Honey House comes with a sweet reward
Conroe beekeepers say consuming local product helps allergy sufferers
CONROE — If the golden sweet goodness of locally produced honey wasn’t enough of a treat, there’s an extra benefit to drizzling the tasty topping in your drinks and on your food.
Consuming honey that is produced in the area where a person lives is known to bring relief to allergy sufferers.
“The bees are picking up the pollen off of the nearby bushes. This is natural pollen from the local flowers,” said lifelong bee enthusiast Ronnie Whitman. “When you (consume) the pollen in the honey, you don’t get effected as much by local weeds.”
Ronnie and Christine Whitman are the proprietors of Whitman Farm/ The Honey House in Conroe. They offer local honey, honey products like beeswax candles, lotion bars, pollen granules and Christine’s homemade preserves.
Their operation is licensed by the state of Texas as a food manufacturing facility and by Montgomery County as a inspected food kitchen. Most weekends you can find them at local farmer’s markets. But their products are also available at their Honey House building in the Mosswood Community.
Ronnie’s passion for bees goes back to when she was in high school in 1964.
She was hired by a construction crew to bring water to men bringing down trees for a new power line. Every nowand then, they’d hit a bee tree causing lots of excitement around the clearing area.
Theworkers would clear the bees with gas and fire. This didn’t sit well with Ronnie.
She persuaded the foreman to let her take the bees. She relocated four hives without destroying them and thus began a lifelong passion for beekeeping.
Now she has 54 hives at Moorhead’s Blueberry Farm in South Montgomery County. She’s also a mentor of the Walker/Montgomery County Bee Association and helps mentor novice beekeepers. She also does educational events for groups.
Her own mentor has approximately 6,000 hives.
In 2019, their operation produced 1,200 gallons of honey.
She said there are several styles of bees. Hers happen to be Italian bees, a milder variety of bees.
She visits the hives once or twice a month. It concerns her that some beekeepers overwork their hives.
“You just want to leave them alone and let them do their job,” she said.
September and October are the best months to “steal” the honey before it turns cold.
She brings the boxes back to her building in Mosswood where all of the honey processing is done in a small structure on their property.
The honey is on frames in the box and each box holds about 10 frames and frames have honey on both sides.
“When the honey is capped, then it’s ready to be harvested,” Whitman said.
The frame is put into Whitman’s Midliner Un capper device. Uncapping refers to removing the thin beeswax covering off your honey frames to expose your honey. Only once honey is exposed can it be extracted.
Once the honey is uncapped, then she puts the frames in a rectangular tank for the honey to drip down. Then the frames are put in a round drum-like device. The frames are spun and through centrifugal force, the honey is flung to the sides of the drum and runs down for collecting.
They honey is then stored in adouble-jacketed, hot-water heated cylinder when the honey is kept at 104 degrees.
A spigot delivers the smooth flowing honey into their honey bear bottles. She said they bottle once a week.
For those unable to eat honey, she also offers two sizes of pollen granules. She said people will put them in beverages and on tops of foods to ingest the pollen to ward off allergies.
Using recipes from both of their grandmothers, Christine whips up a variety of preserves that are also sold at the shop. One of their best sellers is the jalapeño jelly. They says it’s sweet and not too hot.
Their website is currently being updated to sell products online. They also offer contact-less sales from their Honey House shop if the customer desires.
They are regular participants of the Grogan’s Mill Farmer’s Market in The Woodlands. For more information on the business and their locations visit https:// whitman.farm/ or their Facebook page facebook.com/ thehoneyhouse13015.