- [David] A Fork in the Road is brought to you by.

- [Narrator] From Produce to People.

The best things are grown and raised in Georgia.

Even in tough times, we come together, work hard, and grow strong.

When you purchase Georgia grown products, you support farmers, families, and this proud state we call home.

Together, we will keep Georgia growing.

- [Narrator] Georgia F-S-I-S provides efficient and accurate third-party inspection services to members of the industry.

We inspect various fresh commodities, including peanuts, fruits, vegetables, and pecans.

The use of the inspection service ensures the shipment of high-quality products and enhances Georgia's reputation as a supplier of superior agricultural products.

- The fascinating and ever-changing world of agriculture.

Let's hit the road here in Georgia and meet the farmers, producers, makers, and bakers who keep us all fed, and keep us coming back for more.

Straight ahead, on A Fork in the Road.

(raucous music) ♪ I came from the mud ♪ ♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪ ♪ Strong like a tree ♪ ♪ There's roots where I stand ♪ - [David] Georgia farmers, artisans, merchants, and producers.

We depend on these men and women every day of our lives, through the choices we make and the food we consume.

Their strategy and approach is always shifting, but the end game remains the same, results.

When we were young, we worried about the sting of a bee, but it rarely happened.

More often than not, the honeybee goes about her business and a fascinating business it is.

And when I say she, well, the girls are the only ones putting in the work.

And what wonderful work it is.

Let's begin our sweet honeybee journey way down south in Homerville, Georgia.

Home to Ben Bruce, and his wide variety of flavors at The Honey Shack.

Ben Bruce knows his bees well.

He knows where they've been and what they're up to, for the most part.

He knows what they're eating and more importantly, what they like, and when.

And for the bees down here, the blooms are plentiful.

And from that sweet nectar, these bees kindly create their magic elixir.

- [Ben] What they're making now is Gallberry, but I mean, there's, there's probably gonna be some Tupelo mixed in with it, and there'll be some Palmetto before it's over with.

And then another Bush called Senna bush.

My dad started with one hive back in the eighties, come along and gradually started getting more and more hives.

And then we took and expanded and started actually packing up honey.

And then from there we opened up this retail shop in 2014.

- [David] How many bees do you have?

- I don't have a clue, a bunch.

Probably 30 or 40,000 to each colony.

So, you know, you take that into consideration with two or three thousand hives.

So that's a lot of bees.

- [David] That is a lot of bees.

Homerville is home to Bruce's Nut-N-Honey Farm and The Honey Shack.

A destination that's just a short drive from downtown and full of local Georgia-grown goodies.

Here they still believe in the honor system.

Take your honey and leave your money.

With over two thousand hives to tend, Ben may not be around to greet you all the time, but his family often is.

And the honey will be here, including their raw, unfiltered, private selection, which was A Flavor of Georgia winner.

- [Ben] The Georgian honey's real slow on granulation.

It's really sought after all over the United States and all over the world.

- [David] Every flavor is fantastic and also quite nutritious.

Most honey contains vitamins A, E, K, B1, B2, B6, and vitamin C among several other healthy proteins and amino acids.

And it's truly fascinating how different each variety can taste.

- [Ben] This is something else we'll make some honey off of them.

It's a real dark honey.

It's a bay honey.

That's a bay tree.

- [David] Tell me about the different flavors that come from all these.

- Bays, it's real strong.

It's kind of a real bold taste to it.

Kind of almost like cane syrup tasting.

Gallberry, it's-it's real sweet, real mild honey.

And then the Palmetto is a darker honey, but it's kinda mild too.

It's a little more bold than the Gallberry but Gallberry's real, real mild though.

- [David] So you kind of never know exactly what it's going to be like?

- No, like each frame could be like, when we're pulling out the frames that you could see the honey you can actually see the different, like where they start, stop different honey flows in there.

You can see the different colors of the honey and kind of tell what it's going to be.

- [David] Tell me what we're looking for here.

- [Ben] I'm just looking just to see how much they've done since we was in here last.

That's like eggs.

Then you got the honey that surround it.

- [David] So the dark is the eggs.

The white is the honey.

And then they cap it?

- [Ben] that's right.

Then they cap-capped over it.

That's like the comb like we cut to put into jars.

Our cut comb, it's like world famous.

It goes all over United States because of it's slow granulation period.

I mean, most places make comb honey, but it granulates really fast.

- [David] Now, is that a queen on top or is that a drone?

- [Ben] That's a drone.

The queen should be down, further down.

- [David] And each stack has a queen, right?

- [Ben] Oh yeah.

Each, each, each hive will have a queen in it.

See where they're starting to draw this to make this look like that.

And they can actually draw like one of these whole boxes out in just a day or two.

The bigger brood right there is a drone brood.

That's like the, the male bees.

And then this is all like jus-just regular bees.

Like the female bees.

Which, they're all female except for the drones.

- [David] So you're, you're going into their hive.

Why are they not feeling threatened right now?

- [Ben] I reckon they know me.

No, we smoked them.

I mean we done what we were supposed to.

We-we'll let them know we're here though, for sure.

So this is like where they stay at all year.

We put these boxes on as they're making honey.

This is all like baby bee's and this is what you want to see now, because they're getting ready to make honey, because all this stuff's fixing to hatch out.

- [David] And how long after the bees hatch until they start making honey, too.

- [Ben] Well, they live a 21 day cycle.

During the, during this time of the year, their wings will just fall off of them whenever they're out making honey.

- [David] So while Ben tends to the two thousand hives, the female worker bees continue to do what they do best.

A fascinating creature that keeps our earth blooming and our palettes content.

From the swamp honey of Homerville, to the mountain apiaries of Lakemont, Georgia.

Where one of the world's most knowledgeable beekeepers has teamed up with the University of Georgia in search of a solution.

- [David] His hives scatter the mountains, his colonies have helped pollinate flowers and crops all around the country.

And his methods are studied and shared all over the world.

Yes, Bob Bennie may be the most interesting beekeeper in the world.

- [Bob] Pollination is the main benefit of honeybees in this country.

Years ago, I used to travel a lot.

I've had bees in as many as nine states.

I would start in California, and then into Oregon, and Washington state, onto the Dakotas.

And I've had bees in Wisconsin, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina.

So in past years, we did a lot of moving around, but I'm a little older now.

I don't, I don't care much for that, living out of motels and trucks and traveling so much, we just stay close to home.

Every bee yard that we have right now, I think there's 38 current bee yards.

They're all within 30 miles of this home location.

- [Bob] We are what is considered producer-packers.

In other words, we're beekeepers and we produce honey, but we also pack large amounts.

We purchase honey from many other beekeepers that I know and trust, and we have honey in several major chains, Kroger, Walmart, and others.

Last year, we packaged about a million and a half pounds in the facility here.

Honestly, I'm quite amazed that we do it.

It's not a large processing facility, but we push an awful lot of honey through here.

Honey doesn't spoil as long as the moisture content is correct.

The magic number is about 18% moisture.

If it's got more water than that, it will ferment if it hasn't been pasteurized.

So in Georgia, as you know, the humidity, we often wake up to a hundred or 90% humidity here in this county.

So we counteract that by bringing our crop into a room where we can dry it down a little bit before we extract it.

This racket you hear over here, is a large commercial dehumidifier.

We have it running 24/7 during our tracking season.

I don't know if you can feel it.

This room is very dry.

The humidity in here is very low and we'll turn these fans on that are in the ceiling and drive that very dry air through our honey supers.

We're not trying to make it extremely thick.

We just want to pull one or two percentage points of water out before we extract it.

We're currently going through about seventy 55 gallon drums of honey per week.

- [David] And the different types of honey, I guess, sells for different prices.

- That's right, sourwood is considered a Cadillac honey and goes for probably twice the amount of money of just normal wildflower.

- [Bob] Sourwood is kind of a Southern Appalachian specialty.

You really can't get it in other parts of the world.

- [David] Bob has been at this for decades and his experience is well-documented.

- [Bob] This technique's really pretty simple.

And what's cool about it is you don't have to find the queen.

So a lot of beginner beekeepers might find this attractive.

- [David] His YouTube channel has tens of thousands of followers and is one of the best sources for someone who wants to get started in this industry as a profession or a hobby.

- [Bob] Now that I found the queen and I put her in the colony, I don't have to shake anymore.

I know she's in there.

- [David] He shares his knowledge, his tricks, and everything else he can do to help both bees and beekeepers.

- [David] Here in Lakemont, you can tour the shop, see the bees up close and in action.

You can try free samples and even get everything you need to start your own hive.

- [Bob] We have a lot of beginners that come in here.

A lot of beginning beekeepers.

We answer a lot of questions for people.

But everything in this store is oriented into honeybees one way or another.

- [David] Bob Bennie's vast beekeeping knowledge was discovered years ago by the University of Georgia honeybee program.

And together they're working to fight a destructive mite that has been ravaging the world's honeybee population for a long time.

- [Jennifer] We are in Bob Bennie's bee yard right now and what we're doing, we're wanting to get real-world research.

We've worked with Bob Bennie a lot in the past, on numerous other projects, and he has been so gracious to donate 45 colonies for us to test a new product for varroa control.

Back in the late 1980s, we had a mite that came into the United States, an ectoparasitic mite.

It has never been on apis mellifera, our Western honeybee.

It evolved on apis cerana, the Asian honeybee.

So our Western honeybee has no natural defense whatsoever.

They're on the adult bees, and they're also inside of the capped brood.

So what we're doing today is we're going to be testing this product.

It's called Aleun Cap, and it's an oxalic acid extended release material.

And what it does, it's going to capture all of the mites over a 42 day period.

And as the bees are emerging from the cells, hopefully they're going to be- come in contact with this product and hopefully we'll get some kind of good control.

The lovely part about this particular product, oxalic acid is found naturally in colonies, in honey.

That's what makes this product really beneficial to, especially, the commercial beekeepers, that they can treat during times where mite loads are high and doing devastating effects on the colony.

Having that ability to use it while honey is still on the colonies is huge.

Whenever we start up a study, we need to know how many bees are in the colony, how much brood, how much honey, and then also how many mites, so we have a beginning point.

Then we will apply the material.

And then at the end of the study, we come back and we do the same thing and we can tell, is this material having negative effects on the bees or on the brood?

If we find that it works very good with killing mites, then we will probably hand our data off to USDA and let them look at getting it registered for use in the United States.

- [Bob] I think it's exciting.

I think it's has a great promise and I'm looking forward to it, probably working.

It look- everything about it looks good to me.

So I'm glad to donate my colonies for this, because I think it's really going to be a good thing.

- [David] From the sweet southern honey of Homerville to the tasty flavors from Blue Ridge Bob, we now head to the city, right downtown, to the rooftop of an iconic Atlanta landmark.

- [David] From this view, it's easy to see why Atlanta is sometimes called, a city in the forest.

So much green draped over the winding roads and honking cars.

But up here, on a rooftop, under the shadow of a famous blue dome, lies a honeybee habitat that is watched over by a couple of chefs that are accomplishing something very special.

And for a tasty cause.

- [Thomas] We've had bees in the building since 2013, and over the years, we've really grown that.

You know, starting with two hives.

We're producing really a large number of honey.

About six, seven hundred pounds, this-in 2019.

And, and we see that growing every year.

- [David] The talented Executive Chef, Thomas McKeown, is actually allergic to the sting.

So, he leaves tending the roof-top hives to pastry chef, James Gallo, who has become quite the beekeeper.

- [James] We've now grown to six beehives with, at the peak of the season, we'll house over a million bees.

Two hundred and fifty feet above Peachtree street in downtown Atlanta.

- [David] What's so neat is you get up here and you realize how green the city is.

Which also means, there's a lot of different flowers, there are some sources for these bees all around downtown Atlanta.

- [James] We were able to surmise from, from some of our honeys and their flavor profiles, the Carter Center, the King Center, of course the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, Georgia Tech.

There's a lot of green, and that means a lot of pollen and a lot of nectar for the bees to collect.

- [David] So Georgia Tech not only has yellow jackets, they have honeybees?

- They have a lot of honeybees, actually.

- [James] Last week I pulled all the honey off of them.

- [David] Okay.

- [James] So, but it would be cool to see what they've done in a week.

- [David] In a week.

Yeah.

- [James] You know, being two hundred fifty feet up, it's, the winds are higher, it's hotter up here, everything.

- [David] And you are estimating a million bees live in these hives?

- [James] Yeah.

- [David] That's crazy.

- [James] The average life of a worker bee is about ten weeks.

In that ten weeks, they will produce estimated between an eighth, and a half of a teaspoon of honey.

This just came back on last week.

So I want to see what they've done in one week.

They're working.

So we have .

.

.

- [David] Look at that.

- [James] This is all nectar here and down in here.

- [David] Oh, you can see the honey starting in there.

- [James] Yep.

- [David] Yeah.

- [James] So if we were to do something silly like this.

- [David] Oh, that would just- - [James] See a finger going in here.

- [David] Oh yeah.

I got a hole.

Oh.

Hey look there, are they drinking the honey?

- [James] Yep.

Now they're eating it.

- [David] What the heck happened to our home?

- [James] Yep.

- [David] Okay.

- [James] But they will, now, within two days, that'll be fixed.

They'll have that right back to where it was supposed to be.

So here we have, they've actually already started capping over here.

- [David] That means, hey, we're done with this hole.

- [James] Yep.

- [David] We're going to cap it.

- [James] So, now, once it's officially cat or capped, it's officially honey.

- [David] Okay.

- [James] Technically, before that, it's nectar.

- [David] So I was just- I just had a taste of nectar?

- [James] Yeah.

- [David] This is such an iconic spot.

The blue disc, Polaris, is an iconic landmark in Georgia.

And I bet over 99% of people don't realize there are bees, there are a million bees, that call this their home.

- [James] Yeah.

I'll go up to Polaris at night and hang out up there and I'll talk to guests, and sometimes they don't even realize they're here until you say something, and then they're fascinated by it.

And now they want the honey.

- [David] And they order something with honey.

- [James] Yes.

- [David] That's, that, talk about local.

- [James] Yes.

- [David] And this may have been my favorite part.

Chef Gallo stood in this one spot for awhile and the bees clogged up behind him, waiting patiently at his back.

Almost like they were at a traffic light.

And as soon as he moved out of their way- - [James] Here they come.

There they go.

- [David] Oh, that's cool!

They buzzed right on back to work.

The chefs of Polaris are working on bringing this full rooftop garden back to its original glory.

The pandemic to blame, as usual.

But the bees made it through, and the queen kept her rooftop colony in order.

And this amazing Polaris blue honey is the result.

A variety offered in many different sizes at the lobby downstairs.

But the best thing to do with this honey is to get it in the hands of chef Thomas and let him do his magic.

- [Thomas] We have Polaris here, of course, at the top of the hotel, looking over the whole city.

You can see as far as Stone Mountain, Kennesaw Mountain.

This is our upscale dining option that has unique flavors and great products as well as great cocktails.

- [David] Well, you are obviously a huge fan of local.

You're supporting farmers, you're supporting Georgia retailers, but also there's a taste reason why you do it.

You're going to put out good food.

- [Thomas] In Georgia we're very lucky to have the best ingredients available to us all year round.

We support about 76 vendors in the state that we utilize their products on a daily basis.

- [David] South Georgia, you can get some really good honey.

Downtown Atlanta?

You can get some really good honey.

- The flavor, as you can tell, is really fantastic.

Depending on what type of the year, the different colors of honey really have different flavor.

- [David] And it was fun.

James was talking about, they're almost like a beer lineup.

You got your stout, you got your IPA down there.

Your, your amber, your hazy, it's, it's really neat.

They don't taste like beer- a little bit sweeter.

- And for us to be able to get our hands on local products and how much more local than a few hundred feet from the restaurant?

And to be able to utilize that in our menus, it makes a big difference.

- [David] Okay, well this is absolutely torture sitting right here, and seeing all this food and not eating yet.

There's, there's bacon hovering over here.

There's honey, over here.

Where are we get started, chef?

- Yeah, so we're going to showcase a local charcuterie board where all the items are from Georgia.

So let's start off with some Pine Street Market speck.

This comes from Avondale and being so high up in the city, it's cool that we're able to put these on a plate and nearly point out the parts of the city, where the food's coming from.

- [David] Yeah, there's Avondale.

- Yeah, you're like right over here, if you go east to here.

- [David] And this is speck?

Tell us the difference between speck and prosciutto.

- So its just an aged ham.

This comes from a good friend of mine named Rusty Bowers.

He owns Pine Street Market.

I've been working with Rusty close to 10 years.

As you can see, my Georgia accent's gotten very strong over the years.

- Yeah, yeah, you pulled it off.

- Yeah doing pretty good.

This is Green Hill, and this comes from Sweet Grass Dairy down in Thomasville, Georgia.

- [David] Absolutely.

- [Thomas] So it's a really wonderful cheese.

We're going to cut a little section off here.

So you can see how it's a really beautiful Brie.

Great texture.

- Oh, it's just creamy.

- Yeah, and they make great cheeses.

This is just one of their amazing cheeses.

And then a good friend of mine, Mary Rigdon, who owns Decimal Place Farms.

This is her feta cheese.

- [David] And this is a goat feta?

- [Thomas] Yeah, and if you haven't had it, its really amazing.

- Okay.

Goat feta.

- [Thomas] And that's Mary Rigdon.

That's the name of the farmer.

- That is phenomenal.

It's different from feta I'm used to.

- Yeah.

It has a great flavor and it really is super fresh.

So of course, we're going to take some more.

You need to always have a hard cheese when you're doing a meat and cheese display.

- Okay.

- Thomasville, Tomme named after Thomasville, of course, Sweet Grass Dairy again.

- [David] It almost looks like a Parmesan.

- [Thomas] Yeah it does it's called a Tomme, and it has a- there's another taste for you.

- I like these tastes.

These are good sample size, right?

- [Thomas] A nice little nuttiness to this cheese.

And it has a nice hardness on the outside, but then goes soft on the inside.

- Mmm, yeah.

That's got a little more bite right at the top, but not too much.

- Yeah, and then when you're doing the charcuterie, I love to have some pickles in here.

Good friend of ours, again, Doux South Pickles.

The owner actually came from New Orleans originally.

So he likes to put a little kick into it.

- Oh, the kick comes a little later.

Oh, I love that.

It's a sweet.

- Yeah, and it's really, really great.

And you can see this adds a really nice color to it.

And of course this wouldn't be done without some of our own honeycomb.

We're going to cut out a section.

So right here, straight from the rooftop.

- [David] Oh this is, I love this contraption.

- [Thomas] Look at that.

- [David] Oh my goodness.

- [Thomas] Beautiful honeycomb, right from the hive.

We'll put it right here.

- And that's going to go with?

- It goes really well with, great, it's great with the cheeses.

It's great with the meats.

- Now, when people are eating honeycomb.

Can you eat the comb?

Everybody knows about the honey but when it comes- - Yeah, so honeys been available for thousands of years.

You can go back to Egyptians and they were eating honey.

And they say that this was-the honeycomb was the original chewing gum.

So it's kind of like this gumminess to it.

So you can chew on it and really get all the flavor out of it.

So it's really a great item to have.

- Got it.

Got it.

- [Thomas] And I think it's missing one item.

What do you think?

- Does it not have bacon?

- Yeah, let's do it.

- Okay.

Here I can help you with that.

- Thank you.

So we've taken, again, Pine Street Market, I've taken our honey and I've glazed it and finished it in the oven.

So it gets this really nice, shininess to it.

- [David It's like candy.

- [Thomas] It's just like candied bacon.

- [David] Oh my goodness.

- [Thomas] So I think we'll just add just one little.

- That piece broke off.

What do you do?

- We'll just have to snack on that one.

And there you have a nice little simple charcuterie plate.

- Oh my goodness.

(chuckles) - That is unreal.

- And you have that floralness from the honey and then the crisp bacon.

- [David] Oh, that is amazing.

- Just to be able to showcase every item from our beautiful state and the great products that we can get.

- [David] So as I enjoyed the Chef Thomas Spectacular, Chef James went to the freezer to grab the Polaris special.

You see the cute little dome, and hard chocolate disc, and, yes, inside more goodness awaits.

This is exciting.

This is James' work?

- What we have is actually this blue dome, which represents the building, the Polaris dome, but on the inside, inside this blue capsule is our honey caramel on the inside.

So as you crack in through the chocolate mousse, you have this beautiful honey caramel on the inside.

We just placed this down.

We grab our blue dome and without breaking the chocolate, we place it right here.

- Oh that's so cool!

- A beautiful look.

We're going to take our gluten-free crumble and we finish it off with more chocolate.

- Oh my gosh.

- [Thomas] Chocolate sorbet.

So there you have our signature blue dome dessert.

- Unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

Where do I start?

I mean, do I go to the ice cream?

- I would go right into the chocolate mousse.

- Okay, I can find that honey ball?

- [Thomas] There you have it.

- It's flowing out.

Oh.

Oh, what a good mix.

- Yeah, he done a spectacular job.

And as I said, what a great way to finish your meal up here in Polaris.

- Oh, I love that dose of honey there.

Oh, fantastic.

Thank you James.

Oh, how the honey flows.

From the rooftops of downtown Atlanta, through the gorgeous Southern Appalachians, and the wild flower swamps and rich farmland of deep south Georgia.

These worker bees, mostly the girls, but also a few helpful boys deliver a rich, nutritious, and timeless product.

I'm David Zelski, see you at the next fork in the road.

- [David] A Fork in the Road was brought to you by.

- [Narrator] From produce to people.

The best things are grown and raised in Georgia.

Even in tough times, we come together, work hard, and grow strong.

When you purchase Georgia-grown products, you support farmers, families, and this proud state we call home.

Together we will keep Georgia growing.

- [Narrator] Georgia F-S-I-S provides efficient and accurate third-party inspection services to members of the industry.

We inspect berries, fresh commodities, including peanuts, fruits, vegetables, and pecans.

The use of the inspection service ensures the shipment of high-quality products and enhances Georgia's reputation as a supplier of superior agricultural products.