All Abuzz About Honey

Finding the Best Local Honey in Seattle Southside

Honey can be so much more than a simple sweetener stirred into tea or drizzled onto toast, and here in Seattle Southside, honey is taking center stage with enthusiasm for beekeeping and locally produced honey shining through on seasonal menus, spa treatments, in bottles of locally made mead, and more.

Read on to learn more about how we celebrate all things honey in Seattle Southside.

Cedarbook Lodge
Local Mead
Farmer's Markets

Bee Basics

For many independent beekeepers, the work is a labor of love. Bees play a crucial role in local ecosystems, pollinating about 80% of the flowering plants in the U.S. Their numbers have dwindled in recent decades due to environmental factors, but our local beekeepers help support the bee population. Throughout the year, they tend local apiaries (places where honeybees live) and produce honey for local businesses. It’s no small feat for the bees, either, who must visit about 2 million flowers to produce a pound of honey.

Sweet Spots at Cedarbrook Lodge

National Honey Month

There’s nothing like knowing that the dish or drink you’re savoring was sweetened by bees that live just yards away from where you’re dining. Call it a “hive-to-table” experience.

Cedarbrook Lodge, an urban oasis with a farm-to-table restaurant and luxury spa, goes all-out for National Honey Month in September. The hotel’s expansive grounds include an on-site apiary overseen by renowned beekeeper Daniel Sullivan, owner of PNW company Shipwreck Honey. The bees on the site produce honey that is used by the culinary team at the Copperleaf Restaurant & Bar, located within the lodge.

Seasonal Menu

While the restaurant always highlights fresh, locally sourced ingredients, September’s menu showcases the bees’ work. Diners can sample such dishes as honey goat cheese salad or a honey-glazed Muscovy duck breast served with blue-cheese polenta gnocchi, honey-poached fig and buttered kale. For dessert, enjoy a Basque blackberry cheesecake with honey caramel and honeycomb candy.

The cocktail menu has something for everyone, whether you fancy a spicy-sweet margarita, classic bourbon or a citrusy Honey Crusta. (A “crusta” is a New Orleans classic that gets its name from the crust of sugar around the rim. Typically made with maraschino cherry liqueur, Copperleaf’s swaps that ingredient with mead and honey simple syrup).

Want to make your own honey drinks? Check out Copperleaf's specialty cocktail recipes.

Sweet Spa Specials

Honey isn’t just a delicious addition to a dish. The spa menu at Cedarbook Lodge highlights this natural resource as well. Enjoy a pedicure, body scrub or facial with lavender and honey, which has numerous benefits for skin. In addition to being hydrating, it acts as a natural exfoliant, helping to reduce dead skin cells and soften rough skin. It also has antibacterial properties that can help fight acne and breakouts. It can even help with blemishes and scarring.

Mead to Know

Oppegaard Meadery

What do you when honey ferments? Make it into delicious mead, of course!

Mead may be one of the world’s oldest alcoholic beverages, but it’s experiencing a resurgence in the U.S., and one of the most prominent mead makers is right here in Seattle Southside. Jon Oppegaard, owner of Oppegaard Meadery in Tukwila, has earned a reputation for making some of the most unique, delicious flavors of handcrafted mead made from local honey and other local ingredients.

The brand is a cult hit among mead enthusiasts, but everyone is welcome in the Tasting Room (pets and kids included!) Novices can enjoy sampling a tasting flight that includes something for everyone, whether you want something sweet as candy (the Skeggox, flavored with watermelon and blackberry) or a restrained flavor with just a faint hint of sweetness (the Semi-Sweet Traditional). Expect infusions of fruit, spices, hops, herbs and even tea leaves. Many varieties are melomels, meaning that they’re made with fruit such as apples, peaches, strawberries, blueberries and cherries. One of the most popular flavors, whimsically named “Dragon’s Blood”, is a rich melomel made with a complex blend of red and black berries that evolves as it glides over your tongue.

Oppegaard is committed to being a fixture of the community. When you sip on a bottle of their mead, you’re supporting the region’s beekeepers, farmers, craftspeople, artists and mead makers. The Tasting Room also serves as community hub, with shelves full of board games you can break out to liven up your night, as well as special events including live music, tattoo events and Dungeons & Dragon’s nights.

A, Bee, SEA

On a typical day, more than 1,000 flights fly over SEA Airport, but down below, there are thousands of flights of a different kind. Did you know there are 20 colonies of honeybees housed at our airport? That's over half a million bees!

Originally installed in 2013 by the Port of Seattle in partnership with the nonprofit The Common Acre, the hives are now managed by independent beekeeper Siobhan Hutchison, owner of West Seattle company Sunflower Bee Co.

The airport may seem an unlikely home for hives, but it was chosen because of the large amount of secluded space. They also help provide helpful clues to how well the habitat supports native bees. If the hives are thriving, it’s a good sign that native bees are, too. In 2024, she harvested more than 100 lbs. of honey from the hives at the airport, which can be purchased on her company’s website in addition to body care products made from beeswax. She says she loves thinking about the connections between air travel and bees, noting that they have their own forms of flight control that parallel humans’. "It's fascinating,” says Hutchinson. “It's a meditative experience. I get to learn about our interconnectedness. I think that's what drives me the most.”

Bliss in a Bottle

Tukwila-based BeeHaven makes premium small-batch mead that’s light, effervescent and gently flavored with flowers. This women-owned and operated business began in 2012 when the owner began brewing mead in her small apartment kitchen, with the goal of creating something that’s both delicious and has low alcohol content, making it perfect for sipping, stirring into cocktails, or even heated to make mulled wine.

BeeHaven bottles are now available at locations throughout the region, including Marina Mercantile in Des Moines, various PCC Community Markets locations, SEA airport and select bars and cafes (see the company’s website for a map of places to find it).

Stroll the Stands

You can often find locally produced honey from small businesses at local farmer’s markets, and there are many throughout the Seattle Southside region. Many markets, such as the Des Moines Waterfront Farmers Market and the Tukwila Farmers Market, are held between summer and early fall, while others, such as Burien’s, occur year-round. Bring a tote and come hungry: you might find a fresh loaf of bread to spread your honey on, or some crisp greens you can enjoy with a honey vinaigrette. The booths and goods at the markets vary, but you can check their websites and social media pages beforehand to get a sense of what they have on hand.

Annie Atherton

Author

Annie Atherton

Senior Content Writer

Annie Atherton is the Senior Content Writer at Explore Seattle Southside. As a (mostly) lifelong resident of the Seattle area, she is very proud to call the region home and to talk it up to all who will listen.

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