User:Namekal/Tennessee Honey Festival

The Tennessee Honey Festival  is a food festival held annually in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 2018 by Nashville-area entrepreneur Erica Brister, President and CEO of U.S. Pest Protection, the festival is dedicated to “bringing together honey lovers and beekeepers” and is designed to foster public awareness for the protection of honeybees and local beekeepers.

Soon after assuming leadership of U.S. Pest Protection, Brister committed her company to develop practices for the protection of honeybee colonies against colony collapse disorder (including favoring use of non-neonicotinoid pesticides). Brister was inspired to found the festival after taking a class at Williams Honey Farm in Franklin, Tennessee. The inaugural festival took place in 2018 in Hendersonville, Tennessee, where U.S. Pest Protection is headquartered.

U.S. Pest Protection remains the festival’s host and leading sponsor. The Tennessee Beekeepers Association (TBA) is a frequent participant in the event, bringing in its network of beekeeping hobbyists and local honey producers. More recently oneC1TY Nashville, an urban residential and commercial community, announced that it would serve as the venue partner for the 2020 festival.

One of the highlights of the festival is its mobile bee yard, inaugurated in 2019 and described as “the first ever interactive mobile educational bee yard experience.” The educational environment contains bees in a screened-in trailer, allowing students to observe live bees up close. According to the organizers, more than 10,000 attendees come to the festival each year, with activities including beehive painting, honey tasting samples, honey popsicles, and honey-themed body products. A new spotlight event of the 2020 festival is the Tennessee Honey Dinner, featuring honey-themed cuisine Nashville restauranteur (and James Beard Foundation Award finalist) Julia Sullivan.