This story was originally published by the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
On Bella Donna’s bucolic slice of land in the shadow of Lookout Mountain, the bees are abuzz with the business of spring.
Inside the house, the news is just as buzzy: Donna’s home-based business, Bee Healthy, recently won a prestigious award from the Good Food Foundation for her strawberry-rose infused honey. She is one of 215 winners from more than 1,700 entries nationwide in a competition that has been described as “the Oscars of the food movement.”
“The qualification process is pretty stringent,” says Donna, 67, a Cleveland, Ohio, native who moved to Rising Fawn, Georgia, from Arizona in 2018. “People think it’s based on the results — the taste of the honey — but it’s so much more than that.”
Credit: Olivia Ross
Credit: Olivia Ross
First presented in 2011, the Good Food Awards are open to U.S.-based companies making products that fall within 18 categories — beer, coffee, cheese and elixirs among them — and that meet certain standards. In each category, three food crafters from each region — North, South, East, West and Central — receive the award each year. Other regional winners this year were from Nashville and Atlanta. Donna was also a finalist in 2016.
Three other Chattanooga-area businesses are among previous honorees: Sequatchie Cove Creamery in Sequatchie, Tennessee, for its cheeses (2014, 2015 and 2017), Bonlife Coffee Roasters in Cleveland, Tennessee (2020) and Mad Priest Coffee Roasters in Chattanooga (2022).
In addition to an extensive application, entrants must submit their products for a blind tasting, which determines the five top scores in each region. The top three products in each region then move on to become winners. To do the math, that’s 25 finalists per category, with 15 named winners.
“What they’re looking for is local, sustainable, small-craft, artisanal foods, whether it’s honey or barbecue sauce or beer or jelly or whatever,” says Donna.
A second application for finalists asked for greater detail about her product, including whether the bees, the strawberries and the roses belonged to her. “A lot of questions about sustainability,” she says.
Credit: Olivia Ross/Chattanooga Times Free Press
Credit: Olivia Ross/Chattanooga Times Free Press
She believes the bright, sweet taste of her honey may have stood out among the competition. Most of the submitted honeys are infused with other flavors, she says, but because the majority of beekeepers are men, other honeys in contention are often infused with heat.
“It’s what peppers did you try and how hot did you get it,” she says. “It’s what would go with beer and barbecue.”
Though suitable for cooking, her honeys are intended for health and healing. Honey has various healing properties and multiple uses, including as an oral remedy for coughs and as a topical treatment for wounds. Donna says the darker the honey, the more antioxidant properties it has and the more robust it tastes.
“My emphasis and reason for growing my bees and herbs are for medicinal purposes,” she says. “Honey by itself is healing, and then if we can add something to it, it increases the healing power of the honey. If I take, for example, strawberries high in vitamin C, when mixed and blended with the honey, it increases the (health) value of the honey.”
Donna lives near Cloudland Canyon State Park on just over a half-acre of mostly forested property with a lake on the back border. Her bees can source nectar and pollen from the surrounding trees, wild blackberries and huckleberries and other natural vegetation, in addition to Donna’s organically grown strawberries and roses.
“I call it my ‘yardens,” she says of her garden-dominated yard that blooms from spring to fall. She has informal agreements with her neighbors and Dade County utility providers to protect the bees’ food sources in the immediate area from pesticide sprays.
Credit: Olivia Ross/Chattanooga Times Free Press
Credit: Olivia Ross/Chattanooga Times Free Press
“They’re known to fly up to 3 miles away if they need to find food or water,” she says of honeybee behavior. “Imagine having to make that trip. You’re not going to make a whole lot of honey. If they have vegetation and nectar and pollen close by, they’re not having to work as hard for as much results.”
Donna says she’s been beekeeping since 2008 and has had as many as 18 to 20 hives and as few as one.
“It’s constantly changing,” she says, citing inadvertent pesticide exposure, the weather’s effect on growing seasons and the strength of the queens as factors that can contribute to the health of the hive. “Last year, I had eight. I lost them over the winter, and now I have two.”
She ventured into beekeeping to have better control over the holistic health-care products she was already making.
“It was getting harder and harder to find pure, clean products,” she says. “Even small beekeepers will put chemicals in their hives or mass-produce queens, which don’t give real strong hives.”
Donna says she maintains eight or nine honey blends with various flavors, such as mint, and different nutritional values, including one she recommends for long-COVID symptoms. She charges $25 for each 5-ounce jar. She also offers honeycomb and propolis, a resin-like byproduct, from the hive, as well as calming scents and tea blends from her “yarden” plants.
Her website, beehealthy.biz, offers information on ordering her products, as well as recipes and other resources. The full list of Good Food Award winners can be found at goodfoodfdn.org.
Credit: Chattanooga Times Free Press
Credit: Chattanooga Times Free Press
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