THE TRIBUTE HONEY CO. STORY

October 2017. The State Fair of Texas. I was walking through the "Go Texan" building—not looking for anything in particular, just browsing—when I stopped at the Texas Beekeepers Association booth.

That's where I met John Talbert, a seasoned beekeeper who ran a school for people like me: curious, maybe a little naive, and completely inexperienced. We got to talking. He explained the craft, the commitment, the steep learning curve. Something about it resonated.

By January 2018, I was sitting in his beekeeping school with my first two hives and absolutely no idea what I was doing. I didn't have land set up for them, no proper apiary—just my backyard at The Tribute Lakeside Golf & Resort Community in The Colony, Texas. That's where the name comes from. Not a clever marketing strategy or a nod to something profound—just the place where this whole journey started. Where I learned to tend bees, harvest frames, and respect the craft.

That first summer, I didn't harvest anything. The bees needed time to build their colony, and I needed time to learn how to be a real beekeeper. But in the summer of 2019, I pulled my first frames, extracted the honey by hand, and bottled it in glass jars.

Then I did something bold: I entered that honey in the State Fair of Texas Honey Contest. The same fair where this all began two years earlier.

We took 2nd place.

That award changed everything. It validated that I wasn't just a hobbyist anymore—I was producing honey that could stand alongside the best in Texas. Since then, The Tribute Honey Co. has won 9 major awards across the state: 5 at the State Fair of Texas, 3 at the Texas Beekeepers Association State Convention, and 1 at the Collin County Honey Contest.

But here's what matters more than the awards: every single jar is still made the same way it was in 2019. By hand. In small batches. With the same obsessive attention to detail that got me into this in the first place.