Looking for a new cocktail recipe?  This is a feisty and fun one!

Ingredients: 

• 2 ounces Dry Gin (We recommend Genius Gin: Texas Oaked Gin or Old Highborn Gin)
• 1 ounce Fiery Sweet Mesquite honey syrup*
• ½ ounce fresh lemon juice
• Cracked black pepper or red pepper flakes

 
*To make honey syrup, thin the honey out with equal parts hot water. This will allow for the honey to integrate easily throughout the cocktail.  

Instructions: 

1. Add gin, honey, and lemon juice to shaker.
2. Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
3. Sprinkle black pepper or red pepper flakes over surface of cocktail.

 
Note: For those who like extra heat, increase Fiery Sweet Mesquite honey syrup to 1.5 ounces.
 
Shutterstock/Kazanovskyi

Mark and I are thrilled to tell you that Lone Star Bee Company has been selected as a Finalist in H-E-B’s 2017 Quest for Texas Best contest!  Our Fiery Sweet Mesquite infused honey and our Lucky Lime & Sea Salt infused honey have both caught the eye of H-E-B and we can’t wait to show our favorite grocer how well our infused honeys pair with so many foods.
 
A couple of years ago, Mark and I noticed H-E-B’s ad in the Houston Business Journal showcasing the winners of the previous year’s contest.  We pasted the ad on our fridge at home and looked at it each time we visited the kitchen, hoping that one day we would be ready to enter the contest.  Earlier this year, we threw our hat in the ring.  Today, we are pinching ourselves that we made it this far.
 
Lone Star Bee Company is honored to be a part of this exciting H-E-B journey! 

The queen bee is the “mother” of all the bees in her colony.   Each honey bee colony will be ruled by only one queen at a time.  She begins her life as a tiny larva, selected by worker bees and fed a special diet of exclusively royal jelly, which allows her to grow into an adult queen bee. 
 
Worker bees take charge in creating a new queen whenever one is needed in a colony.  Space constrictions, poor egg laying performance associated with the queen’s age, or perhaps the unexpected death of a queen will trigger worker bees to get right at work. 
 
Queens are raised in special cells, fittingly called queen cells, which resemble the shape and texture of a peanut and are constructed by the worker bees.   The old queen lays an egg in the queen cell while it is in the early stages of construction.  The worker bees then continue building the remainder of the queen cell around the egg.  In just three days, the egg will hatch into a larva.  After eight days, the cell that houses the queen larva will be fully encapsulated in beeswax by the worker bees.   Once encapsulated, the queen transforms into a pupa.  After 16 days, she is ready to emerge as the queen bee of the colony.    
 
She will fly only once in her lifetime and this flight event is referred to as her “maiden flight”.  The purpose of the maiden flight is to mate with several drones before returning to her colony for the remainder of her life.  Thereafter, the queen’s only job is to lay eggs…sometimes more than 1,500 eggs each day!
 
It is typical for a colony of bees to construct a few queen cells at one time, in order to better their odds that one queen will survive her maiden flight, mate, then return to the colony.  In the photo above, the worker bees have created three queen cells side-by-side, and only one of these queens will emerge victorious.
 
The first queen to emerge from her queen cell will immediately begin searching for other queen cells. She makes her best effort to kill all the other queens, while they are still encapsulated inside their cells, by stinging them through the wall of the cell from the outside.  Queen bees do not have a barbed stinger, so she can user her stinger repeatedly, without the threat of dying.  

Who knew honey could be such a fantastic ingredient in cocktails?  And, our Lucky Lime & Sea Salt Clover honey is exceptional in mixed drinks!
 
Lately, Mark and I have become mixologists of sorts.  We’ve been toying around with our infused honeys as a fun ingredient in cocktails, and this cocktail is truly wonderful.  We have taken the classic Paloma (Spanish for “dove”) and changed it up just a bit and I have to say, our twist on this recipe is invigorating.  It is a perfect drink to sip on in the summertime; when lounging by the pool, after a hard day’s work in the yard, or celebrating with friends and family on the Fourth of July.   Here’s our Honey Paloma recipe, give it a try!
 
Ingredients:

• 2 ounces of your favorite blanco or reposado tequila
• 2 ounces fresh squeeze grapefruit juice
• 2 ounces club soda
• ¾ ounces Lucky Lime & Sea Salt Clover honey
• Salt

 
Instructions:

1. Rim glass with Lucky Lime & Sea Salt Clover honey and salt.
2. In shaker, mix grapefruit juice and tequila.
3. Add ¾ ounces Lucky Lime & Sea Salt Clover honey to shaker.  Shake very well to incorporate honey into tequila and juice.
4. Add ice and shake.
5. Pour into glass.
6. Top off with club soda.
7. Garnish with grapefruit and lime wedges.   Enjoy!

shutterstock/robstathem