I don’t know where I got this jar of honey. It looks like it’s been hanging around for a long time. The label is worn and it says “$3.50” on the plastic lid, so the price dates it at least five years. You can barely get a candy bar for that price anymore.

An eight ounce jar of honey doesn’t last long in my house–I love the stuff–so I’m not sure why I have kept it so long without consuming it. But here it is in my cupboard and I used it in my tea the other day and thought, wow, this is good.

I called the number on the label for “Bailey Hill Honey.” The owners name was on the label, too, and when Ed Chapman answered his landline, we spent some time figuring out where I came across his honey. He lives near Ellicotville, and at least eight years ago, I went that way to take my grandsons camping. He said he sold his honey to a farmstand near the campground around that time and that must be where I picked it up. But eight years ago? I can’t imagine that jar of honey sat in my cupboard for eight years, but then I’m memory challenged in the quaint way we become memory challenged as the years pass.

The honey was delicious even if it was old, but that’s the nice thing about honey. Honey never perishes. Something tasted like home in it—pure western New York. Ed says he’s been making honey a long time, and it’s pure, local honey, but you’ve never heard of it, I’m sure, because Ed doesn’t ship, advertise on Facebook, or have a website or sell to farmstands outside of his town. He thought it quite odd that I’d call him out of the blue from far away to ask him about a jar of honey I bought a long time ago. When I asked him if he could ship me a few bottles, he said he’d have to look into it. Shipping isn’t something he does. Ever.

I love this story because it’s so refreshing to run into someone who has old ways from better days. Ed Chapman doesn’t know the first thing about Instagram and that’s why I like him. I like supporting small businesses and especially businesses who still think it’s 1954. If he’s making a profit without using a cell phone or a post office, then hats off to him.

There’s a lot of good honey in our part of the state. Panama Bee Honey is a favorite too, although I haven’t had a bad jar of honey from our region.

I drove to Florida some years ago and stopped on the Florida-Georgia border to buy some Tupelo honey. Tupelo honey is one of the rarest honeys in the world, and for centuries it was an under-the-radar delicacy eaten only in certain areas of Georgia and Florida, where the white Ogeechee tupelo tree blooms ten days a year. That is, until the 1970s when the rock star Van Morrison released his album, Tupelo Honey. Ever since this flash of stardom the honey has been sought out by eaters and prized for its butteriness and floral spice.

The thing to note about wild flower honey is it can come from any place in the world; the name simply means that the bees took nectar from local flora. On the other hand, tupelo honey can only come from the blossoms of tupelo trees, which grow in specific areas along the Apalachicola River in Florida and Georgia.

We should all be big connoisseurs of honey. It’s in our genes. The Egyptians were fans, but it’s really as old as written history, dating back to 2100 B.C. where it was mentioned in Sumerian and Babylonian cuneiform writings. Its name comes from the English word “hunig,” and it was the first and most widespread sweetener used by man. Honey was valued highly and often used as a form of currency, tribute, or offering. In the 11th century A.D., German peasants paid their feudal lords in honey and beeswax. That’s a business model I can appreciate–honey for rent.

I never fail to buy a jar of honey wherever I travel. The best I’ve tasted was from Greece; there’s just so many wildflowers there. The truth is, honey aside, is that we need bees. They directly contribute to a third of America’s food: apples, peaches, lettuce, squashes, melons, broccoli, cranberries, tree nuts, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, plums, clementines, tangerines, sunflowers, pumpkins, and alfalfa for beef. The problem is they die. The number of colonies in the U.S.–2.7 million–is less than half what it was at the midpoint of the 20th century, and it has remained flat since the early 2000s. Let’s hope that’s a struggle we win.

If you’re ever near Ellicotville, stop in and buy a jar of honey from Ed Chapman at Bailey Hill Honey. He made 600 pounds of the stuff this year. And I’m here to tell you, eight years in, it’s still delicious.