VIHC owner, Richard Spiegel

Back in the 1980′s, when VIHC was just becoming more than a hobby, Richard went into Dean & Deluca (one of the first and finest specialty food stores in the U.S.) with a jar of White Honey in his vest pocket. It was just before Christmas, and Richard was told he would not be able to meet with the store buyer, as the holiday season was very busy. But as fate would have it, Joel Dean, the owner, walked out at that very moment and asked if he could help …

Richard showed him the jar of honey and gave him a taste. “Send me two cases,” Mr. Dean said. That endorsement later warmed many a cold call, as Richard introduced the honey to other potential accounts. Once tasted, the honey sold itself.

At that time, VIHC had only one product: white kiawe honey. Many people advised Richard on how to run a small business, saying it would never

Rare Hawaiian Organic White Honey

succeed with just one product. But, being an unconventional, hippy businessman, Richard ignored this advice; VIHC continued to offer only the White Honey and the business continued to grow. Eventually, however, he did decide to try creating another product. One of those he tried was honey with passionfruit, or lilikoi (“li-li-koi”) in Hawaiian.

Lilikoi vine, with flowers and fruit

Though not native to Hawaii, lilikoi has become a local favorite, especially when added to other foods. Eaten fresh off the vine, it is high in vitamin C, potassium, beta carotene and fiber. Baked, squeezed, frozen or preserved, it is turned into a variety of tasty confections (lilikoi butter, jelly, pie, cookies) and refreshing drinks (smoothies, iced tea). We obtain our lilikoi wild crafted from a small, local, family-owned company. The lilikoi puree is then mixed, by hand, into our honey in small batches.

Since we began offering Rare Hawaiian Organic White Honey with Hawaiian Lilikoi, it has become a customer favorite. Like other winning flavor combinations (tomato and basil, apple and cinnamon, papaya and lime), the blend of White Honey and lilikoi somehow amounts to more than the sum of its parts: the tart, tropical tang of lilikoi complements the rich, creamy sweetness of White Honey, yielding a sensuous, magically delicious result!

If you’ve already tried our White Honey with Hawaiian Lilikoi, let us know what you think on the product review link on our product page. If you

White Honey with Hawaiian Lilikoi

Be creative: if you discover your favorite way of using our lilikoi honey, please share it with us on Facebook or by email. Better yet, invite some friends to share your favorite lilikoi honey treat!

White Lilikoi Eco Box

In honor of sweet fathers everywhere, for the next week only (ending on 6/20/11) we’re offering special flat rate shipping of only $15 for any order of$100 or more. May we suggest our White Lilikoi Eco Six Pack?

Sunset in the Puako forest, where our White Honey is gathered

People often ask what makes our honey so special? Our short answer is that we use meticulous harvesting and handling techniques; however, there is an essential element that provides the platform for all our beekeeping activities.  This element is where the honey comes from, and can be described as a sense of place, or ‘terroir.’ This special place imparts an extraordinary quality to our honey, which is gathered exclusively from this one unique dryland forest.

Terroir comes from the Latin word for land, terre. It was originally a French term used to denote the special characteristics that geography, geology and climate give to the unique foods cultivated in different regions. Examples include Champagne (from Champagne, France), Balsamic Vinegar of Modena (Italy), Columbian coffee, Camambert cheese (from Normandy), and Vidalia onions (from Vidalia, Georgia). Humans also affect the quality of these special foods – for instance, through their decisions about which crop varieties to cultivate and animal breeds to raise, and which specific farming practices to use.

Our Rare Hawaiian Organic White Honey is a prime example of a terroir food.  All our White (kiawe) honeys come from a single grove of kiawe trees on the Big Island of Hawaii. Known as the Puako forest, this rare environment was created by converging natural and human forces.

The Puako forest is located on the island’s leeward coast, meaning that it is sheltered from the prevailing northeasterly trade winds by the nearly 14,000 foot Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa volcanoes.

Owner/Beekeeper, Richard Spiegel, walking through the Puako apiary

So, the Puako forest does not receive much rain – only about 7 inches per year. The climate is warm and dry, but a perennial source of brackish (salty) groundwater provides subterranean irrigation year-round. While most plants cannot tolerate Puako’s saline, coastal soils, the kiawe tree (Prosopis pallida) — a salt-tolerant legume native to coastal South America — is perfectly adapted.  Kiawe was brought to Hawaii from Peru by humans in the late 1820s. It was later spread by cattle, who ate the nutrient-rich bean pods, literally planting the Puako forest that exists today.

Luckily for us (and our honey-loving friends), the forest in Puako happens to be a classic oasis — isolated in the middle of a ‘lava desert’, created by Mauna Loa’s 1859 eruption. Since no other flowers bloom in such high abundance in this area, we are able to collect a monofloral honey, made solely from kiawe nectar.  This also allows for the production of organic honey, as Puako’s more than 1000 forested acres are free from synthetics, pesticides and other toxins.

View of Puako

These unique ecological features (isolation, abundant sunshine, dry weather,and constant irrigation) and human influence (the introduction of kiawe), combined with the bees’ tireless work, create the essence of our Rare Hawaiian Organic White Honey. Our intention, as beekeepers, is to change it as little as possible, bringing you as close to a taste of this magical Hawaiian forest as possible! That is why we are committed to a raw, unfiltered, all-natural product.

This May, Puako is bursting with Spring flowers. Thankfully, our bees’ health also appears to be improving, and right now the kiawe honey flow is strong. Since all of our honeys are seasonal and limited in supply, you will be glad to know that our White Honey, is available right now through our online store.

We know that shipping has gotten expensive with rising oil prices, and many of our customers have found that ordering larger shipments, especially our eco six pack, helps them save money.

Blooming Kiawe flowers

Ordering larger quantities at a time also helps conserve our precious natural resources, like fossil fuels.

Taking care of the environment is a huge part of who we are and what we do here at Volcano Island Honey Co. We are grateful and honored to share the rare and wonderful environment of the Puako forest with customers like you, who will appreciate the terroir that makes our exceptional honey possible.

Macadamia nuts, shelled and whole

Some of you have been waiting for our Macadamia Honey for a long time. After two years of not producing Macadamia Honey, we are happy to offer it once again. 

Three weeks ago, we harvested an unusual blend of macadamia and kiawe honey – a combination that, in Hawaii marks the end of winter and a sudden turn to spring. 

Because the kiawe flower bloom started a month early, we moved the bees from an organic macadamia nut orchard into the Puako kiawe forest before we could extract the Macadamia Honey. And, before we were able to get the macadmia honey off the hives, the bees had already collected some kiawe honey; the result: a natural but unique blend we have never had before, capturing some of the bees’ winter surplus of Macadamia Honey and a hint of their first spring harvest of White Kiawe Honey – all in one jar!

Macadamia flowers and nuts

This naturally blended Macadamia Kiawe Honey is truly a happy marriage of two honeys that has some very unique qualities; in fact, we’ve never tasted anything quite like it. Its full, fruity Macadamia Honey flavor (think warm caramel with a tropical tang) is quite different from the rich, round, neutral sweetness of our White Honey. But it isn’t like pure Macadamia Honey either, which has a deep bronze color and viscous liquid consistency. This honey does have a smooth buttery texture like our white kiawe honey, but it’s not as firm, and with an opaque amber sheen. What creates this unique texture?

 In our March newsletter, we talked about our fancy Silk Honey and how its exquisitely smooth texture is the result of microscopic crystals.    As we learned last month, texture is related to how the nectar crystallizes and crystallization is a result of the specific combination of different sugars present in the nectar.  This month, let’s look a little deeper into the relationship between nectars, sugars, crystals and honey texture. Many people know that honey is largely composed of sugar with small amounts of minerals and vitamins.  But not many people know that there are different kinds of sugar in honey – dextrose and levulose are the main sugars, along with sucrose, maltose, and at least 20 other more complex sugars.  Honeys from different flower (nectar) sources have different sugar compositions; and that’s the main reason why different honeys have different textures.

Crystallization in honey is a complex process, involving many other factors still not fully understood. From our understanding, it is the proportions of sugars that affect crystallization timing. Essentially, honey with a higher proportion of levulose to dextrose crystallizes more slowly, while honey with a lower proportion of levulose to dextrose crystallizes more quickly.  Most honeys have a high levulose to dextrose ratio and crystallize slowly over time, causing large gritty crystals to grow; honeys that crystallize quickly, on the other hand, grow tiny crystals.  Thus, the faster honey crystallizes the smaller its crystals, and the smaller the crystals the smoother the honey. Our White (kiawe) Honey crystallizes very quickly, within a couple days of bottling, due to its relatively high dextrose to levulose sugar ratio; this fast crystallization leads to its naturally thick, smooth, creamy texture. Macadamia flower nectar has less dextrose in relation to levulose, making it crystallize more slowly and typically remain liquid for about a year.

This year’s natural blend of a hint of kiawe honey in the Macadamia Honey is a unique mix of nectars and combination of sugars, resulting in a smooth, crystallized but soft-textured honey. Order a jar right now through our online store and get a taste of the macadamia magic, 100% organic and raw, while it lasts.

Diagnostic testing: we had to sacrifice some of our bees in the pursuit of a scientific understanding for the causes of this disease. The sampling team (from left to right): UH researcher, Didi; Volcano Island beekeeper, Daniel; UH graduate student; Volcano Island beekeeper, Arthur; UH extension agent Scott; Dr. Steven Martin in the red Haz-Mat suit; Volcano Island owner-beekeeper, Richard Spiegel.

Last week at Volcano Island Honey Co., Dr. Steven Martin of the University of Sheffield (UK) visited our farm for the second time to collect samples for his research on insect viruses. We took advantage of Dr. Martin’s visit to learn more about the latest in bee health worldwide – a subject that affects us all, since many of our favorite food crops rely on bees for pollination (including avocados, lemons, apples and broccoli). As one of the world’s foremost scientists studying honeybee viruses, we thought you might be interested in hearing what Dr. Martin had to say – especially as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has recently received much media attention.

Selecting: Volcano Island beekeeper, Arthur, looks for a good sample of bees on one of our frames, with UH extension agent (left) and Dr. Martin (right).

CCD is characterized by a sudden departure of worker bees from a hive still rich in resources and brood. The title of a recent New York Times article, “Scientists and soldiers solve a bee mystery,” was somewhat misleading, as the CCD quandary remains largely unresolved. One recently published study and the basis for the NYT article suggested that CCD might be linked to the combined presence of fungus and virus in the hive. Yet, many scholars are exploring other possible culprits – such as yet unknown viruses, GMOs, and pesticides applied to crops consumed by bees. Of particular concern to some beekeepers, neonicotinoids, or nicotine-based insecticides, are known to be harmful to bees and have already been partially banned in France.

Collecting: UH researchers scoop a small sample of bees into a plastic bag to test the viruses present in the hive.

Luckily for us, CCD has not reached Hawaii. Nonetheless, other bee diseases are threatening our hives, as well as many others around the state. These include the Varroa mite, responsible for spreading the viruses Dr. Martin studies. According to Dr. Martin the mites themselves are less harmful than the viruses they carry. The viruses enter the brood and adult bees at the mites puncture wound/feeding site on the bees body; these viruses proliferate exponentially and reduce the bees’ lifespan by about two thirds. On Dr. Martin’s first visit to Volcano Island Honey a year ago Varroa had not yet infested our colonies; on this return visit he intends to compare the virus levels present in newly varroa-infested colonies with the levels he found in those same colonies before they were infested with varroa.

Over the past few decades, Varroa has managed to spread across the world at an alarming rate: the first mite was found on the east coast of the U.S. in 1979 and reached Hawai’i in 2007 (the Big Island in 2008). As we understood from Dr. Martin, this epidemic is related to humans moving infested mite-resistant Asian bees into regions where non-resistant European honeybees lived, allowing the mite to crossover and infest the European honeybees. In this way, human meddling with nature has probably contributed to an environmental problem, threatening not only bees, but beekeepers and honey lovers – as well as some 30% of our entire food supply.

We are now working with Dr. Martin and researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa to fight the Varroa mite so that our bees can continue to live long healthy lives and create the very special honey we love sharing with you. Dr. Martin’s fascinating visit also renewed our commitment to holistic, organic honey production – as pure and natural as possible, for your health and that of our planet.

When I travel I am looking to connect with the people and the place in a deep and authentic way. Yes… I want to read books and improve upon my tan, but I also want to feel connected to something outside of my ordinary range of experience.

Andrea dancing with new friends at a kava party in Lawena, Taveuni, Fiji.

I just got back from a trip to Fiji and was deeply touched by the depth of my visitor experience. I stayed in a number of places that were owned and run by Fijians, and in some cases owned and run by the village. The connection between my visitor dollars and the good it did in the communities where I stayed was real and immediate. I never felt so good spending money! In exchange, I got to experience Fijian nature and culture in a real, authentic way.

Andrea (at left), Mary and Fijian friends in Sabeto, Viti Levu.

Given my interest in food self-sufficiency, I was always on the lookout for how people were growing and harvesting food. In summary- cassava and taro, everywhere! There was no formal “agri-tourism,” but every experience was an opportunity to sample native foods. On the outer islands, you don’t go to the food store for your food you go to the land and sea.

At one point I was sharing granola bars with some villagers. “Are these Hawaiian snacks?” they asked. “Well…not exactly, I bought them at Costco.” And then I found myself having to explain what Costco was to the people who brought me a dinner the night before that consisted entirely of foods they grew or harvested from the ocean on that day.

Agriculture in Hawaii is second only to tourism in terms of an economic driver- and some farms have married the two together creating “agri-tourism” on the Big Island. Visiting working farms is a great way to connect with Hawaii residents, explore new areas of the island, and sample the bounty of the land.

Students from DePauw University sampling bee pollen.

Volcano Island Honey has been welcoming visitors to the bee farm, or “apiary,” for over 20 years. The bees have so much wisdom to share with us about how to live gently on the earth and in community with one another. Richard Spiegel, owner of Volcano Island Honey has been passionate about the bees and the environment for over 30 years.

Richard shows Lama Dhondup a frame from the bee hive.

Visiting Volcano Island Honey is always an authentic experience because Richard wears his heart on his sleeve (or his bee suit, as the case may be!) When you visit, Richard (resident beekeeper-hippy-lawyer-philosopher) shares his personal and professional philosophy evolved from over 30 years of working with the bees.

Next time you are visiting Hawaii, or have friends or family visiting you- consider spending part of a day at Volcano Island Honey. The company has just launched a new Private Artisan Apiary Tour designed to give visitors more one-on-one time with Richard and the Bees. (You even get to put on a bee suit and explore the inside of a hive, but you don’t have to!)

Posted by Andrea Dean.