June 2026
How We Harvest Tupelo Honey Near Chipley, Florida — 25 Years on the River
Most people who enjoy Tupelo honey have never thought about what it actually takes to make it.
This is that story … based on our 40 acre family farm near Chipley, Florida, with over 25 years of experience making Tupelo honey on the Apalachicola River bottoms and surrounding creeks. .
It Starts in March
The Tupelo trees along the Apalachicola River typically begin to bloom in mid-April. But the work of making high-quality Tupelo honey begins weeks earlier.
Every March, our team starts preparing our hives at our Chipley, Florida farm …getting them into peak condition before the bloom arrives. Strong hives, healthy queens, and bees at full population are essential. When the Tupelo bloom opens, you have a narrow window, and there is no time to fix problems once it starts.
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The Art of the making top shelf Tupelo
Here is something most people don't know about Tupelo honey…and it is the difference between a good jar and a truly exceptional one.
Before the Tupelo trees bloom, the Florida Panhandle offers the bees plenty of other nectar sources. Titi bushes, Highbush Gallberry, Yaupon, and Willow all bloom earlier in the spring. These are genuinely nice honey sources — good flavor, good color. But if any of that earlier honey is left in the hive boxes when the Tupelo bloom begins, it will mix with the Tupelo nectar and promote crystallization.
And crystallization is exactly what we are working to avoid in addition to the right flavor profile.
Honeybees will forage for whatever nectar source is closest and most abundant. They don't know…and don't care …that we need the Tupelo to be pure. So our beekeepers have to be observant of the bud development on the Tupelo trees, watching for the exact moment the bloom is about to open.
Just as the first bloom starts, we move quickly. The guys remove every box containing honey from those earlier nectar sources. It’s a pain, but that’s how we do it. We put on fresh, empty boxes. We give the bees a clean slate.
Only then are the hives ready to collect pure Tupelo nectar.
Moving the bees into the river bottoms is tricky. If you get there too early, you risk mixing in some Highbush Gallberry (sugars fast). Too late and you've missed part of the Tupelo crop. Getting it right is an art — one that takes years of experience on a specific piece of river to develop.
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The Bloom Window
When the Tupelo trees bloom, the river bottoms transform. The blossoms are delicate, fragrant, and brief. Our bees work them intensely….(insert video here of bees flying in the trees) foraging as close to exclusively on Tupelo as the river will allow.
We say "as close to exclusively" because in nature, you cannot control exactly what bees forage on. A 100% pure monofloral honey is an ideal, not a guarantee. What can we do? We manage the hives to achieve the highest possible purity levels. Removing the early honey, timing the box changes correctly, watching the bloom — all of it pushes our Tupelo as close to pure as nature permits.
And every year, we send our honey to Florida State University for pollen analysis. FSU's laboratory examines the pollen content and certifies that our honey is genuinely derived from White Ogeechee Tupelo blossoms. Kirk also personally contacts the Florida state bee inspector annually as part of this process. We do this because our customers deserve verified authenticity — not just a label.
The Second Critical Moment — Pulling the Boxes
If the preparation in March is the first critical moment, pulling the honey boxes at the end of the bloom is the second.
As the Tupelo blossoms begin to fall from the trees and honeybee foraging activity slows, our team has to be ready to move fast. We watch the bloom carefully, monitoring both the tree blossoms and the activity at the hive entrances. When we see the Tupelo nectar diminishing, we pull all the honey boxes off and start spinning out the honey quickly.
Why the urgency? Because right behind the Tupelo bloom comes the Lowbush Gallberry bloom. Lowbush Gallberry makes a very nice tasting honey in its own right …our customers love it. But it will mix with anyTupelo nectar in the boxes, changing the character of the honey and promoting crystallization.
So we harvest the Tupelo completely — pulling every box — and then put fresh empty boxes on for the Gallberry crop.
Two separate harvests. Two separate preparations. Back to back, in the same spring, on the same river.
This is the “Dance of the Beekeepers”. We do it every year.
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Not every year is a good Tupelo year.
Many springs, the trees don't produce much nectar. Weather, flooding, late freezes, timing any of these can reduce the harvest dramatically. The labor is always the same. The preparation is always the same. The care is always the same. But the trees produce what the trees produce, and we cannot change that. One big windy thunderstorm can blow the delicate blossoms right off the tree. I’ve seen it happen many times. Hot, windy weather will dry out the blossoms before the bees can gather the nectar.
Foggy mornings are a beekeeper's dream, as the nectar just sits in the flowers until the bees can find it. We call them “Tupelo mornings” and it makes us really happy.
In our 25 years on the Apalachicola River, we have found that we get a genuinely abundant Tupelo year roughly once every three years. The other years may be decent, or lean, or somewhere in between.
This is part of why Tupelo honey commands a premium price …and why you should be skeptical of any seller who always seems to have abundant supply at a low price. Real Tupelo is rare. The good years are precious. The lean years remind us why.
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Why the Price Is What It Is?
When you hold a jar of Sleeping Bear Farms Tupelo honey, you are holding the result of:
25 years of learning this specific river
Weeks of preparation beginning in March
Precise timing of hive management around four separate bloom cycles — Titi, Highbush Gallberry, Yaupon, Willow, then Tupelo, then Lowbush Gallberry
Annual FSU pollen certification to verify what's in the jar
Hustling to pull boxes early rather than let the honey mix
And the uncertainty of a crop that delivers abundantly only about one year in three
The combination of the elegant, buttery flavor of the honey itself and the extraordinary effort required to produce it honestly … that is the reason Tupelo honey has a premium price.
We are genuinely grateful for the opportunity to bring this to your table. And we think that once you taste it, you will understand every bit of what went into it.
Learn More About Sleeping Bear Farms
What Makes Tupelo Honey So Special?