Want something sweet? Hens & Hives Farm offers variety of honey for Bolton Fair visitors

Local businesses parked along the main path of the Bolton Fair, but one smaller booth featured different offerings of one particular insect’s work: honey.

Run by John and Nancy Thomas from North Brookfield, the table for Hens & Hives Farm provided fairgoers with a diverse sampling of honey, some including honeycombs while small cups held creamed honey.

• Read more: Bolton Fair kicks off with pig races, deep-fried snacks and rides

Thomas and Nancy said there was previously a beekeeper at the fair but following a vacancy, they were asked to attend. Thomas said this was their seventh or eighth year at the Bolton Fair.

“It’s interesting from this end of the table how little they know about bees,” Thomas said. “Some people think these are bumblebees, some people think they’re yellowjackets and some people don’t know there’s a difference. But this is good because this is a give-and-take if they can’t ask questions, and we have pamphlets we hand out.”

The beekeeping business runs in the family, Thomas added.

• Read more: How to get discount tickets to 2023 Bolton Fair

“I’ve always liked bees,” he said. “Two of my uncles on different sides of my family have bees. When I was a little kid, I was impressed.”

The craft carries on through his work with Nancy. Thomas said all of his local honey is made in Massachusetts, with bees foraging within a three-mile radius. This leads to various flavors of honey, from the simpler, traditional honey to honey made from nectar from Buckwheat, giving it a brown, molasses appearance.

• Read more: Fairs in Massachusetts 2023: Here’s what you need to know

They also offer honey made from nectar found in orange blossoms. The sweet taste is “not offensive, but pleasant.”

The couple uses raw honey. According to their website, it doesn’t spoil and it doesn’t need to be pasteurized, is anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral and “contains these natural enzymes that are also essential for human digestion.”

“Honey is precious indeed,” their website goes on to say. “The bees manage to make a surplus of honey, more than what they need to survive the winter. It is this surplus that we harvest while making sure that each colony has ample supplies until the next spring.”

For all the time they are around bees, stings are inevitable. Thomas said they get stung frequently but have not developed any allergies.

“I used to be scared to death of bees,” Nancy laughed. “But (making honey has) helped.”

To learn more about Hens & Hives Farms, visit their website at the link here.

This post was originally published on this site