Florida Factoid Friday

The movie Ulee's Gold was filmed in Wewahitchka. Northwest Florida is the main producer of Tupelo honey with the Florida Panhandle handling most production. Tupelo honey is produced from the blossoms of the white Ogeechee tupelo tree, which only blooms for 2-3 weeks every year. The beehives are kept on the edge of swamps or near rivers on elevated platforms or floatation devices to prevent flooding.

The Apalachicola River Basin has become known as the Tupelo Honey Capital of the world. Wewahitchka, FL, locally called “Wewa”, is the unofficial town to represent the origin of this premier gourmet honey. This small region in the panhandle of Florida, where the Apalachicola and Chipola Rivers converge, is home to nearly all the Tupelo Honey Production in the United States. It is one of the few areas where the Ogeechee Tupelo grows profusely enough to harvest tupelo as a monofloral honey.