Travel Articles

There’s a place in Florida where residents will tell you they live in the land of milk and honey. That’s because in Wewahitchka, money grows on trees. The money is honey money.

And this place in Florida is the only place in the world where the finest of honeys – tupelo honey – is grown commercially. If it were not for the honey made by bees visiting their tupelo trees, many area residents would be broke most of the year. The bees contribute $2.4 million a year to Wewahitchka’s economy. Here’s how Mother Nature blessed this place in Florida with the unusual name – a place so far off the beaten path that at last count it had only one motel.

Wewahitchka lies at the confluence of two rivers, the Chipola and the Apalachicola, a few miles upstream from the famous oyster town. And she created the perfect climate and landscape for the tupelo tree: hot, steamy swampland.

And a home for the bees. Well, it so happens that bees absolutely love the nectar in tupelo trees. It’s said that it takes 60,000 bees flying more than two million air miles to produce one pound of tupelo honey. And that honey is high up in hives in the tupelo trees in the middle of the swamps.

That makes beekeeping in this place in Florida a tricky business. At just the right time, the keepers have to clean the hives – so the bees can produce pure white tupelo honey, which is the best kind. The honey is so pure that it won’t crystallize, so doctors recommend it to diabetics. About the second week in April, the bees start collecting the nectar from the trees. Shortly, Wewa (that’s what most people call it) is abuzz with keepers climbing the trees in the swamps. In just a few weeks, the bees and the keepers have done their thing and Wewahitchka holds a two-day festival to honor the bees – on the third Saturday of May.

If you haven’t eaten tupelo honey, you may have heard of its fame: In 1971, it starred in a song by Irish singer Van Morrison, and in 1997 it starred in a movie, ‘Ulee’s Gold’, with Peter Fonda.

But, hold on. All is not well in the land of milk and honey. You might want to hurry down to your corner tupelo honey store, because the trees that help produce it have the sickies. Yes, something is wrong with the tupelo trees. Honey production in Wewa is dwindling, and this place in Florida is concerned that it won’t always have the tupelo trees to produce its honey money.

So a couple of bee sleuths (or tree sleuths) from Florida State University have a grant to figure out what’s ailing the trees. Fingers point to pollution. Perhaps the sleuths will find out if that’s the cause.

Copyright (c) 2009 Gene Ingle, an award-winning editor-writer-cartographer, is an expert on places to see in Florida. He has driven nearly a million miles in Florida researching places on maps you probably never heard of. This place in Florida is one of 213 featured in The Famous Florida Trivia Game available free at http://www.ebookserendipity.com – Test your knowledge of Florida free.