Buzzing with sweet honey

The Meljess Bees booth at the Scripps Ranch Farmer’s Market offers a wide selection of raw honey. (photos by John Gregory)

Buzzing with sweet honey

The Scripps Ranch Farmer’s Market has included some incredible vendors throughout its 17 years of existence and there have been some extremely unique items for sale. One of the most unique and fascinating items at the market is raw honey from Meljess Bees.

Sure, this is a small business that simply produces honey, and it’s one of many small businesses that bring natural products to the Farmer’s Market. There are fresh flowers, fresh eggs and fresh produce. Natural honey fits right in, but the story of how honey is produced is one of nature’s more fascinating ones and too detailed to explain here. The fact that bees are a huge factor in the environment; that they have colonies and that they produce one of the most amazingly healthy sweeteners on earth is also interesting. The story of humans nurturing this process and cultivating the end product is just as incredible.

Luke Olivares is a beekeeper for Meljess Bees. He was staffing the booth last week at the market and explained a small part of the process. Make no mistake, this man knows bees and honey.

“It’s all raw. We do our honey differently. We don’t heat it up at all. There are a lot of beekeepers out there who actually heat up their honey, which takes out a lot of nutrients,” Olivares explained. “We don’t heat up our honey at all. We extract it completely different. But it’s just 100 percent raw, so when people try our honey, it tastes a lot different than others and people love it. It’s an amazing honey.”

Most of the hives with bees that produce their honey are located in Temecula and Murrieta, with other locations in San Diego and Riverside counties.

“We find people who want to host hives on different properties. We only try to do properties that contain at least 80 hives,” Olivares said. “We have some that have 300 colonies on each property, or some that do 500 colonies on each property. Right now, we’re running about 1,400 colonies.”

Meljess Bees offers three different kinds of honey: wildflower, alfalfa and orange blossom.

“With the wildflower, we just put the bees in the middle of locations where there is an assortment of flowers that are local to what’s growing at that time. So, throughout the year, the wildflower actually changes flavor due to the pollens and nectar that are growing.” Olivares said.

“We grow the alfalfa [honey] in Blyth, California … because that’s the only place alfalfa really grows … where there’s enough for the bees to produce that,” he explained. “The orange blossom we grow throughout the wineries in Temecula at the orange groves there.”

Their best-selling honey is one that is not as common as one would think.

“The alfalfa is pretty popular just because the alfalfa isn’t a very common honey because a lot of beekeepers, for some reason, don’t produce it. But when people do try the alfalfa, its an amazing honey,” Olivares said.

The Meljess Bees booth at the Scripps Ranch Farmer’s Market sells honey in jars as small as 2-ounces – including a bear-shaped container, 1 pound, 1.5 pounds, 3 pounds and a one-gallon container that sells for $70.

The company also has honey with a block of honey comb inside, as well as a square of honeycomb by itself. The honeycomb squares have been harvested fresh from this season.

Visit the Meljess Bees booth during the next two Saturday’s at the Scripps Ranch Farmer’s Market. Unfortunately, the local market will be forced to close after that because the present location is being redeveloped and a new location was not found.

However, the Scripps Ranch Farmer’s Market will be open Oct. 20 and 27 from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 10380 Spring Canyon Road, in the Innovations Academy parking lot.

The final day, Oct. 27, will be a very special Trick or Treat Day for kids. Families with children are encouraged to dress in costume and kids should bring a bag to hold the treats they will receive from the many vendors. Several fun activities will be available to keep the children happy all day. Visit srfm.org.