Home Sweet Honey

Honey from the Philadelphia Bee Co. is not only local to the city, but to your very own neighborhood. Every jar is labeled with the hive of origin’s zip code, cross-streets, and surrounding zip codes where the bees likely foraged.

Beekeeper and founder Don Shump’s raw, unfiltered honeys come from 12 apiaries scattered across the city—and each neighborhood’s jar is strikingly distinct. For instance, this year’s West Philly honey is pale yellow, thick like cream cheese, and equally as luscious. Center City/Fairmount’s batch, on the other hand, is a rich dark amber in color with robust flavor.

These hyper-local honeys have even inspired research scientists to take a closer look. Biologist Charles Nicholson, formerly with Morris Arboretum, studied the fine traces of pollen in different honey samples from Philadelphia to investigate the diversity of each hive’s botanical sources.

Color and flavor notes from PBC's Spring 2014 harvest appear on the opposite page along with possible pollen/nectar sources the bees may have foraged to create that honey. —Meeri Kim