really cool. I geek out on all of it. When you start looking into honey itself, besides being a sweetener for the tea or a substitute for sugar and bread, you start asking about honey, and they get dull eyes and you say, "It takes a visit to 2 million blossoms to get a pound of honey. What else do you want to know, Jeff?" What you've done and what you've educated us the other three times you were with us, and I think you were with your friend from Italy, is that there's so much more to honey than just a sweetener. [unintelligible 00:22:07] it keeps bread moist or something like that.

Marina: There really is. I'm a beekeeper, and I talk to beekeepers. One of the problems that we complain about is the price of honey and the imports and competing with what's on the market. This program and this kind of education gives beekeepers the tools to market their honey, to know their honey, to know how to store it, to know how to handle it in the best way that you're maintaining the integrity, and then how to market it, how to talk to your customers at the farmer's market and explain to them maybe your spring honey, your summer honey, your fall honey might be different.

We have an interest in the culinary world. These chefs are looking for particular kinds of honeys for special dishes that they're putting on the menu and giving the tools and the power to the beekeeper to have these kind of conversations about honey besides just saying, it's sweet, and it's yummy, and it's delicious. We can add some integrity with words like woody or floral or aromatic to describe honey and elevate it to the same level that wine or olive oil or any other artisan food is.

Jeff: We're sitting here in December, and we're getting close to holidays, and there's going to be a lot of holiday festivals and getting together. Where would I, as a beekeeper, start to learn more about honey? In the next few weeks as I have family over and I'm visiting folks, or I go to a party, and I want to take a pound of my bees' honey to that party, how can I learn to describe it better and be a better representative of my honey and honey in general to the common folk? [laughs]

Marina: The program that I've been teaching and that I took is very interesting because it starts at the bottom where anyone can walk into this class or this training and you learn about identifying smells and flavors through these exercises. The most difficult thing is you crack open a jar of honey, you hand it to somebody, and they taste it. We've all done that, and they go, "Oh, it's good, it's yummy." We don't really have the words how to describe it.

The training and these classes that I'm doing and that they're doing in Italy, and beekeepers now all over are doing it, is really trying to teach people how to identify smells and flavors. It requires a little bit of formal training. Once you get that, then you can apply it to honey. It's really important work, I think, to elevate honey.

Jeff: When I take my honey and give a sample to somebody, what are some of the key characteristics I can tell that person to look for in a honey?

Marina: I guess a good starting point for anybody or a beekeeper is one of my books. I've written the HoneyConnoisseur with Kim Flottum. I did a book called Honey For Dummies with my mentor Howland Blackiston. In those books, I do a deep dive into the process of honey tasting.

There is list, or it's a honey wheel, it's a tool with various descriptors that you could use to describe honey. It starts out with major or broad characteristics or what we call flavor families like floral, like fruity, there's words like animal, like as a funkiness. There's a broad category. The books are really a great tool just to dip your toes into it to see what it's all about. I also have my new book out, The World Atlas of Honey, and there is also a spread on honey tasting. These are great ways just to start the process and get involved if you're waiting on getting into a class or looking into it.

Becky: I've been very quiet, but I'm going to admit something, Marina. I really don't like honey. I know it's because I don't have a sophisticated palette. I would much rather drink an IPA than taste honey. What do you tell beekeepers who do not have, I call it a sophisticated palette so I can tell sweet-- I really, really don't like Clover honey. I can tell the differences between honey, and I taste my way through my extractions. What is your advice for somebody like me?

Marina: I have to ask you. You're a beekeeper?

Becky: Yes.

Marina: You extract your own honey?

Becky: Yes.

Marina: You don't like your own honey?

Becky: No, I just don't like honey. I've never really liked honey.

Marina: When people tell me that, I usually ask them, "What kind of honey have you had?" The answer usually is, "I bought it in the store."

Becky: No, I've had everything.

Marina: You've had real honey?

Becky: Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Marina: You don't--

Becky: I don't like it.

Marina: That's very rare for me to hear.

Becky: Oh, I thought you were going to solve my problem.

[laughter]

Marina: There's a couple of things that happen. Everybody has a different genetic makeup. Certain people are a little bit more sensitive to different taste and flavor. For example, some people are genetically averse to bitter. They just don't like bitter foods, bitter coffee. That could be a genetic makeup. Some people don't like cilantro. They think that it tastes like soap. Then there's other people who, depending upon their diet, could affect how they perceive different kinds of flavors.

The best example I can give you is, have you ever been on a diet where you eliminated sweets, cakes, cookies for two, three weeks, and then you break your diet, and you have your first bite of cake or pie or something, and it tastes so sweet to you? It's because you haven't had anything sweet in a while and your palate recalibrates. Your diet can change how you perceive honey. As a taster, I actually keep my palate clean, meaning I don't go overboard on too many snacks or too many salty foods.

I eat fairly bland. I find that when I eat bland that my perception of flavor is a lot more enhanced. Then there's other environmental variables that can affect how you perceive flavor and food and honey, if you're really tired or you have fatigued, you're stressed out, this can affect us because we're human. Different kinds of human activities, like stress and things, can change how you perceive honey.

Becky: I think for me it's that I don't like sweet food, so I don't eat a lot of it. Honey is probably just that huge punch of sweetness, except for linden. Linden honey is the most palatable that I've ever had.

Marina: Linden honey has this very interesting minty menthol finish. There are some honeys that are not sweet, like honeydews. There are certain honeys that are actually on the salty side and not so sweet. If you were willing to explore honeys, you may find one that's a little bit more interesting to you, but the fact that you don't like sweets is also your personal preference or maybe your genetic that you don't like sweets. There are people that don't like sweets. There are some people that don't like bitter. We're all human. We all have our own preferences.

Becky: I do think it's important though to taste your way through the hive and to taste the nectar that the bees are bringing in so that you can identify what their nectar sources are. I do do it. I recommend that beekeepers taste their way through their beekeeping year so that they can identify what's coming into the hive. Do you recommend tasting the nectar too and not just the finished product?

Marina: With my training and the school, we don't really taste nectar. We're not really trained on that. We usually do mostly just liquid honey. We really don't even evaluate honeycomb. From a sensory point of view, we're really just tasting the liquid honey that's been extracted, but that's an interesting point, tasting the nectar. Usually, the nectar is overly sweet because it's primarily sucrose. I'm not really sure how much flavor that you would be finding in it, but that's an interesting experiment to try.

Jeff: Let's consider that, and we're going to hear from our sponsors. We'll be right back.

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Becky: Welcome back, everybody. Marina, your book, World Atlas of Honey, it's not just gorgeous, but it's an amazing resource, I think not just for beekeepers, but for anybody who loves honey. For a beekeeper, it is such a good place to start. You mentioned that if you want to market your honey better, you should know your honey. Can you go through the sections of your-- You've got two main parts of your book. Will you describe that for us?

Marina: Thank you very much. I'm really proud and exhausted to present this book. It was a tremendous undertaking with a lot of research and a lot of help from beekeepers in the community worldwide that chimed in and answered all my questions. It was a tremendous project. It's two sections. The first part is basically introduction to honey. I have various spreads. It's broken up into spreads, which is two pages, so left and right. Basically, I cover things like honey harvest, tasting techniques, flavors, a little bit about honey fraud and defects in honey.

As I mentioned, different kinds of medicinal uses of honey in health and beauty as well. A little bit on cooking, a little bit on pairing with cheeses. Then the second part of the book is over 80 countries around the globe and their most popular honeys by country. Each country gets a spread. I talk about the most important honeys that are produced in those regions, a little bit about the region, the terroir, which is like the climate, the soil, the seasonality, if there's interesting bees, different types of bees being raised, producing honey, wild bees, certain kinds of honeydews are covered, a little bit about mad honey of Turkey and Nepal. It really just goes around the world talking about the different kinds of honeys that are produced. I learned quite a lot myself.

Becky: To me, it's also like a travel book because as I was going through it, many beekeepers, when they go someplace, they want to seek out beekeepers in that location. You're giving people information as far as what to look for, as far as those major nectar-producing plants. They either know what they have to buy or taste while they're there, but you could plan quite a trip by looking at your book and picking out some must-do honey trips, right?

Marina: Yes, honey tourism.

Becky: Honey tourism.

Marina: Yes. Beekeepers, when we travel, we go visit other beekeepers, we go to the markets, we pick up honey. In my research and coming across some of these honeys have such interesting stories about the traditions, the cultures of the people, the local beekeeping practices. The stories behind the honey and the production and all of the background is just fascinating. I just love telling these stories. I loved reading about them and researching them, but honey is so complex and so fascinating. I think it really deserves this kind of a platform.

Becky: Another use is that sometimes you don't have to travel to meet people from different countries. Many of our communities are built up of people from different countries. One of the things that I've always thought of as a great community project is to bring people who are visitors here, immigrants, and bring them into beekeeping because they have their tie to honey, which you shared with great illustration, that means home to them. Although you might not be able to bring them into beekeeping and they can't get the same honey, they can get their own honey. They've got cooking and medicinal uses for honey that you can share with them. I love being able to maybe meet somebody from a different country, look at your book, and go, "Oh, this is what honey means to them."

Marina: Exactly. There's such a deep significance of the cultural, the tradition of honey in various countries. It goes very, very deep. Humans have been hunting and consuming honey for thousands of years. These stories run really deep within various countries and cultures. We really don't hear about that. We really don't know those stories. I've already heard from various beekeepers through social media that are producing some of these honeys, and they were very excited to see that their honey was featured in the book.

I wasn't really able to do everything, but we did quite a lot. The beekeepers are very proud of their honey. They're very proud of their beekeeping practices and their country and their traditions. It's a source of pride for them. It just made me very happy to be able to feature different types of honey and give them a voice.

Jeff: You touched on it, terroir. How do you pronounce it? I want to say terroir, but I know that's not right.

Marina: Terroir. It's French.

Jeff: Terroir.

Marina: I don't have a good French accent.

Jeff: I can't even speak English. Can you explain that? What does that mean?

Marina: It's a French word. It translates to soil or earth. Basically, it's a term used mostly in the wine world, but I'm using it for honey because I think that honey really deserves to be elevated. It really just describes the environmental variables that affect the final product of honey. We have the botanical source, we have the region that it's produced, we have the climate, we have the soil, and the sun, the rain, the wind, the seasonality. All of those variables are what gives honey its particular color, smell, and flavor.

I think the best example of this is we have a citrus honey or maybe an orange blossom honey. We have it produced in the southwest of the US, we have it in the southeast in Florida. You can have orange blossom produced in the Mediterranean region and even in Asia, certain Asian countries. They're all produced by the citrus kind of flower, various citruses, but the flavor is going to change the color. The smell can change depending upon the region that it was produced and the climate and the soil. If you're familiar with orange blossom honey from Florida, it's usually very bright. It's very orangey, citrusy. You literally can taste the orange blossom in it. It's very floral.

Then if you go to the southwest and you harvest some of those honeys from the desert, which is arid, dry sand, and that honey has a different flavor profile. It can be a little bit more earthy, dusty, it's not as bright. Then in the Mediterranean and the Sicily and around those Mediterranean countries, the honey is a little less intense. It's lighter, more transparent, and just not as candy-like like Florida. It's basically telling us terroir is the story of the honey, where it was from, when it was produced, what season, the soil, the region. It's really the story. Then we have the cultural significance and the traditions of the production and how it was harvest and the type of bees.

Jeff: As you describe, it does explain all the different variances that goes into beekeeper's honey, whether it be why his honey could taste different or his or her honey could taste different than someone a mile away just because of many different variables, not only floral sources.

Marina: The thing is, there's still a lot we don't know about honey. We really don't have a lot of research on why honey tastes the way it does. We know that there's volatile and non-volatile compounds that give honey its flavor, and the bees adding their enzymes in the botanical source, but there's still so much we really don't know about honey. It's going to take every beekeeper and every researcher eventually to come together and compare notes and major undertaking.

I can tell you that in Italy, they really have done an incredible amount of work in collecting data over probably 40 years. They run a lot of honey contests. At the end of the contest, any of the honeys that they have left over or the award winners, they test in the lab for chemical, they test for pollen, and then they have a panel of professional tasters. They take all of that data and put it into some kind of a program. They've collected it over the years. That's how they pretty much identify the botanical sources of their honey. It is fascinating.

They're a much smaller country. Being that they're Italy, they very passionate about all things food and good food and quality, it makes perfect sense that they would be the world leaders in honey, as well as maybe wine and olive oil, but they've done a tremendous amount of good work.

Jeff: This is another one of these great beekeeping topics. I can't believe how quickly the time has passed. I wanted to ask you, give you an opportunity in the brief amount of time we have left, the American Honey Tasting Society, can you talk to us about that, and is that something I can join as a beekeeper to learn more about honey?

Marina: Basically, it's an organization. Right now our main activity is teaching. I partnered with my instructors or my teachers in Italy to bring this education here slowly. It's been 10 years that we've been trying to do these classes. Now, at this point, the American Honey Tasting Society and me, along with my teachers in Italy, we are doing the first of three levels here in the US. It means that basically the first level class that you would take in Bologna, you can take it here in the US with us.

One of the teachers will come here, we teach together. It requires two people really to do this class. It's very intense. There's a lot of moving parts. The honeys have to be brought in from Italy. They have to be approved, all the exercises. Everything has to be approved. Basically, the students that complete that class will get a certification of completion for Level 1 that will be recognized by the Italian register to move on to Level 2 and 3, which you'll have to take in Italy. Basically, our main activity is teaching.

Quite interesting enough is that now there's such a demand for these classes. The two instructors in Italy, Raffaele, who was on the podcast with me, I guess was last year, and John Luigi Marcuson, who is the president of the organization. Between the three of us, we're the only ones that can actually teach the class in English language. There's many instructors, but they're all teaching it in Italian because they're in Italy. There's a huge demand right now for classes, and there's only three of us that can do the class in English.

They're very, very busy right now in Bologna, Italy, doing classes around the clock. Then they're also traveling to other countries in the EU. There's request and demand. The floodgates opened after so many years. I might or might not be responsible for that. I think that the program is just amazing. Everybody who's taken it really has great things to say. They come back so excited with so much new knowledge, and then they're out there spreading the good word.

I guess they're going to start training more teachers. They control all of that. The American Honey Tasting Society eventually, as we can get more people trained and interested, I'd like to do a speaker series and have beekeepers talk about their honey, just to keep connecting the dots and spreading the information about honey.

Jeff: Definitely seems like there'd be a big need for more education. I can see beekeepers really wanted to be a part of that. If not, the beekeeper themselves, they know people who would like to learn more about the terroir of honey and how to describe it and appreciate it better.

Becky: I think the whole farm-to-table movement and all of the chefs that are emerging and using honey, it just makes sense that the more we can learn as beekeepers to be able to promote our product, the more it's going to be incorporated into different restaurants and other opportunities. It's pretty exciting. Will there be a class next spring?

Marina: We are looking at doing a class here in Connecticut in May. We don't have a date on the calendar. Like I said, there's a lot of moving parts. The class is four days. It's very academic, it's very intense. There are a lot of exercises, a lot of tasting, a lot of note keeping. Everybody's going to be taking notes and learning how to write tasting notes for the honey. They'll be tasting all of these samples that are brought in from Italy that are approved. Then there's other challenging exercises and blind tasting.

They'll get a chance to taste defective honey and to learn about crystallization structures and why honey crystallizes and why it does crazy things where it separates or the crystals are very large or coarse. There's a lot of information that is in these classes. It just really demystifies so many things about honey. It gives beekeepers the tools to market and get the good word out.

Becky: Marina, do they sell out right away?

Marina: Pretty much do. They limit the class to 25 people to keep it very interactive and to keep it intimate. There's a lot of conversation, there's a lot of question-asking and answering questions. They have to be limited to 25, but in the meantime, I've been doing an online mini class with Atlas Obscura. I have one coming up on November I believe it's the 17th, 18th, and the 19th. I've been doing them online now for quite a few years, a couple of times a year with Atlas Obscura. Those pretty much sell out as well.

People will sign up, and then they can purchase what we call a honey kit. I ship out a little box of honey samples for them, and then there's some other exercises and paperworks so that we can learn how to taste honey together, and to write tasting notes. It's a three-day class, it's a six hours for those who can't travel right now and would like to learn more. I usually post them on the American Honey Tasting Society website and on social media.

Becky: Your website is fantastic as far as getting more information and learning about the courses. For sure people should visit that if they're interested.

Jeff: We'll have those links in the show notes. Marina, the time has flown. I apologize for rambling and asking too many questions.

Becky: Well, I apologize for hogging it all about me too. We didn't use our time well. No, I'm kidding.

Jeff: I don't remember. Anyways, Marina, is there anything that we haven't asked you about that you would want our listeners know about, either yourself, the American Honey Tasting Society, anything at all?

Marina: Well, you know we can go on and on and talk forever about all things honey. Well, I just really want to say thank you for having me back. The World Atlas of Honey is out right now. My publisher would not be happy if I didn't mention it again. It can be ordered online in bookstores and doing a couple of author appearances. If anyone is interested, they can always email me. I'd love to come to your part of the country or world and do a honey tasting or talk about books. Yes, thank you.

Jeff: It is available on Amazon. I can tell you that Amazon got my copy to me in next day, day after the next day, something like that. It was pretty quick. I was really happy about that. Amazon was treating you well, Marina.

Marina: Yes. They get those books out. That's amazing.

Jeff: Well, we look forward to having you back and learning more about honey, the American Honey Tasting Society, and everything that you're doing to promote the valuable product honey is.

Becky: Making us better beeekeepers. Thank you, Marina.

Marina: Thank you.

Jeff: It's been pounded in my head, of course, through Sheri who used to work at the honey board, and now through Marina, just the whole varietal honey, that's what you need to push as a beekeeper. Varietal honey, get it different from the clover honey on the store shelf. Make yours special, take it to the market. Don't say wildflower. Find out what the source is. Varietal honey sell. What I like about what Marina is talking about is you're adding another dimension to the varietal label, is being able to describe it's as she called it, what? Terroir.

Becky: Terroir.

Jeff: Terroir.

Becky: Yes, that--

Jeff: That word?

Becky: The dirt part, yes.

Jeff: Aw.

Becky: Oh, I'm sorry.

Jeff: You make it sound like beets.

Becky: The ash part. It's the ash of the earth.

Jeff: The earthy--

Becky: Micronutrients, all of that.

Jeff: How do you describe that? If you could put flavor notes on your honey label, wouldn't that be really cool?

Becky: When I was running the Bee Squad, I recognized early that dear Clara, one of my longtime employees had an amazing ability to taste the honey and described the flavor notes. Again, and I don't want to make it about me, but a lot of times I taste honey, and I go ew because it's just too sweet for me. I don't get the sense of flavor. I just get sweet. Clara would for our customers write down the different flavor notes that she tasted in each bucket of honey that we extracted so that they were able to-- that was their starting point. They were able to look for those flavors when they were tasting their honey.

I think it's an amazing thing. I don't know that I'm holding out any hope that I'll ever be able to do it. I can tell the different general flavors of honey, but those notes, you need training and you need a better palate than mine.

Jeff: I said the same thing to Marina the last time she was on with Kim and me. She says, "You can train your palate. You can train under the right supervision and everything. You can train your palate to pick up the differences." I was joking about having the Midwest Ohio palate, everything is meat and potatoes, and everything is bland. She says you can train that. That always gave me hope, and of course maybe a little bit, but I'm not really good at it.

Becky: See for me, that just means I'd have to eat more honey. I already eat my way through the harvest so that I can categorize them, but oh my gosh. It's not going to happen. I'm going to buy Honey For Dummies, her other book, and get what I can learn out of that. I think it's great. We need more beekeepers who can do it. Honestly, it's such a skill that those beekeepers who train their palates are going to be much better at a farmer's market selling their wares than somebody like-- although I can get excited about the bees, so I do have a competitive advantage too.

Jeff: Folks, do yourself a favor this holiday season. Gift Marina's book The Atlas of Honey. It's a great gift, it's beautiful, and you might learn something to boot. Well, that about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to follow us and rate us five stars on Apple Podcast or wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you like.

You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews tab along the top of any webpage. We want to thank Betterbee and our regular longtime sponsors Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their generous support. Finally and most importantly, we want to thank you, the BeekeepingToday Podcast listener, for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions and comments on our website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

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