Don Wood’s The World’s Best Honey
At Dogwood Crafters, visitors can find an heirloom product that’s sweet in both flavor and history. Known as The World’s Best Honey, this golden nectar has been on the dinner table of Don Wood’s family for as long as he can remember. “My family has lived in North Carolina for at least six generations,” says Wood. “When I was five years old, after church we would go to my great-grandparents’ house for a family gathering and noon-time meal called ‘dinner.’ While the food was being prepared, us kids would roam the farm’s property.”
In their explorations, the kids would always come across the honeybee hives of Wood’s great-grandfather, who was well-respected in the community and raised farm crops. At dinner time, the kids returned home, and a dozen or more family members would gather around the large wood farm table. “To eat,” says Wood, “there were always farm veggies, something from the smokehouse and in the center of the table was a small, square, glass open-top container filled with honey from my great-grandfather’s hives.”
Decades later, Wood built his first home: a log cabin in the mountains of Western North Carolina. “Childhood memories drew me to have bees on my land,” says Wood. Noticing his son’s interest in beekeeping, Wood’s father traced down the original hives that Wood remembers from his childhood—the ones that were tended by his great grandfather. “My dad acquired a nucleus colony from the owner to add to my bees,” says Wood. “To this day I still use the hive bodies that housed my great-grandfather’s bees. I’m proud that the DNA of my great grandfather’s honeybees still lives on in the honey I make and share with you today.”
Dogwood Crafters is located at 90 Webster Street in Dillsboro. For more information, visit DogwoodCrafters.com.
