Honeybee Embassy opens at Bright Raven Farm

After years of selling honey at the Ithaca Farmers Market, Bright Raven Farm and Apiary owners Teresa Vanek and Brent Welch now have a way to sell from their home in Trumansburg. On Oct. 10, they opened the doors to their new retail space, the Honeybee Embassy, on the farm at the corner of Swamp College and Halseyville roads.

Right now, the building functions as a storefront for in-person sales as well as a space to bottle, pack and ship their varietal honey. The store is open to the public Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., for honey purchases and chats with the farmers. They plan to add Friday hours in the next few weeks.

The unique structure is paneled on the outside with hundreds of small, wooden, unstained boards, with spaces to let the breeze and light pass through. The large, honeycomb-patterned front doors lead into a bright, open area with high ceilings and a cathedral feel.

A small store on the left side of the space is set up with glass jars of honey in every shade of gold, while a commercial kitchen is hidden from sight on the right side. Welch said that the aesthetic of the space has intrigued many passersby to stop in already, even without a road sign.

“We’re trying to create a place to slow down and see what beautiful things there are right here,” Welch said. “It’s pretty paired down. There’s not a lot of stuff in there. Everybody just seems so distracted and hurried. We’re trying to slow people down a bit.”

Vanek says they have big plans for the space, including their signature honey tastings, which work much like a wine tasting. They currently aren’t doing tastings out of an abundance of caution during COVID.

“We launched the concept at market and it worked fabulous,” Vanek said. “The honey sales were great, and people were so responsive to having that experience and choosing the honeys after the tasting.”

Bright Raven does about five micro-harvests each year to produce its small-batch honey, and each yields a different flavor. The differences in taste come from the predominant nectar source that the bees are feeding on at any given time. Varietals available now include black locust, Japanese knotweed, goldenrod, sumac and basswood.

Bright Raven’s honey is also raw, which means it doesn’t use heat to extract or filter the products. The couple said that their hands-off approach to beekeeping and honey-making creates a final product that tastes better than mass-produced honey and has more medicinal properties. Welch said that their technique takes longer and is more labor-intensive than conventional beekeeping, but it’s worth it.

“Of all our products, again and again, people said how good the honey was or that they don’t even like honey but that this one is so good,” Welch said. “We just kept hearing that over and over. And we thought maybe we should listen.”

Bright Raven began predominantly as a fruit and vegetable farm. The concept for the Embassy has been in the works for about four years now as it has slowly switched over to selling honey as its main offering. The couple, along with a local carpenter, worked on the construction of the building for the last two years.

The Embassy isn’t just about its honey sales, though. The kitchen functions as a way to create more value-added products like infused honey and honey-sweetened products. In the future, the couple also hopes to add hot and cold beverages, products from more local honey farms and more natural lands for customers to enjoy.

The space may also function as a small event space, and Vanek said she is developing classes to teach people more about bees and their broader ecology.

“We realized how long we would spend talking to people at farmers markets about honey and bees and beekeeping,” Vanek said. “We realized there was so much interest, and we enjoyed educating people.”

There is widespread concern about the health of bees across the globe, but Vanek said that many people don’t understand what exactly is going on or how they can help.

She said that there have been huge declines in the number of bees over the past few years mostly because they are under pressure from so many environmental factors, including parasitic mites.

“Bees could probably handle the mite pressure if they weren’t already dealing with environmental contaminants,” Vanek said. “Herbicides, fungicides, insecticides that they take in from pollen and nectar weaken them. So, it’s this multipronged thing.”

Bees also suffer when their habitat and food sources are destroyed, something that the average consumer can help with. The couple has planted one wildflower meadow near the Embassy with plans to add a few more that people can walk through to see the ideal conditions for native pollinators.

“Maybe take out 25% of your lawn, just let it grow wild, plant some milkweed, and look at it not just as a weedy mess, but actually it can be really beautiful and it can help all these pollinators,” Welch said.

The Honeybee Embassy will be open through Christmas with honey-related gifts, and its honey is available online at brightravenfarm.com.

In Brief:

Early morning fire on Tuesday

The Trumansburg Fire Department made quick work of an early stage fire Monday morning on Falls Road in the town of Ulysses. Firefighters were called to the residence for a fire in a second floor wall.

Crews arrived on the scene to find a fire in the corner of a second story room and were able to knock down the fire with a water can extinguisher. The single resident was alerted to the danger when smoke detectors went off and was already out of the house when firefighters arrived on scene.

Enfield Fire Department, Mecklenburg Fire Department and Trumansburg Ambulance also responded for additional assistance.
TFD credits the resident for shutting the door behind him as he left the room, which helped slow the spread of fire, and stresses the importance of having working smoke detectors throughout every residence. Properly functioning smoke detectors give residents enough time to escape a dangerous situation and can provide valuable time to help save lives and property.