Oats & Honey Soap. © 2010 Sarva.

On the Sarva web site, we note that we use only locally harvested Ohio honey in our soaps.  Further, honey is the only non-vegan product we use, so we choose our honey carefully!

I’ve been a fan of a company called Ohio Honey for years.  Many consider Ohio Honey to be the best honey in our region! Ohio Honey is what makes our Oats and Honey soap so special, and customers who try it quickly become addicted (though we don’t recommend eating our soap, of course).

September is National Honey Month, and I recently had the pleasure of chatting with the delightful Lucy Wellhausen of Ohio Honey.   Lucy kindly agreed to answer some questions for us regarding her fine honey, the ethics and process of harvesting the honey, her affection for her honeybees, and much more.  Read on!

Lucy Wellhausen

How did you get into beekeeping and making honey?

This was something we never dreamed would happen. My husband worked for a school system (incidentally, he just retired in July). I was a mortgage loan/escrow officer. A friend’s father asked if he could place hives on our property – which is adjacent to a very, very large field – where mostly goldenrod/wild-aster grows in autumn. Of course we said it was perfectly fine. For about 10 years, he would tend the hives and every year give us a jug of honey with a big thank you. We were very pleased with the situation. Along came 1997 and the man passed away. His family told us they were no longer interested in beekeeping….well, that was it. We learned in a hurry! We looked up some beekeepers (in 1997, it wasn’t easy to find them)… we drove around – “in the country” to find “honey for sale” signs and found help! We also got some in depth education from other beekeepers…and hands-on information, too!!!

How is honey made by the bees, and how is it then turned into the Ohio Honey we buy from you?

Honeybee scouts fly around to find out where and what is in bloom, then come back to the colony and tell them where the pollen/nectar source is…they tell them by doing what is called the “waggle-dance” – based on the location of the sun and the other bees are able to understand this dance and find the source, gather pollen and/or nectar and bring it back to the beehive by attaching the pollen to their legs via a sticky substance from a gland on their legs and carry it into the hive where it is then transferred to another honeybee – they process the honey with water and another substance in their body – and turn it into honey.

It is important to note here – that honeybees do not “poop” honey. Also, many people think that honey is made by regurgitating the substance…well, here’s where the plot thickens. Honeybees have their own digestive system. They eat, they poop. The honey is made in a different “stomach” – which is actually the honey-manufacturing-plant – like a little factory. I like people to know this fact, especially vegans and vegetarians, who may think that we are consuming something that the honeybee requires to live.

Is Ohio Honey organic?

We are not ‘certified’ organic…but we do try to be as organic as possible.

Can you talk a bit about the ethical treatment of bees, and how it affects them to harvest the honey?

I can only really respond to how we treat our own colonies. We are so careful with our “girls” – when working in the hives, we are careful to not step on them, crush them by accident, we even talk to our honeybees. There are large, commercial honey-packers, however, who may not be able to say that…for example when they truck honeybee colonies from – say, a southern State up to a Northern State, like Michigan, Maine, etc… in springtime to pollinate the blueberries in Michigan, for example. I feel so sad for those colonies because they don’t have a chance to live a “bees life”… they are transported on truck flat-beds from one location to another, not having any chance to establish their colony as Mother Nature intended. In fact, those honeybees are disoriented with the travel involved and don’t even get a chance to make much honey. Work, work, work – that’s it. Their main job is POLLINATING… no reward.

What kinds of sustainability and/or environmentally-friendly practices does Ohio Honey follow?

By not using products in our hives that would hurt our bees or people eating our honey. In fact, at the various farms where we have placed bee-colonies, the farmers use honeybee-safe products in their fields.

Sarva's Oats and Honey Soap, made with Ohio Honey. Click picture to buy this fabulously honey-oaty soap!

Where can people purchase Ohio Honey?

We sell at various farmer’s markets in the spring/summer/fall. We have belonged to the North Union Farmer’s Markets for many years now…Shaker Square, Chagrin Falls, Cleveland State University… and are represented at Crocker Park via the Sirna Farm stand. There are a few other stores you can shop to buy our honey as well… The Cheese Shop at the West Side Market, Olive & Grape at Tower City, Sirna’s Farm (at Crocker AND at their farm in Auburn, Ohio), Bay Lobsters in Twinsburg, Buckeye Water and Coffee Company in Eastlake, Bauer Restaurant Supply in Mentor, Ohio, Natural Remi-Teas in Madison, Great Scott’s Bakery in Rocky River, and more… see our website at www.ohiohoney.com.

Anything else you’d like to add?

We are so happy to be beekeepers. It is an awesome experience to be out at the hives with the honeybees, harvesting, extracting and selling. We also harvest bee pollen and make propolis and propolis tincture available… all gifts of Nature! Even though our job is time-consuming (honeybees are like our babies) it is rewarding.