If someone asked you to describe what honey is like, you might say: "Sweet, sticky, comes in a plastic bottle shaped like a bear."
Here's how Brian Fredericksen describes honey he makes:
"Very floral, delicate, sometimes minty... . Herbal tones, usually an overriding cinnamon flavor... . Very earthy. I hate to say barnyard, but it does kind of have that."
And when he isn't selling honey still in the comb, he puts it in a nice-looking jar with labels identifying it as "buckwheat," "basswood" or "bird's foot trefoil" and informing you it came from Hive 550A at Blue Earth River or Hive 10D at Painters Creek.
That's because Fredericksen, owner of Ames Farm based in Watertown in Carver County, is one of a very few producers in the country producing "single source" honey: honey identified and jarred by the individual hive it came from and the type of nectar the bees collected.
It's a labor-intensive, artisanal approach that seeks to elevate humble honey into something approaching fine wine in its attention to detail and flavor.
Most of the honey on supermarket shelves is mass produced, a homogenous blend that's intended to make each jar look the same and have the same mild, mainstream flavor.
But a beehive actually produces honey each season that is unique in flavor, color and texture compared to other hives and other seasons, Fredericksen says. Those qualities can differ dramatically depending on what flower the bees visit, the weather during the honey production season, even the soil conditions where the blossoms are growing.
The honey from each colony is "a snapshot of that landscape, that time period," Fredericksen said.
The results are honey varieties that range from light and floral, like a Vouvray, to something strong and bitter, like a Guinness. In between there are exotic varieties with flavors like menthol, licorice, marshmallow, caramel, vanilla and black currant. There are different initial tastes and finishing tastes, variations in textures, changes in levels of moisture content.
To expose those kinds of tastes, however, Fredericksen has had to do things differently from most beekeepers.
Most people trying to make a living producing honey have thousands of bee colonies working for them. Fredericksen has only about 250.
Most honey found on the supermarket shelves is heated to aid the production process and to extend the shelf life before crystallization occurs. Fredericksen keeps his honey raw because he says cooking the honey kills the flavor.
Above all, Fredericksen doesn't mix honey between hives. Once you start blending, "you take away from what the bees have made."
"In general, the reaction I get is 'This is some of the best tasting honey I've ever had,' " Fredericksen said of his customers. "People can taste and see the difference."
But if they plan to use it to sweeten their tea, do most consumers care that it was made from Hive 613 on Parley Lake or that a microscopic analysis of the pollen by a biologist Fredericksen uses shows that the bees were buzzing around alfalfa?
"It's not very productive the way I do it," Fredericksen said. "It's just the sort of level of detail and care I want to put into it."
ACCIDENTAL BEEKEEPER
It seems like a funny sort of obsession for an industrial engineer who became a beekeeper by accident.
Before he got into the honey racket, Fredericksen, 44, worked at 3M for 12 years. But while he toiled away doing material sciences research, he nurtured a dream of getting into some sort of farm-related business. The career change was hurried along by a bad boss at 3M, Fredericksen said.
"It ended in a shouting match," he said.
At first, it was going to be apples. In 1994, Fredericksen bought a 5-acre orchard that had been owned by David Bedford, a research scientist who breeds apples for the University of Minnesota. The land came with a couple of beehives used to pollinate the trees.
"I was scared of them at first," Fredericksen said of the bees. He made novice beekeeping mistakes, ending up with a lot of dead insects.
But he did notice how different honey tasted when it came from the hive instead of from a plastic bear. And he noticed how different the honey tasted in one hive compared to another.
When he decided there was a niche for single-source honey, he looked to beekeepers in Europe and New Zealand for inspiration. Raw varietal honeys are common overseas.
When he started selling his product at the Minneapolis Farmers Market, he found that some of his best customers were Europeans, Hispanics and Asians.
"All of them are more traditional honey consumers than Anglo-Saxon Americans," Fredericksen said.
One of their questions: "Is it right from the hive?" That concern for purity is not totally misplaced.
Blended honey could contain honey from anywhere, including China, where some honey has been banned from importation because it was produced using an antibiotic forbidden in the United States. Suspicions that some of that honey is still getting shipped here by first sending it to a third country have raised dark accusations of honey laundering.
Fredericksen said many of his customers prefer to buy honey from him still in the comb.
"They recognize that as pure. It's impossible to adulterate a piece of comb."
Other consumers like knowing that some of Fredericksen's bees are placed in organic farm locations. Customers are able to get descriptions of colony locations and dates when the honey was collected and extracted on Fredericksen's Web site, www. amesfarm.com.
THE BUZZ
His honey isn't cheap. The per-ounce cost is about twice what you'd pay for supermarket honey.
But "a lot of people are eating food not just to fill their belly. They want to know where did it come from? Who made it?" Fredericksen said. "You know the buzz with local. It's hot. People want local products."
Fredericksen's honey can be found on grocery shelves in the Twin Cities. About two-thirds of his honey is purchased at local Kowalski's, Whole Foods stores and a variety of Twin Cities co-ops, natural food and specialty food stores. The rest is sold at the farmers market.
Fredericksen has been a full-time honey-maker since September 2001. He doesn't want to get in the shipping business, so all he produces — more than 15,000 pounds a year — is sold around here.
"Every batch is unique," he said. But some varieties are extremely limited, the result of an unusual combination of weather conditions and rare plant growth and having a colony of bees ready and nearby at the right moment able to take advantage of the nectar.
A wetlands restoration project once resulted in some blue vervain honey. But the plant got edged out of the area the next year.
"That was in 2001. We haven't seen it since," Fredericksen said.
His rare boneset honey will never make it to the grocery store. "I might have 50 jars of this," he said. He keeps it under the counter at the farmers market and sells it to his most discerning customers.
"People have picked up that some of the best basswood is from Painters Creek," he said. "Buckwheat is very popular. It's very hard to find."
In the future, Fredericksen hopes to push the envelope of U.S. honey production by creating some chestnut honey, a rarefied variety that typically has to be imported from Italy. In the "Zingerman's Guide to Good Eating," Ari Weinzweig describes chestnut honey as "deep, dark, mysterious, brown" with "a slightly bitter, sensually smoky flavor."
Fredericksen also wants to try to produce some fireweed honey on some property near Hovland. Fireweed honey, known as the "champagne of honeys," is normally found only in the Pacific Northwest. It's difficult to produce in cold regions. Fredericksen said he'll have to install some solar-powered electric fences to keep predators away from the hives.
"I'm looking for more distinctive, interesting honey," he said. "I'm looking for whatever I haven't found."
For more information, including a list of stores where you can buy Ames Farm honey, see www.amesfarm.com.
