Though Georgia’s agricultural reputation hinges on Vidalia onions, peanuts and, of course, peaches, it could also be considered the Honey State.
It also happens to be home to the world’s greatest beekeeper, who makes the planet’s best honey a little more than an hour north of Atlanta.
Virginia Webb produces one of nature’s finest delicacies in a small facility at her home in Clarkesville. Her company, MtnHoney, puts the superlative right on its sourwood honey varietal with stickers that say, “Best Honey in the World.”
That’s not an unbacked marketing claim. Webb’s sourwood honey has won five gold medals from the world’s foremost beekeeping organization, Apimondia, in addition to a slew of other awards.
Credit: Henri Hollis
Credit: Henri Hollis
At each international competition, her sourwood honey is tested by experts against hundreds of other entries, and it keeps coming out on top. She has brought home gold medals from the biannual competitions in Dublin, Ireland; Montpellier, France; Kyiv, Ukraine; Daejeon, South Korea; and Istanbul, Turkey. MtnHoney is simply dominant on the world stage.
The quality of Webb’s honey comes from a combination of terroir and talent, similar to wine production. The foothills of the Appalachian mountain range are the natural environment for sourwood trees, also known as sorrel. Sourwood blooms in the summer, during what Webb calls the second honey season, when it becomes the only source of nectar and pollen for honeybees.
Credit: Henri Hollis
Credit: Henri Hollis
The conditions allow the bees to produce a monofloral honey that brings forth the unique characteristics of sourwood. Webb sells her honey raw and unfiltered, retaining flavors and characteristics that would be lost in the process of pasteurization and homogenization.
MtnHoney’s sourwood honey does taste special. Its flavor develops at a languid pace with a palate-coating richness that makes it seem like the honey has already been mixed with butter.
Unlike lots of other good honey, the floral notes don’t creep into your nose. The flavor is grounded and satisfying in a way that makes you think, “This is what honey is supposed to taste like.”
“That’s really, really good. I’d forgotten how good it is,” Webb said during a taste test that pitted her sourwood varietal against wildflower and tupelo honey.
At this point, Webb is the Wayne Gretzky of beekeeping, with such a long career that has been so consistently great that it’s unlikely to ever be duplicated. She is also one of only two women in Georgia who are commercial beekeepers, but she has become one of the most forceful and influential voices in the state’s male-dominated agricultural industry.
Beekeeping falls into the same category as many other professions like cooking, fashion design and teaching. Once considered “women’s work,” the highest professional levels have come to be dominated by men. According to the Savannah Bee Company, founded by a former student of Webb’s at the John C. Campbell Folk School where she teaches a beekeeping class, the membership of national beekeeping clubs is more than two-thirds male.
Webb first ran into gender-related barriers during her high school days in east Tennessee when she was denied an opportunity to take an agriculture class.
“My mom went down to the school board meeting and said, ‘My daughter wants to take agriculture,’ and they said, ‘No, she can take home ec,’” Webb said with a laugh. She never got to take the agriculture class, but probably learned more from her father, Carl Webb, an enthusiastic beekeeping hobbyist who shared his love for honeybees with his daughter.
No thanks to her high school, Virginia Webb would go on to become a Tennessee State Honey Queen, a lifetime member of Tennessee 4H, director of the American Beekeeping Foundation, a charter member of the Russian Queen Breeders and the U.S. delegate to Apimondia. She is the only person, male or female, in the U.S. to hold three master beekeeping certifications.
Webb says that women tend to naturally possess many of the qualities needed to be good beekeepers.
“We have a gentler approach, and bees need to be treated gently,” Webb told the Savannah Bee Company.
Credit: Henri Hollis
Credit: Henri Hollis
While recently surveying some of MtnHoney’s hives, Webb put her keen eye and gentle touch on display. She carefully pulled out panels of honeycomb from several hives, looking for the queen in each. When she found a queen, Webb demonstrated how to carefully pluck her from the mass of workers and drones and delicately apply a red dot to her back with a paint pen, making her easier to identify and protect during the honey production process.
Despite her history of winning awards and holding various leadership positions, Webb remains humble and doesn’t seem particularly competitive. She’s made a career out of beekeeping but has not attempted to convert her 24-karat-gold reputation into an industrial honey fortune.
She is satisfied with her small, hands-on operation and happens to live in an area that produces some of the most complex and appealing honey in the world. Her passion for working with honeybees is its own reward.
As a tireless advocate for honeybees, Webb crusades for environmental and policy changes to their benefit.
“I don’t mean to be political, but we can’t be a free and prosperous country if our food source is going to be controlled by someone else,” Webb said. “What would the grocery store look like if you took away all those fruits and vegetables that are pollinated by beneficial insects?”
Even the aforementioned Vidalia onions, the pride of South Georgia, rely on honeybees for efficient pollination, although “it makes a terrible honey,” Webb said.
Credit: Henri Hollis
Credit: Henri Hollis
For food lovers in Atlanta, the beauty of having Webb so close is the accessibility of such a delicacy.
MtnHoney’s modest roots are visible at the end of Webb’s driveway, where her precious honey can be purchased from a small farm stand, though it’s also available online. Customers can buy the undisputed best honey in the world on the honor system for $20 a pound and still be chewing on honeycomb by the time they get back home.
About the Author
