The coffee plant is a botanical beauty...a lush, dark green plant with ruby red cherries when ripe. However, before those cherries develop, they start as a lovely white flower. While arabica coffee can self pollinate, the cross pollination that occurs when insects (primarily bees) visit the flowers for nectar improves the ripening, uniformity, and size of coffee cherries. The improved yield isn't the only thing benefit for the farmers, it also provides another income source via the honey that the bees produce. El Apiario honey exhibits a well-balanced body with brown sugar and vanilla aromas. Flavors of peach, chamomile, caramel, and orange are finished with delicate lavender notes.

The scientific literature on the benefits of bee pollination for coffee is convincing. Although coffee plants are self-pollinating, bee pollination enhances quantity and quality of yield. Managed pollinators, e.g. honeybees are not usually deployed, even though shown to increase yields and produce honey while doing so. Wild bees are common closer to forest patches than in centers of plantations where yields are less. Coffee plants in given areas bloom together and over a short time but a problem for harvest is asynchronous ripening of berries. Hand harvesting ripe berries must take place several times. Thus, pollination would a) improve yields in quantity and quality, and b) may improve synchronicity and uniformity of fruit-set, so reducing harvesting and sorting costs. New research shows honeybee pollination can double a coffee crop’s yield.

This honey is raw and is not suitable for infants or those who are immunocompromised.

JORGE MENDEZ by Coffee Blossom Honey
*"We've known Jorge Mendez for over a decade. His farm being quite near our own, we visit his family at Finca El Apiario multiple times per year. On one such visit six years ago, our group marveled over home-baked bread with honey from Jorge's farm. We were enraptured.

An idea buzzed among us, and then stuck: to support alternative revenue streams for coffee producers like Jorge, by connecting roasters with the delicious honey already produced on farms. El Apiario was the first honey we shared with the world."*