Welcome to Bee Chama Honey

Bee Chama Honey is a mid sized apiary (honey bee farm) based out of the central Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. Our company is a cooperative effort between four beekeepers who have an ongoing commitment to bring you the finest products from our hives. Our commitment as bee keepers is to supporting the healthiest, genetically strongest and most productive bee colonies with the least invasive management techniques we can. We believe that honey is more than just a sweetener and that all the honey products of the hive are a gift to man.

A minimum of handling and processing is what we believe creates the superior hive products that we sell. Raw Unfiltered honey is far superior to the highly processed and pasteurized honey that most of us know. The high level of filtration used by corporate packing companies removes many of the beneficial products left from the extraction process like small amounts of pollen and wax known as capping. Pasteurization destroys many of the healthy qualities of honey by degrading the enzymes the bees have added into the natural product. Honey is easiest to pack between 98 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit but at 110 degrees the beneficial enzymes break down exponentially so we strive to keep the temperature in our packing house and heating room in the optimum range for packing the healthiest and highest quality varietal honey.

We are migratory varietal honey collectors. We move our colonies from location to location following different blooming times up and down the Rio Grande Valley from Deming, New Mexico to Chama, New Mexico. This process extends our season by several months and allows us to collect a wide variety of honey from around New Mexico. By isolating our hives with specific plants throughout the season we are able to collect mesquite honey, cat claw honey, tamarisk honey, alfalfa honey, desert marigold honey, mountain wild flower, clover honey, aster honey, dandelion honey and occasionally rare varieties like oak leaf honey dew. Varietal honey is rarely 100% of any one type of flower nectar but a blend from bee yards with a predominance of one type of flower forage. This means that there is some variation in our harvest from season to season.

In addition to our honey production we also go to California to do almond pollination in the spring. Not only does this give our colonies an opportunity to grow big and strong after a long winter but also gives us the opportunity to network with other top quality beekeepers and hand select some of the finest honey varieties produced in California and Oregon. Varietal honeys like wild crafted raspberry honey, wild crafted blackberry honey, orange blossom honey, California chestnut honey, wild crafted star thistle honey not to mention the occasional rare variety like meadow foam honey are some of the fine honeys we have brought back from California.

Throughout history many great minds have advocated using the pure and simple products from the hive to benefit the mind, body and spirit. Bee Chama believes that using hive products every day can improve your health, achieve your ideal weight, strengthen your immune system and enjoy a longer, richer and sweeter life. Whoever said it had to taste bad to be good for you was wrong.

We at Bee Chama honey feel that education is a big part of our job. Please come out and see us at the local Albuquerque area markets. If you can’t see us locally, please enjoy the information included in the Web site.