There’s some serious buzz surrounding Claire Papevies. The co-founder and beekeeper at Greenwood Honey Co. is lending her expertise to several cool local collaborations and educating folks on the beauty of beekeeping. Get to know Claire and her delicious honey product line — just in time for holiday gifting!
Before we go any further, why bees?
Initially, I was drawn to honeybees for my love of honey. When I was a little girl growing up in Georgia, my grandmother made the best homemade biscuits. The only thing I ever knew to go on biscuits was raw honey. My family never bought honey from a grocery store. We always purchased our honey from local beekeepers, and I was always drawn to the varying tastes of different regions. My family traveled a lot growing up, collecting and selling antiques, and on our travels, honey was the first thing we bought whenever we came across a local find.
Steven — my partner, fellow beekeeper, and co-founder of Greenwood Honey Company — noticed we were going through honey so fast in our personal kitchen. We use it to replace sugar for absolutely everything because it tastes amazing and is a superfood. To keep up with our honey habit, and because we both have a profound love for nature, we decided to study honeybees together.
Our love of honey quickly transferred to an even more robust love of studying honeybee behavior. We quickly realized that beekeeping is addicting, and in a matter of a couple of years, we went from one beehive to around 50 beehives all over Nashville.
Tell us about your mission.
Studying the life of a honeybee and the democracy of a hive will leave you in awe of how closely we function like they do. Each bee has a purpose — a job — and works incredibly hard to advance to its next position in the hive to ultimately function as an ecosystem. If some consistently fail, the hive also fails … similar to humans in a job or community.
It’s a team effort to survive. There’s no value in idolizing one bee; they see it all as one, working together to keep the hive alive. They do take care of the Queen, as she holds the future of babies to spread the colony’s genetics. But if she’s not performing or is sick, they overthrow her and replace her with a new Queen.
How does this relate? We see it as a beautiful lesson to share. Connect and work with your community. Make it strong by supporting each other and excelling at what you do best to help the community thrive. Our world is more divided than ever. A divided hive will eventually die. We strive to bring the community together and share something as beautiful as honey to connect our tribe around us.
If we can spread this message by understanding the power of the honeybee, we hope it translates to supporting our “community hive” — working together to be more united than divided. That’s how we came to the idea of “where humanity meets the honeybee.”
Beekeeping is an art form. Can you tell us about your hives on the Patina Meadow property?
We currently have seven beehives at Patina Meadow. The honeybees help pollinate the Bloomerie flowers and vegetables, and Leila (Giannetti) helps by planting pollinating native plants to provide nectar and pollen resources. It’s a symbiotic relationship. She’s currently working on a wildflower meadow around the beehives that will bloom throughout the season, ensuring they have enough.
What are some of the ways you are collaborating with other local growers and venues, and where can we purchase your honey?
One of our collaborations is with Leiper’s Fork Distillery. Their grain-to-glass whiskey and bourbon are bottled in bond. It’s what we are most excited about right now because we’ve been working on bringing this product to life for three years. As you may know, the distillery grows much of its own wheat, corn, and barley on Lee’s (the owner and master distiller) property. The rest of it comes from other local producers. Everything they do is in the style of pre-prohibition whiskey production and well thought-out to provide an exceptional product.
We decided to put hives on the LFD property. Steven worked on a special recipe using our honey, propolis, wax, and pollen to incorporate with Lee’s bourbon, creating a limited-release honey bourbon, which will be released this winter.
You can find our honey (when seasonally available) at the Leiper’s Fork Distillery gift store. We sometimes hold a few honey frames aside to offer some closer to the holidays. They make great gifts! Each apiary location has a different piece of Steven’s artwork on the bottle, along with a co-branded label Steven helped design with a graphic design family we work closely with.
What is the most misunderstood facet of beekeeping?
Honey production and the nectar and pollen resources available. We live in a time where we’re used to getting everything we want when we want it — the “Amazon” mentality. Many people don’t understand where their food comes from or what it takes to get it. Most everything is seasonal, but the shelves reflect otherwise, making it hard to believe when something runs out.
When honey doesn’t run out on the shelf, it is because it’s being packaged from multiple honey sources, and a lot of it is imported from overseas. Naturally, the supply cannot keep up with demand, so honey can be mixed with additives to help keep costs down and stretch out the amount of honey over time to keep the shelves stocked. The perfect explanation of this problem is in a docuseries on Netflix called Rotten (season 1, episode 1).
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Focus on your passion, even if it’s a risk. And take one step at a time, even if it’s uncomfortable.
Outside of faith, family, and friends, what three things can’t you live without?
Nature, animals, and travel. They help me reconnect to the earth and recharge my soul.
LIGHTNING ROUND
Favorite thing to put honey on? I’ve really enjoyed dipping bacon in it lately. Or drizzling it on chicken. Of course, I always say biscuits; that’s a constant.
Favorite self-care product? Tallow Moisturizer. Not sure how I functioned without it. It makes my skin feel amazing!
Coolest little-known fact about bees? One way honeybees communicate is by flapping their wings at a certain speed and pointing their butts in a particular direction to show where food and water sources are and where their new home is in the midst of a swarm.
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