I Feel a Honey Rush Comin’ On
by Rita Calvert
November 10, 2011
The summer flowers at Homestead Gardens were loaded with bees!
If you have been to Homestead Gardens lately, the new goods for the holidays will excite you. Let’s get on the honey theme, there’s a lot of honey happenings out there. First there is a proliferation of backyard hives to help rebuild the struggling beehive population. Bonnie Finlay at Homestead has brought in a slew of artisan honey products and we recommend it on the side or drizzled over a cheese plate, for sweetening those warm beverages and just drizzling on fresh fruit, pancakes, French toast or waffles.
Make sure to read the interesting article by the Chester County, PA Beekeepers Association. Lastly and sadly-not all honey labelled as such (in fact most honey from the supermarket) is truthful! Check out the report below from Food Safety News.
Amazing and True: Honeybees must tap over two million flowers to make one pound of honey, flying a distance equal to more than three times around the world.
Here is just a portion of the Homestead Gardens honey lineup:
Our Local honey company
Blue Heron Creations honey is 100% pure Maryland honey produced in the Apiary from the nectar of the blossoms of Black Locust, Tulip Poplar, and other spring blooming trees and flowers. The apiary is managed by Maryland artist, baker and beekeeper, Linda Elliott.
Savannah Bee Company
Where else, but Savannah comes a line of specialty honey consumables and body care products-beautifully packaged for gift giving.
Raw Honeycomb-100% edible-the prime of the prime cut by hand from the comb. Suggested to serve on the side with a cheese plate and fruit.
Sourwood trees blossom late in June through August and need generous sunshine and rain to produce enough flowers to yield a honey crop, so the honey is only available in ‘vintage’ years. 2011 has proven to be a banner year for this Southern Appalachian favorite. This award winning honey is big and complex with hints of maple and spice.
Cheese Honey-selected to mellow out the flavors of tangy cheese
Tea Honey – 100% pure varietal honey carefully chosen to be the perfect sweetener in fine tea without overwhelming its delicate flavors and fragrance.
Those Busy Bees
Many people confuse honeybees, who busy themselves collecting pollen and nectar from plant blossoms, with wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets, who are not bees at all and often bother us at picnics or when we work outside. Did you know that honeybees are not native insects to North America? They arrived here with European settlers 400 years ago and were brought along for their ability to produce honey as a food sweetener. The Native Americans reportedly referred to them as “white man’s flies.”
While producing and storing honey in the hive are major activities of the honeybee and help them survive the winter, pollination is their most valuable service. Pollination refers to the transfer of pollen from the anther to a receptive stigma within a blossom or flower–this allows the development of a fruit or seed by a plant. Bees visit only one type of flower during a trip away from the hive–this allows them to spread pollen across different plants within the same species, thereby providing genetic diversity to the plants. At least one third of our food supply is pollinated by honey bees. Thank honeybees for their help with apples, pears, almonds, blueberries, cranberries, avocados, cantaloupes, cherries, strawberries, asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, onions, almonds, etc. Honeybees also pollinate many plants used for livestock feed and are important in cotton production.
The particular characteristics of a batch of honey are determined by the types of flowers visited to produce it. Most local honey comes from of a wide variety of plant sources; commercial beekeepers can produce honey from a single type of blossom if hives are located next to certain fields. Have you seen clover, orange blossom, tupelo, and buckwheat honey at the store?
Honey has many interesting qualities. It consists mainly of sugar and is only 17-18% water. If you put honey in baked goods, its ability to draw water out of the air keeps baked goods moist. Honey has been used as a medicine on wounds because bacteria cannot grow in it and it dehydrates infected tissues.
Honeybee colonies typically number between 40,000 and 60,000 bees. Each colony has a single queen bee, who mates at one time in her life and then goes on to lay an average of 1500 eggs/day for her 2-3 year lifespan. Male drone bees exist only for the purpose of mating with new queen bees–they do not gather nectar and pollen. Almost all of the work of the hive is done by female worker bees–these are the ones you see on flowers. During the summer season, workers live for only about 6 weeks and during the first half of their lives go through a sequence of tasks within the hive–caring for the developing bees, cleaning the hive, raising or lowering hive temperature, guarding the entrance to the hive–before spending the second half of their lives as foragers outside the hive. Article by:The Chester County Beekeepers’ Association Reprinted with permission
DID YOU KNOW?
•Honeycomb wax is great allergy therapy! Chew a small amount of the wax from raw honeycomb for 20 minutes every day to naturally boost your body’s defenses.
•Honey is not for infants under one year, as their immune systems have not developed enough to fend off!
•Darker honey has more nutrients than lighter. Nutrients are also dependent on the flower source.
•Honey’s antibacterial properties prevent infections
•Honey can be applied topically to a wound
•It also functions as an anti-inflammatory agent, reducing both swelling and pain
YIKES, WHO KNEW?
Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey – Food Safety News
In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that’s been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn’t honey. However, the FDA isn’t checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen.
Ultra filtering is a high-tech procedure where honey is heated, sometimes watered down and then forced at high pressure through extremely small filters to remove pollen, which is the only foolproof sign identifying the source of the honey. It is a spin-off of a technique refined by the Chinese, who have illegally dumped tons of their honey – some containing illegal antibiotics – on the U.S. market for years.
Food Safety News decided to test honey sold in various outlets after its earlier investigation found U.S. groceries flooded with Indian honey banned in Europe as unsafe because of contamination with antibiotics, heavy metal and a total lack of pollen which prevented tracking its origin.
by Rita Calvert
November 10, 2011
The summer flowers at Homestead Gardens were loaded with bees!
If you have been to Homestead Gardens lately, the new goods for the holidays will excite you. Let’s get on the honey theme, there’s a lot of honey happenings out there. First there is a proliferation of backyard hives to help rebuild the struggling beehive population. Bonnie Finlay at Homestead has brought in a slew of artisan honey products and we recommend it on the side or drizzled over a cheese plate, for sweetening those warm beverages and just drizzling on fresh fruit, pancakes, French toast or waffles.
Make sure to read the interesting article by the Chester County, PA Beekeepers Association. Lastly and sadly-not all honey labelled as such (in fact most honey from the supermarket) is truthful! Check out the report below from Food Safety News.
Amazing and True: Honeybees must tap over two million flowers to make one pound of honey, flying a distance equal to more than three times around the world.
Here is just a portion of the Homestead Gardens honey lineup:
Our Local honey company
Blue Heron Creations honey is 100% pure Maryland honey produced in the Apiary from the nectar of the blossoms of Black Locust, Tulip Poplar, and other spring blooming trees and flowers. The apiary is managed by Maryland artist, baker and beekeeper, Linda Elliott.
Savannah Bee Company
Where else, but Savannah comes a line of specialty honey consumables and body care products-beautifully packaged for gift giving.
Raw Honeycomb-100% edible-the prime of the prime cut by hand from the comb. Suggested to serve on the side with a cheese plate and fruit.
Sourwood trees blossom late in June through August and need generous sunshine and rain to produce enough flowers to yield a honey crop, so the honey is only available in ‘vintage’ years. 2011 has proven to be a banner year for this Southern Appalachian favorite. This award winning honey is big and complex with hints of maple and spice.
Cheese Honey-selected to mellow out the flavors of tangy cheese
Tea Honey – 100% pure varietal honey carefully chosen to be the perfect sweetener in fine tea without overwhelming its delicate flavors and fragrance.
Those Busy Bees
Many people confuse honeybees, who busy themselves collecting pollen and nectar from plant blossoms, with wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets, who are not bees at all and often bother us at picnics or when we work outside. Did you know that honeybees are not native insects to North America? They arrived here with European settlers 400 years ago and were brought along for their ability to produce honey as a food sweetener. The Native Americans reportedly referred to them as “white man’s flies.”
While producing and storing honey in the hive are major activities of the honeybee and help them survive the winter, pollination is their most valuable service. Pollination refers to the transfer of pollen from the anther to a receptive stigma within a blossom or flower–this allows the development of a fruit or seed by a plant. Bees visit only one type of flower during a trip away from the hive–this allows them to spread pollen across different plants within the same species, thereby providing genetic diversity to the plants. At least one third of our food supply is pollinated by honey bees. Thank honeybees for their help with apples, pears, almonds, blueberries, cranberries, avocados, cantaloupes, cherries, strawberries, asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, onions, almonds, etc. Honeybees also pollinate many plants used for livestock feed and are important in cotton production.
The particular characteristics of a batch of honey are determined by the types of flowers visited to produce it. Most local honey comes from of a wide variety of plant sources; commercial beekeepers can produce honey from a single type of blossom if hives are located next to certain fields. Have you seen clover, orange blossom, tupelo, and buckwheat honey at the store?
Honey has many interesting qualities. It consists mainly of sugar and is only 17-18% water. If you put honey in baked goods, its ability to draw water out of the air keeps baked goods moist. Honey has been used as a medicine on wounds because bacteria cannot grow in it and it dehydrates infected tissues.
Honeybee colonies typically number between 40,000 and 60,000 bees. Each colony has a single queen bee, who mates at one time in her life and then goes on to lay an average of 1500 eggs/day for her 2-3 year lifespan. Male drone bees exist only for the purpose of mating with new queen bees–they do not gather nectar and pollen. Almost all of the work of the hive is done by female worker bees–these are the ones you see on flowers. During the summer season, workers live for only about 6 weeks and during the first half of their lives go through a sequence of tasks within the hive–caring for the developing bees, cleaning the hive, raising or lowering hive temperature, guarding the entrance to the hive–before spending the second half of their lives as foragers outside the hive. Article by:The Chester County Beekeepers’ Association Reprinted with permission
DID YOU KNOW?
•Honeycomb wax is great allergy therapy! Chew a small amount of the wax from raw honeycomb for 20 minutes every day to naturally boost your body’s defenses.
•Honey is not for infants under one year, as their immune systems have not developed enough to fend off!
•Darker honey has more nutrients than lighter. Nutrients are also dependent on the flower source.
•Honey’s antibacterial properties prevent infections
•Honey can be applied topically to a wound
•It also functions as an anti-inflammatory agent, reducing both swelling and pain
YIKES, WHO KNEW?
Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey – Food Safety News
In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that’s been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn’t honey. However, the FDA isn’t checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen.
Ultra filtering is a high-tech procedure where honey is heated, sometimes watered down and then forced at high pressure through extremely small filters to remove pollen, which is the only foolproof sign identifying the source of the honey. It is a spin-off of a technique refined by the Chinese, who have illegally dumped tons of their honey – some containing illegal antibiotics – on the U.S. market for years.
Food Safety News decided to test honey sold in various outlets after its earlier investigation found U.S. groceries flooded with Indian honey banned in Europe as unsafe because of contamination with antibiotics, heavy metal and a total lack of pollen which prevented tracking its origin.
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