Beechworth Honey CBD

Jodie Goldsworthy started Beechworth Honey in the ’90s with her husband, Steven. She’s a fourth-generation beekeeper who learned the craft from her parents – a childhood spent migrating around the country as they set up hives.

The Goldsworthys’ products are on supermarket and kitchen shelves all over the country, but in 2017 they opened their first store outside Beechworth, in Melbourne’s CBD.

The narrow shop inside the ornate Block Arcade on Collins Street was built at the same time Jodie’s grandfather was looking for gold in Beechworth. Its high shelves of beauty products, candles, soaps and honey are shielded from the front window by photo panels displaying a eucalypt forest, giving the illusion of walking into the bush when you enter. In the centre is an island bench with a ring of jars of honey, all for tasting.

But your eyes will immediately be drawn to the imposing “honey altar” on the back wall – unmarked jars of honey in dramatic shades of gold, arranged on ceiling-high ledges that require you to crane your neck to admire them.

The store is almost entirely timber, made from Australian spotted gum, which is one of the 40-odd honey flavours produced.

Beechworth honey has more than 500 hives all around Australia, each of which houses an average of 30,000 bees. One hive will usually produce 100 kilograms of honey a year.

Honey can vary in flavour and colour as much as wine, beer or coffee, and here the staff will help you find your “sweet spot” – the perfect, swoon-inducing honey for your palate, from the delicate and fruity, to the bold and very intense.