About our Honey:
All of our honey is raw, unfiltered, unpasteurized and delicious. We extract it in small batches, keeping track of each location and harvest date. We are fascinated by how different the honey can be, year to year, and site to site. Each site produces subtly different honey, depending on what is in bloom, and when the honey is collected.
We have a small collection of "horizontal honey tastings" with different extractions from the same site. These are unique and premium collections. If you are interested in trying one of these, please contact us for more information. This is an unusual opportunity.
All pure raw honey will crystallize at different rates, depending on the sugars in the nectar gathered. This is a sign of natural, unadulterated, unprocessed honey. You may also find small pieces of wax in our honey, as it is strained, not filtered. The wax is edible, and adds to the honey's character. Our honey is unpredictable in how quickly it crystallizes -- in 2019 it stayed clear for months but it usually crystallizes very quickly. Always delicious! If you want to de-crystallize it, set the jar in slightly warm water for a few hours, being careful not to get water into the jar. You can also slowly melt it in an in instant pot set on "yogurt" setting over several hours. If it is heated greater than about 40C, the enzymes begin to break down and you lose some of the benefits of "raw" honey.
It is impossible to predict how each year's honey will look and taste, that's up to the bees.
About our Bee-yards:
We have several bee-yards. The honey produced at each site reflects the 'terroir' of the different sites.
We have retired our Lethbridge County bee yard..
Our Anchor B bee-yards are both near Cowley, where the prairie meets the foothills in Pincher Creek County. The yard closest to Cowley is surrounded by native short-grass prairie, foothills range-land, and some hay production. Immediately adjacent to the Cowley bee-yard is a small wetland with red-wing blackbirds and other native species, including a very curious raven. The second yard is further up the Old Man river valley, where the river is a few metres away. There is range land and native cottonwood valley habitat all around.
Our Glencastle bee-yard is in the SW Calgary neighbourhood of Glendale, full of established trees, urban gardens and an extensive park system. This honey will soon be gone, as we have moved our bees out to our acreage in De Winton.
The rest of our hives are semi-rural wildflower bees. We have bees in the De Winton area, a spot along Highway 22x near Spruce Meadows, and out in Springbank. These semi-rural Calgary bees forage on whatever is around, often sweet yellow clover, alfalfa and wildflowers.
We still have some Lethbridge County honey. This honey is the mildest, with the late summer honey (the warmth and late season nectar of goldenrod) having an almost caramel flavour.
This year's Anchor B honey is mild and crystallizes quickly. We think the bees found some canola (which they adore), in addition to short grass prairie wildflower/foothills range-land wildflower.
Our Glencastle honey is our mid-summer Calgary Urban wildflower honey, the most floral of our honeys. We have limited quantities left.
Our Calgary semi-rural honey is mild and floral.
We have pure raw honey in 45g guest size, 150g, 300g, 500g, 1kg, and 2.7kg sizes.