Walker Farms
“I started getting interested in bees when I was 12,” says Allen “Buddy” Walker, owner of Walker Farms in Fort Myers. “My uncle gave me two hives at $1 apiece and I still have them.” Walker and his wife, Joyce, run their bee farm. “You really have to love the business,” he says. “We are constantly battling destructive insects, and having to find FDA-approved chemicals to battle them, but it’s worth it. I may not be getting rich, but the business has allowed me to care for and support my family. Some years, of course, are better than others.”
Walker produces and bottles many types of honey. “Our most popular varieties are orange blossom and saw palmetto,” he says. Wildflower honey is great for allergies, he adds, but not that popular because some customers consider its flavor unpleasant. (Upon reflecting on this conversation and Buddy's thoughts... "unpleasant" was possibly not the best word choice when describing how some find the flavor of wildflower honey, this would have been more accurate and better said as "some customers consider the flavor of wildflower honey to be not as sweet as the orange blossom honey, yet still find it to have a nice taste." Our wildflower honey is very popular).
Walker Farms sells most of its honey wholesale across the country to companies that repackage and sell it under other labels. “The honey is especially popular with bakeries,” Walker says. “We also sell to local health-food stores in Naples and Fort Myers,” which market the honey under Walker’s name. What makes Walker’s honey unusually good is his processing method. Larger processors heat the honey to a high temperature (about 160 degrees) and run it through microfilters. The process—called polishing—kills most of the harmless enzymes in the honey that give it flavor, resulting in a bland, homogenized product. Walker heats his honey to about 120 degrees (Since the printing of this article we have lowered the temperature which varies from 103 to 110 degrees) and filters through nylon mesh using only gravity feeds—no pressure and no pump. It cleans the honey minimally and retains its flavor, Walker explains.
