HONEY – A CRASH COURSE

What’s all the buzz? What exactly is honey?

Honey bees collect two raw ingredients from flowering plants, pollen and nectar. While pollen is used mostly as protein, nectar is used to make honey. After slurping up all the nectar they can carry with their straw-shaped tongues, these little foragers carry it back to the hive where worker bees take over. In order to transform the watery nectar into thick, silky honey, these busy bees create an assembly-line, passing the nectar mouth-to-mouth until the moisture content has reduced. The bees then deposit the newly formed honey into honeycombs.

Cooking with honey has never been easier. Try Fried Chicken & Waffles with Hot Honey Butter, Sweet Chili Chicken Thighs, on top of Roasted Brussels Sprouts, or in The Bees Knees cocktail.

It’s kind of a honey story

The history of honey dates all the way back to 6000 BC. How do we know? An early cave painting was discovered in Spain depicting a figure harvesting honey from a wild hive. Ancient Egyptians also held honey in high regard.

As Honey for Dummies tells us, Egyptians would float beehives up and down the Nile during flower-blooming season providing these bees with the cruise of a lifetime across the entire length of Egypt. Honey was used for paying taxes, curing infections and even in the embalming process for mummies.

egyptian honey

Try It On

  • Pizza
  • Fried Chicken
  • Corn Bread
  • Whipped Feta or Goat Cheese
  • Parmesan, Blue Cheese or Cambozola
  • Whipped Butter (with biscuits)
  • Grapefuit
  • Roasted Parsnips & Carrots

honey pizza

Shop local

There’s a reason Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba produce 80 per cent of Canada’s honey. Produced from the nectar of clover, thistle, alfalfa and other wildflowers, Alberta honey reflects the flavours of this unique terroir.

Drizzle Honey

Sold at Blush Lane and Calgary Co-op locations, drizzlehoney.com

MOB Honey

Sold online at mobhoney.com

Chinook Honey

Sold at their retail outlet in Okotoks and online at chinookhoney.com

Peace River Organic Honey

Sold online and at Calgary Co-op locations, peaceriverhoney.co

Beeland

Sold at Beeland Market Calgary, at the Calgary Farmer’s Market, beeland.ca

Canadian honey

What’s in a name

Liquid gold, nectar of the gods, nature’s candy… honey goes by many names. And many labels.
Let’s break it down.

◆          Raw honey is unprocessed honey straight out of the hive.

◆          Pasteurized honey is honey that has been heated to a certain temperature.

◆          Unpasteurized honey is honey that is only partially heated.

You had Mead at Hello

As the saying goes, as grapes are to wine, honey is to mead. Touted as the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world, mead is made by fermenting honey and water with yeast. And this classic medieval libation is enjoying a little renaissance lately. Check out the Alberta meadery Fallentimber based in Water Valley. With honey harvested from the foothills of Alberta, Fallentimber brews a range of styles and flavours including traditional and session meads. And no, you don’t need to dress like Jon Snow to enjoy it. Although no one’s stopping you. fallentimbermeadery.ca

mead

Why do we call it a honeymoon?

While it’s now synonymous with Mai Tais in Maui, the term honeymoon has its roots in the 5th-Century wedding ritual of providing the bride and groom with mead during the first month of marriage. It then became a way to reference the sweetness of those first 30 days.

Did You Know

  • “Honey, Honey” by Abba was the second single off the album Waterloo in 1974.
  • China produces and consumes the most honey in the world.
  • A worker bee only makes .42 ml (1/12 tsp) of honey its whole lifetime.