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 Our Tuscan Blue Rosemary & Pepper honey is out of this world in this recipe. It's a delicious iced coffee that will no doubt become your favorite this fall! Ingredients 1 cup brewed medium or dark roast coffee (lukewarm) 4 tablespoons Tuscan Blue Rosemary & Pepper honey, or more to taste 2 tablespoons oat milk, or more to taste Ice cubes Instructions Pour coffee into a glass, then add honey. Stir until honey is completely dissolved. Add ice cubes, leaving room for oat milk. Top off with oat milk. Follow these instructions carefully. The brewed coffee should be warm enough to dissolve the honey, yet cool enough not to melt all the ice cubes. Serves one. Our Tuscan Blue Rosemary & Pepper honey is the toast of the town with two top-notch awards; the Specialty Food Association's 2021 sofi™ Awards (New York) receiving the New Product Award in the sweeteners category, and the 2022 Mediterranean Taste Awards (London) receiving the Gold Award in the excellent taste category. Both are top honors in the international food industry. Visit our "Shop Online" page and discover all of our honey flavors and select the honey product size that best suits your needs.
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 Photograph by Mark Crippen Here are a few ways you can pay honor to the insect responsible for more than one-third of the food we eat. Plant native flowers The human-dominated landscape no longer supports functioning ecosystems. You can use Audubon's handy database to discover native plants in your area. Just enter your zip code. It's as easy as that. Not only does a yard full of native flowers look beautiful, but it's also an open buffet for bees and other pollinators to feed on nectar and pollen. Once established, native plants generally require little maintenance. Keep the mowing to a minimum A neatly kept lawn is nice, but letting it grow a bit long invites bees to visit dandelions, clovers, and other flowering plants that might grow in your yard. Don't call pest control if you see a swarm When a colony has too many bees, the hive will split in half. One half will swarm and travel together to find a new home, white the other half remains in place. Swarming bees take time to group up before leaving and will usually take off to find a permanent home within a few hours or up to a couple of days. Read more about swarming bees here: Bee Not Afraid of Swarms If you use pesticides, apply them when plants are not in bloom Honey bees, bumble bees, mason bees and other pollinating insects pollinate your plants and are critical for our environment. Avoid applying any pesticides, including insecticides and fungicides, while the plant is blooming. Bees and other insects may be harmed if they consume nectar or pollen containing pesticides. Honey bees are like no other insect. We all know how tasty their honey can be, but their brilliance goes well beyond that!  Great news, friends! We are a 2022 Scovie Award Winner!
We are thrilled to be recognized by the Fiery Foods Show for our Fiery Sweet Mesquite Honey as it has claimed 2nd place in the Sweet Heat - Unique category. The Scovie Awards honor the memory of Wilbur Scoville, the scientist who invented the Scoville organoleptic test in 1912 to determine the heat scale of chili peppers. Thank you to the judges and thank you to the Fiery Foods Show for this special regcognition! Friends, we are pinching ourselves! We're thrilled to receive not only one sofi Award, but two!
It's an honor to have won the New Product Award for our Tuscan Blue Rosemary & Black Pepper infused honey as well as the Gold Award for our Lucky Lime & Sea Salt infused honey. We are proud to be recognized by the Specialty Food Association (SFA). The SFA is the leading trade association and source of information about the $158.4 billion specialty food industry. Founded in 1952 in New York City, the SFA represents makers, importers, retailers, distributors, and others in the trade. The sofi Awards competition is open annually to members of the Specialty Food Association. The Awards have been given each year since 1972. They recognize extraordinary specialty food and beverage products and the people who create them. The SFA's 2021 sofi™ Awards included a total of 130 winners selected from nearly 1,500 entries across 49 product categories. Products were judged in an anonymous sampling for taste - including flavor, appearance, texture and aroma - ingredient quality, and innovation. The sofi judging was held at the prestigious Rutgers Food Innovation Center in April following strict safety guidelines.  Friends, we're excited to tell you about our latest creation! We proudly collaborated with Patty's Herbs in Pearsall, Texas and used their fresh cut rosemary to create this infused honey...and it's quickly becoming a favorite.
Our new Tuscan Blue Rosemary & Pepper infused honey is small-batched in 10-gallon batches and has a piney aroma with a distinctive sharp flavor. Just a hint of black pepper gives this honey an added earthy tone. It has a use in everything from meat and poultry, to vegetables, cheeses, baked goods, and even cocktails. It can be added to a marinade or combined with butter to melt over many finished dishes. Check out our recipe page and you can create your own fantastic dishes using our Tuscan Blue Rosemary & Pepper infused honey this holiday season!  It's been awhile since I've posted to our blog, but it's not because we don't have much to talk about...we've been staying pretty busy and that's a great thing. One of our latest adventures has been making new friends at The Chopping Block Premier Meat Market, located southeast of Houston in the town of Webster, about halfway to Galveston. Just recently opened, this market caters to folks who enjoy grilling and cooking all types of meats at on their own. If you're new to grilling or want to expand upon your robust cooking talent, you'll find comfort with the knowledgeable and very friendly staff. They offer a large variety of meats to select from and the enticing aroma in the store will get your creative grilling juices flowing for sure. This place has it all. Daily discounts are available to military veterans, first responders, nurses, teachers, and senior citizens. Stop in and say "hello" to the folks at The Chopping Block (14020 Galveston Road) and pick up our infused honeys while you're there!  For the past couple of years, we’ve been making our way throughout the Great State of Texas to spread the word about our tasty infused honeys. And now we are super excited to tell you that our Fiery Sweet Mesquite and our Lucky Lime & Sea Salt honeys are available at each of the Whole Foods Market locations in the entire state of Texas! This is a big deal for Lone Star Bee Company because it's now easier for YOU to get your hands on our delicious honeys. It's also a big deal for us because we enthusiastically appreciate and support Whole Foods Market's core values.
These are great traits that we can all appreciate. Click on our “Retailers” page to find the Whole Foods Market nearest to you! Our loyal followers already know that we have our infused honeys on several H-E-B Texas Grocery shelves in the Houston area, and we love it! Shoppers at these stores have had the chance to meet Hannah on many occasions, while she samples our infused honeys for them with a variety of fun foods. We're huge fans of Hannah. If you've had the privilege to meet her, then you know...she's got a cheerful and engaging personality with an infectious charm. When we're around her, we feel like we've made it to the party. She's a gem! If you're wondering when and where to find Hannah sampling, give us a shout and we'll get you connected.  It's almost hard to believe that the Weaver Family's been beekeeping since 1888, but it's true. They certainly know everything there is to know about bees, having five generations of beekeepers in the family. Over the past few years, Danny and Laura Weaver have created an inviting retreat in the Texas countryside where folks can come enjoy nature. Just a short one-hour drive northwest of Houston, BeeGoods Mercantile offers honey bees, queens, equipment, lessons, tours, demos, tastings and gifts. Each year, they host visitors from around the world to celebrate "Buzzfest" in May, "Infuzzed" in September, and "Holidazze" in December, whereby food trucks, musicians and vendors share in the bee experiences. Nearly every weekend, folks enjoy social time in the honey house and gift shop relaxing on the porches while sipping on refreshing drinks. For the adults, the honey gift shop sells Rohan Meadery's delicious mead from La Grange and Wildflyer's mead from Navasota. Bring the kids; they'll have so much fun they won't know that they're learning! We had a little fun in the bee yard a few days ago! Look at our girls working hard to make honey in their hive. We're asked quite a bit, "How do bees make honey?" Here's a very short and informative video that explains exactly how the bees do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPKg43uUUtA   Here's a great photo from one of our hives. These worker bees are situated on top of the queen's brood. You can see just beneath them are brownish, felt-like hexagons and some black hexagons. The brownish ones are baby bees yet to be born. The black ones are actually empty cells where baby bees were grown prior to emerging from their hexagon cell to join their new honey bee colony. Can you spot the queen bee in this photo? (Hint: She's quite a bit larger than her worker bees!)
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