Suburban Sodbuster
Suburban Sodbuster

Ozarks Homesteading Expo 2024

It’s almost time for the Ozarks Homesteading Expo, which will be on September 6-7, 2024 at the Webster County Fairgrounds in Marshfield, MO. This will be a fantastic event for anyone wanting to learn to live a more independent, sustainable life. There are many great speakers scheduled, demonstrations of traditional skills such as animal processing, wood milling, blacksmithing, etc., and over 150 vendors with goods to equip your sustainable life.

Visit ozarkshomesteading.com for more information and to buy tickets to the Expo.

I’ll have a booth at the Expo, where I’ll have books, Layens hives and swarm traps available, along with a new hive stand available for the first time. I’ll also be speaking at 2:00 pm on Saturday on the topic: “Keeping Bees Doesn’t Have to be Hard”. I hope you’ll come by to say hi!

The new hive stand, described in the video below, has been developed by Kris Hopkins of hopkinshomesteadstore.com, where the Hopkins family sells high quality steel raised garden beds. Visit their website and use code “SODBUSTER” for a 5% discount.

What is “USDA Organic” Honey?

When you purchase honey, you might be looking for a natural, healthful product. And choosing a product labeled as “organic” seems like a good way to ensure this. But for honey it’s not that simple.

In order for a product to truly be “organic” it must be free of chemical pesticides or herbicides. For honey this means that the keeper must ensure that any crops and flowers on which the bees forage (within about a 3 mile radius) are not chemically treated. That’s a tall order, if not impossible. This makes certification of US honey difficult and the USDA quit certifying US produced honey in 2016. Even before that, the standards were pretty vague.

While the USDA doesn’t certify domestic honey they will add certification, without verification, for foreign honey if the honey has been certified as “organic” by the source country. This is done no matter what standard (if any) was applied for the original country’s certification. So if you see honey labeled “USDA Organic” the only thing you can say for certain, about that honey, is that it came from outside of the US.

You might see small producers calling their honey organic, as some indication of how they keep their bees, but understand that there is no specific standard or certification behind that claim.

If you want to find the healthiest honey possible, for you, it’s best to find a beekeeper who keeps hives in your local area and sells “raw” (unpasteurized) honey. Pasteurization of honey does not make it safer, but only delays crystallization and kills beneficial enzymes.