On a clear spring weekend, take a drive west on Highway 290 until the suburbs disappear. You’ll see the gentle slopes of Grimes County farmlands thick with wildflowers stretched out across the horizon and you’ll know you’re on the right track. Make a few turns down the quiet country roads and you’ll arrive at a little place called Lynn Grove, the ancestral home of the Weaver family, where a beekeeping legacy dating back five generations is still all the buzz.
BeeWeaver Honey Farm is a place to enjoy all things bees. It’s the oldest family-owned bee farm in Texas and one of the largest in the nation, selling more than 10,000 queen bees annually. In recent years, BeeWeaver has grown into a vibrant community attracting both experienced beekeepers and curious families. It’s a destination for anyone yearning to understand more about the life of bees, taste locally-sourced honey, or escape the city and sip a glass of golden mead.
The Weaver Family Legacy
The first Weavers, newlyweds Florence and Zachariah Weaver, likely had little idea their sweet spot for honeybees would reshape the course of their entire family. The couple was gifted 10 hives of honey bees as a wedding present in 1888, and as the years passed the bees flourished. The hives did so well that Zachariah found himself hauling honey to Houston to sell on the weekends. By the 1920s, the Weavers began commercially producing queen bees and by the 1970s BeeWeaver became the largest producer of queen bees in the country.
In 2007, a phenomenon called Bee Colony Collapse Disorder began to make headlines, where entire colonies were lost because the majority of worker bees disappeared leaving the queen behind. This sparked interest in bees and the importance of bee colony conservation. Soon travelers arrived at BeeWeaver, cameras in hand, eager for one thing: they wanted to see the bees.
“There was this demand out there,” says Laura Weaver. Laura co-owns BeeWeaver along with her husband Dan, Zachariah Weaver’s great-grandson. “We took for granted what we know about bees and our enjoyment watching and learning about them. Other people wanted to do this as well.”
Today, BeeWeaver offers tours, classes, bee handling experiences and events that draw people from all walks of life. During spring and summer, visitors can watch beekeepers catch a queen or get up close themselves and hold a frame of live bees. And for those less enthusiastic about meeting the insects, BeeWeaver offers a screened observation deck as well as plenty of shopping and honey-tasting opportunities at its Bee Goods Mercantile and on-site country kitchen. More recent additions include a stylish loft located above the farm’s honey-packing facility and a collection of glamping tents built just a few yards from BeeWeaver’s on-site meadery.
Drink Mead and be Merry
WildFlyer Mead Company is known as the “buzzed side” of the honey farm. BeeWeaver co-owns the meadery along with husband-wife mead makers Jeff and Chelsea Murray. The couple launched the business in 2019 after years of mead making using honey from their own bees (which they originally purchased from BeeWeaver). Jeff, the mead master who has a background in hydrology and beer brewing, creates each of the meads from scratch using Texas honey, seasonal fruits, water, yeast and fermentation time. The result is an irresistibly boozy honey wine that makes for a relaxing way to end your trip to the bee farm.
“It’s a basic process upfront,” Jeff says. “But the magic, art and science making the mead is in the fermentation.”
WildFlyer meads are dry to semi-sweet tasting with clever names revealing their origin. There’s Game of Thorns, a high-alcohol mead crafted from mesquite blossom honey, and then there’s Peaches Be Crazy, a light and peachy blend, and the Imperius, a darker imperial mead crafted exclusively with BeeWeaver wildflower honey. This summer, Jeff plans to launch a mint julep mead as well as a grapefruit lime blend.
WildFlyer visitors can enjoy mead inside the WildFlyer farmhouse tasting room or sit outside with the dogs and let the kids roam free. WildFlyer also serves food Thursdays and Fridays, hosts live music on Friday nights and food trucks on the weekends.
From honey bees to honey wine, BeeWeaver Farms is the place to experience the sweeter side of life.
BeeWeaver.com or WildFlyerMead.com
16481 County Road 319, Navasota
737-230-3435