Where does the honey come from?

While living together in college, John and Liam had a small backyard apiary, and after college, John continued to manage a various number of hives over the years. Today, we leave the beekeeping to beekeepers, and have partnered with small apiaries all over the United States. We work directly with beekeepers, so we know exactly where our honey comes from and the person responsible for maintaining the hives. Many honey companies work with food conglomerates, brokers, and middle-men to source honey from all over the world. Our approach is rooted in the belief that the best way to help the bees and our community is to curate a network of sustainable beekeepers and to make pure raw honey accessible to everyone.

How does Apis Mercantile support the bees?

We believe that pure raw honey from domestic apiaries should be widely accessible to everyone. We’ve partnered with beekeepers in New Hampshire, Michigan, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Florida to source unique honey varietals and regional wildflower honey. According to a University of Delaware survey, the average age of beekeepers is close to 60 years old. By supporting small and mid-size apiaries, we’re hoping to make beekeeping a more viable profession for those interested in increasing the size of their operation and sideline beekeepers.

How can honey have different flavors?

One of the best ways to think of honey is to think of it as dehydrated flower nectar. While this can be a bit reductive, it perfectly illustrates how honey can vary from jar to jar. Think of a jar of Apis Mercantile orange blossom honey and imagine the orange grove in Florida from which it came. Spanning hundreds of acres of land is a densely packed and abundant nectar source for the hives moved to the farmer's land to aid in pollinating the crops. While bees are capable of flying as far as six miles, most foraging worker bees will stay closer to home only venturing about one to two miles. When the bees are limited to a single nectar source, in this case, orange blossoms, the honey that is produced is distinct and unique to that floral source. Honey that is primarily composed of a single nectar source is often called single-varietal honey or mono-floral honey. Honey that is made of a wide variety of nectar sources is called wildflower honey. Wildflower honey will taste different throughout the year based on what is in bloom and the whimsy of the foraging worker bees.

In 2019, we partnered with a great friend and experienced farmer, Matt, at Ivanhoe Farms in Ramah, Colorado to begin the journey of producing seed to shelf products. By exerting greater control over the sourcing, growing, and processing, Apis Mercantile is able to produce and deliver to the consumer hemp products of the highest quality.

CBD or cannabidiol is one of the phytocannabinoids associated with the plant genus Cannabis. As a cannabinoid, CBD is highly reactive with the endocannabinoid system, a network of cannabinoid receptors found throughout the human body.