Prep time: 10 minutes (+ time to freeze watermelon) • Serves: 4-6
Ingredients:
6 c. seedless watermelon, cut into small chunks and frozen
2 c. chilled brewed fruit tea (or water)*
¼ c. fresh lime juice
2 T. Great Canadian Honey
2 T. fresh mint
6-8 large ice cubes (optional)
Garnish: (optional)
Sprigs of fresh mint
Small watermelon wedges
*Tip: Although it is optional, brewed fruit tea greatly enhances the flavor of this recipe when compared to using plain water.
Directions:
Add frozen watermelon, chilled tea (or water), lime juice, Great Canadian Honey, and fresh mint to a high-powered blender. Blend on high until thoroughly combined, approximately 2-3 minutes. Add ice cubes, if necessary, to achieve desired consistency.
Pour watermelon mixture into four chilled glasses. Garnish with sprigs of fresh mint and/or watermelon wedges, if using, and serve immediately.
Tip: For best results, prepare the vinaigrette the day before serving to give the flavors time to fully develop.
Vinaigrette Ingredients:
½ c. extra virgin olive oil
¼ c. champagne vinegar
1 t. Dijon mustard
3 T. Great Canadian Honey
4-5 large blackberries, rinsed
1 T. fresh basil, roughly chopped
Sea salt and black pepper, to taste
Ingredients:
2 c. baby spinach
2 c. baby arugula
2 large ripe peaches, sliced
1 c. blackberries, washed and patted dry
½ c. walnuts, roughly chopped
4 oz. goat cheese, crumbled
Fresh basil sprigs, for garnish
Directions:
Add the olive oil, vinegar, Dijon mustard, Great Canadian Honey, blackberries, and basil to a food processor container. Season with salt and black pepper, to taste, and process on high until thoroughly emulsified. Taste and add additional honey, salt, and/or black pepper, if desired. Transfer to an airtight container and store in the refrigerator until ready to serve.
Add the spinach and arugula to a large bowl and toss to combine. Transfer to a serving platter and top with sliced peaches, fresh blackberries, walnuts, and goat cheese.
Garnish with sprigs of fresh basil and drizzle some of the blackberry-basil vinaigrette on top. Serve immediately with remaining vinaigrette on the side.
Tip: Use 100% dark cocao for best results with these no bake chocolate peanut butter cookies.
Ingredients:
½ c. creamy peanut butter
6 T. unsalted butter, room temperature
1/3 c. Great Canadian Honey
1 t. real vanilla extract
2 T. dark unsweetened cocoa powder
1/8 t. salt
1½ c. quick cook oats
Directions:
Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
Add peanut butter, butter, Great Canadian Honey, and vanilla extract to a microwave-safe bowl. Cover and place in microwave for 1 minute at 50% power. Remove from microwave and stir vigorously until smooth.
Add dark cocoa powder and salt to the peanut butter mixture and stir to combine.
Add oats, one-half cup at a time, and stir until oats are completely coated.
Add rounded tablespoons of peanut butter oatmeal mixture to prepared baking sheet. Place in freezer for a minimum of 30 minutes to set.
Remove from freezer and serve immediately. Store remaining cookies in the refrigerator until ready to serve or the cookies will lose their shape.
Tip: For added fiber, do not peel the apples or pear prior to cooking. The final result will still be smooth and creamy after blending.
Prep time: 10 minutes • Active cook time: 4 minutes (+ time to come to pressure) • Natural release: 10 minutes • Serves: 4
Ingredients:
4 large apples, cored and chopped
2 large pears, cored and chopped
¼ c. water or apple juice
2 t. ground cinnamon
1 T. fresh lemon juice
1-2 T. Great Canadian Honey
Directions:
Combine apples, pears, water, ground cinnamon, fresh lemon juice, and Great Canadian Honey in Instant Pot® and stir to combine. Add lid and lock into place. Switch the vent to “Sealing” and set the “Manual” setting to 4 minutes.
When cook time is complete, allow pressure to release naturally for 10 minutes, then manually release any remaining pressure.
Transfer apple mixture to a food processor or high-powered blender and blend until smooth. (For chunkier results, use an immersion blender instead).
Serve immediately, or transfer to airtight containers and place in the refrigerator until ready to serve. Can be stored in the refrigerator for up to one week. Enjoy!
1 c. unsweetened applesauce
3 T. Great Canadian Honey
2 T. sugar-free Dijon mustard
3 T. fresh rosemary leaves, chopped
Sea salt and black pepper, to taste
2 T. extra virgin olive oil
1½ lbs. pork tenderloin
3 medium firm apples, cored and chopped
Directions:
Place oven rack in center position and pre-heat oven to 350°F.
Combine applesauce, Great Canadian Honey, Dijon mustard, and rosemary leaves in a small bowl and stir to combine. Season with salt and black pepper, to taste, and set aside.
Heat olive oil in a large oven-safe skillet over medium heat. Generously season the pork roast with salt and black pepper, to taste. Cook until browned and evenly seared on all sides, approximately 5-10 minutes.
Remove from heat and spread half of the applesauce mixture all over the top and sides of the pork. Arrange the chopped apples around the sides of the pork and place in the pre-heated oven.
Roast for 20 minutes, then remove from oven and flip the pork. Brush with remaining applesauce mixture, drizzle with Great Canadian Honey and return to the oven for another 20-25 minutes, or until the pork is cooked through.
Remove from oven and cover loosely to rest for 5 minutes before serving.
4 c. fresh blueberries, rinsed
¼ c. real maple syrup
¾ t. ground cinnamon
½ t. ground allspice
½ t. dried rosemary (or 1½ t. fresh, finely chopped)
Topping Ingredients:
¾ c. old-fashioned rolled oats
¼ c. almond flour
¼ c. almonds, sliced
¼ c. Great Canadian Honey
2 T. unsalted butter, melted
1/8 t. table salt
Optional, to Serve: 1 c. Greek yogurt
Directions:
Place top oven rack in the center position and pre-heat oven to 350°
Place blueberries in a large bowl. Add maple syrup, cinnamon, allspice, rosemary, and salt. Toss to combine and set aside.
Combine the topping ingredients in a separate bowl and stir until oats are thoroughly coated and all ingredients are well combined. Set aside.
Pour blueberry mixture into a 10” cast iron skillet and spread into an even layer. Spread the topping evenly across the top in a uniform layer, as well.
Place into pre-heated oven and bake for 30 minutes. If the top layer is nicely browned at this point, cover dish loosely with aluminum foil to prevent over-browning. Bake for another 15-20 minutes or until the blueberry crisp is nice and bubbling. Remove from oven and set aside to cool for 5-10 minutes.
Serve warm with some Greek yogurt, and a drizzle of Great Canadian Honey if desired.
2 lbs. fresh carrots, peeled and cut on the diagonal
1 T. extra virgin olive oil
3 T. Great Canadian Honey
1 T. curry powder
10-12 fresh thyme sprigs
Sea salt and black pepper, to taste
Directions:
Place the top oven rack in the center position and pre-heat oven to 400°F. Line a large, rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or a baking sheet. Set aside.
Add carrots, olive oil, Great Canadian Honey, curry powder, and fresh thyme to a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle with salt and black pepper, to taste. Toss until well combined.
Pour seasoned carrots on the prepared sheet pan and spread into a single layer without overcrowding. Place in the pre-heated oven and roast for 20-25 minutes, turning carrots once halfway through cooking. Carrots should be crisp, tender, and nicely browned when ready.
Remove from oven and transfer to a serving bowl or platter. Serve immediately with your choice of entrees. Enjoy!
¼ c. fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped or minced
1 c. unsweetened cranberry juice
1 c. fresh orange juice (approximately 3 large oranges)
1 large lime, sliced
1 large orange, sliced
½ c. fresh or frozen cranberries
3 c. club soda, chilled*
2-3 T. Great Canadian Honey
Additional orange slices and/or fresh cranberries, for garnish
Directions:
Add the ginger, unsweetened cranberry juice, orange juice, lime slices, orange slices, and cranberries to a large non-reactive bowl and gently press with a potato masher or wooden spoon to release the juices. Stir to combine and place in the refrigerator to chill for a few hours.
Remove from refrigerator and strain to remove solids, squeezing out excess liquid from the sliced fruit in the process. Discard solids and transfer the remaining liquid to a large pitcher.
Add chilled club soda and stir to combine. Taste and stir in the Great Canadian Honey to sweeten.
Serve immediately over ice and garnish with extra cranberries or orange slices, if desired. Enjoy!
¼ c. raw almonds
¼ c. raw pecans
3 pitted dates, roughly chopped
¼ t. ground cinnamon, plus more for garnish
Cheesecake Ingredients:
4 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1 c. full-fat Greek yogurt
3 T. Great Canadian Honey
1 t. real vanilla extract
1 c. strawberries, chopped
1 c. raspberries
½ c. blueberries
Directions:
In the bowl of a food processor, combine almonds, pecans, dates, and cinnamon. Pulse until the mixture starts to form a ball and the nuts are nicely broken down. Divide the nut crust between 4 individual serving dishes or jars and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese, Greek yogurt, honey, and vanilla with an electric mixer until smooth. Set aside.Tip: If cream cheese isn’t fully softened, beat it first before adding the other ingredients.
Divide half of the cheesecake mixture between the 4 serving dishes or jars and divide half of the berries among the individual dishes. Repeat this process with remaining cheesecake mixture and fresh berries.
Place the parfaits in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours to chill. To serve, garnish with ground cinnamon or an extra drizzle of Great Canadian Honey if desired.
Honey bees are one of the most amazing creatures on earth, and there is still a lot to be discovered about them.
Did you know that scientists, for many years, had no idea how a bee was able to fly given it’s mass relative to its wing power, but that’s long since been resolved.
What is special about honey bees?
Honey bees are so unique because they’re the only insect that produces a food product that humans eat. Bumblebees produce honey-like product stored as a food source only for themselves, but honey bees produce much more honey than they need to consume themselves, creating a surplus that people and animals can’t wait to get ahold of.
Why are bee facts important?
It’s important to learn interesting facts about bees because they are an essential part of our ecosystem. The more interest we can find in honey bees, and their hives, the more likely we are to preserve their hives, rather than exterminate them if they located somewhere that needs to be moved.
Bees help pollinate flowers and crops so they can produce maximum yield, and, of course, bees provide us with honey. Honey by itself contributes $4.6 million dollars each year to the Canadian economy, so cultivating an interest in honey bees in both adults and kids, allows us to continue to preserve bees place in our ecosystem and economy.
All About Honey Bees, Honey, and Beekeeping:
Facts about Canadian Honey and Bees
In all of the Canadian provinces, Ontario has the most beekeepers, with British Columbia coming in at a close second!
Saskatchewan has the most bee colonies of any province, with more than 110,000 in the most recent study by the Canadian government.
Newfoundland has the least number of beekeepers.
Bee population and hives in Canada have been continually on the increase since 2013. In the most recent government study in 2016, there were about 750,000 bee colonies in Canada.
Canada exports honey to many countries around the world. The top 3 are United States, China, and Japan.
Alberta produces more honey than any other province. Some Alberta beekeepers Saskatchewan harvest over 300 lbs (136 kg) of honey per colony.
While Canada produces 92,000 pounds of honey per year, we import an additional 1 446 232 pounds, mostly from Brazil, United States, New Zealand, and Australia. Much of this honey becomes an ingredient to be packaged and exported again.
Facts about Honey
Honey bees are the only insects that produce a food product for humans.
Honey bees harvest nectar and pollen from flowering plants, and spread pollen between plants as they are searching for nectar.
Although bears do like honey, they’re actually trying to eat the bee larvae.
Nectar is a sweet watery substance that the bees gather. After they process the nectar in their stomach they regurgitate it into the honeycomb cells. Then they fan with their wings to remove excess moisture. The final result is honey.
Honey was found in the tombs in Egypt and it was still edible! Bees have been here around 30 million years.
Honey is sweeter than sugar. A teaspoon of honey has 5 grams of sweet sugar, while a teaspoon of granulated sugar only has 4 grams of sweet sugar.
Nectar as gathered by the honey bee contains about 70% water (Honey is about 17% water).
Facts About Honey Bees
Bees have 5 eyes and 6 legs.
Honey bees fly up to 9.5 kilometers (6 miles) per day at a speed of 24 kilometers (15 miles) per hour.
A male bee in the is called a drone and he does not have a stinger.
A worker bee is always a female. They do all the different tasks needed to operate and maintain the hive.
The worker bees are all female and they do all the work for the hive. Workers look after cleaning, feeding the baby bees, feeding and taking care of the queen, packing pollen and nectar into cells, capping cells, and building honeycombs.
Bees will sometimes fan to cool the hive if it is getting too warm. Fanning is standing still, but still flapping their wings to create air movement.
A male bee in the hive is called a drone. His job in the hive is to find a queen to mate with. Male drone bees don’t have a stinger.
Honey bee wings beat up to 200 times per second.
Bees have two stomachs – one stomach is for storing nectar collected from flowers or water so that they can carry it back to their hive, and the other is for eating.
A honeybee can fly 24 km in an hour at a speed of 15 mph. Its wings beat 200 times per second or 12,000 beats per minute.
Bees have straw-like tongues called a proboscis so they can suck up liquids and also mandibles so they can chew.
Bees carry pollen on their hind legs called a pollen basket. Pollen is a source of protein for the hive and is needed to feed to the baby bees to help them grow.
A bee must collect nectar from about 2 million flowers to make 1 pound of honey. It requires 556 worker bees to gather a pound of honey. Bees fly more than once around the world to gather a pound of honey.
The average worker bee makes about 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
Bees have 2 pairs of wings. The wings have tiny teeth so they can lock together when the bee is flying.
Bees communicate through chemical scents called pheromones and through special bee dances.
The average life of a honey bee during the working season is about three to six weeks.
It requires 556 worker bees to gather a pound of honey.
Bees are mostly attracted to bright colored flowers. Select bright color flowers when you’re planning your garden to make a fun place for honey bees to visit.
Facts about Beehives and Honeycomb
A honey bee uses honeycomb cells to raise their babies when the combs are not being used to store nectar, honey, pollen, and water.
A beehive in summer can have as many as 50,000 to 80,000 bees, but most are around 10,000-15,000 honey bees.
A single beehive can make more than 100 pounds (45 kg) of extra honey per year. The beekeeper only harvests the extra honey made by the bees.
Beeswax is produced by the bees. Bees have special glands on their stomach that secrete the wax into little wax pockets on their stomach. The bee takes the wax and chews it with her mandibles and shapes it to make honeycomb.
During peak season, a hive can produce 2-5 pounds of honey per day.
Facts about the Queen Bee
Each hive only has 1 queen bee, but every hive must have a queen!
Only the Queen in the hive lays eggs and can lay up to 1,500 eggs per day.
Queen Bees are fed an exclusive diet of royal jelly, a protein secretion stored in the head of bees which allows her to lay eggs. It’s called Royal Jelly because it is fed exclusively to the queen.
When it is time for a female bee to become the queen bee, she fights to the death with the current queen if the current queen bee hasn’t already left the hive.
The queen bee is the only honey bee whose stinger doesn’t have barbs, which means she can sting in and out repeatedly like a wasp.
A queen bee’s only responsibility is to lay eggs. All other tasks are taken care of for her. Once she stops laying eggs, the worker bees start feeding royal jelly to a young bee to raise her to be the queen and take over.
Facts about Pollination
Every 3rd mouthful of food is produced by bees pollinating crops. Flowering plants, including flowering fruits and vegetables, rely on bees for pollination so that they can produce fruit and seeds. Without bees pollinating these plants, there would not be very many fruits or vegetables to eat.
The flower where the nectar was gathered from determines the flavour and colour of the honey, and often spices are added during the packaging process, like our cinnamon honey.
Pollination occurs naturally with wind and rain, but worker bees moving from flower to flower and plant to plant increase the process of pollination.
Facts about Beekeeping (Also called Apiculture)
Beekeeping has been around more than 4500 years
There are more than 7,000 beekeepers in Canada, maintaining more than 600,000 colonies.
It takes between 15-30 hours per year to maintain a colony.
The location where bees are kept is called an apiary.
(Pictured on the right: Great Canadian Honey is a family-operated business with hive locations throughout Oxford County, Ontario!)
While we cannot offer medical advice on the health benefits of honey, there are many ways that honey has been shown to be an anti-inflammatory, and many people with allergies swear by local honey. Consult with your doctor for medically-reviewed details about honey.
According to Stats Canada, Canadians consume about 100,000 pounds of honey per year. Not only is honey consumption going up, but thankfully bee population is on the rise in Canada also.
Whether you’re putting honey in your morning cereal, spreading it on toast for an afternoon snack, or putting a few drops in an evening tea, honey is a natural sweetener with a host of health benefits.
The health benefits of honey can be both long-term and immediate.
Honey is soothing, whether you’re adding some to a warm drink as a cough suppressant, or rubbing some raw honey on a burn to reduce the sting or act as an anti-inflammatory.
In the long term, honey contains natural antioxidants that may reduce the risk of some cancers and help fight infections, and in the short term, it will quickly bring a smile to your face.
Why is it good to eat local honey?
Honey is a product that bees produce all over the world, in fact, over 1 million tons of honey are produced each year worldwide. Mass-produced honey shipped from many areas to a factory, then shipped to distributors, who ship the packaged honey across Canada.
Local honey, like Great Canadian Honey, is from here the Woodstock area, and picked up at a neighbors house in Sweaburg, Ontario, or delivered for free within Oxford County, reducing the length of the shipping process and getting the unpasteurized honey to you directly.
Factories often produce pasteurized honey, bringing the temperature up to a level that will remove natural bacteria, both harmful and helpful, to remove liability for the company.
Our local honey is not raw honey but unpasteurized which means it is heated to an extent to remove harmful bacteria, but not enough to compromise vitamins and minerals.
Local Honey as an aid to allergies
Though the connections are not definitive in medically-reviewed studies, since local honey contains small amounts of bee pollen from local flowers, ingesting some amounts of local honey may increase your resistance to allergies from the same plants that live in your area. These allergy-resistant health benefits are only available through local honey.
Honey is a healthy alternative to processed sugars
Swap out honey in place of sugar in many recipes where the sugar is primarily used as a sweetener – toppings on pound cake, a sweetener in teas and drinks, and glazes are all simple ways to swap local honey for processed sugar.
As a natural sweeter with added health benefits, this easy switch will help you reduce your sugar intake while still enjoying a sweet treat, and supporting the local economy and ecosystem.
Releasing smoke around a Bee Hive has been documented for centuries as people discovered ways to harvest honey from a hive, and until recently, we didn’t know why.
While all of the details are not entirely clear about how a Beekeeper’s smoker calms bees, we do know some things about the reaction, and it’s clear that exposing bees to smoke doesn’t harm them.
What we do know is that the smoke masks the bee’s pheromones – the danger signals released when a bee is scared. A scared bee will release this danger signal to alert the rest of the hive that they need to move from honey production to protection mode.
By using a smoker, the beekeeper blocks this signal from being sent, so that the whole hive doesn’t go into alert mode.
A secondary response when a bee detects smoke is to go into a feeding frenzy. This is a protection mechanism in case the hive is on fire, and the bee doesn’t know when it will get to eat again. This eating distracts the bees from attacking or swarming into the air by keeping them close to the hive.
When we host a hive, can we see how the smoker works?
Yes! We love taking our hosts on tours of the hive. We bring all of the equipment you need to suit up and be protected during the visit.
We know getting that close to the hive isn’t for everyone, but it makes a great experience for a class presentation for a student in your house, or a curious neighbour who would like to see what all the buzz is about.
You’ll get to see the inside of the hive and hold a frame of honeycomb. We can’t make any promises, but we’ll do our best to show you the queen bee, and we’re always happy to answer any questions you have along the way.
While we are as careful as possible, we are still disturbing the home of the bees while collecting honey, so some bees still go into protective mode, but our suits keep the bees away from our skin so they don’t find the opportunity to sting.
When you host a hive, you’ll notice that each one looks unique. Some are different colours, others are stacked different heights and each group of hives has a different arrangement of heights and colors.
While bees seem rather simplistic, they have the intelligence to recognize their hive, but not enough to distinguish identical hives in a row.
Imagine it like this. Some people live in neighbourhoods or apartment buildings where all of the houses look very similar if not identical. If you grew up in this neighbourhood, you would simply remember that your house is the 3rd from the end, or that you live in apartment 202. A bee can’t count the number of hives in a row; but that doesn’t make him unintelligent.
A bee can recognize an arrangement of hives. A bee can recognize that She lives in the middle hive in a group of low hive, medium hive, tall hive. She can also tell that he lives in the green hive if it’s next to an identical sized yellow hive.
Why does it matter that a bee gets to the right hive?
Bees have families and allegiances to a queen (that’s why hives only have one queen) in the same way a neighbour randomly walking into your house is going to realize he’s out of place.
A bee flying into the wrong hive can be seen as an intruder and the bees that live there will do whatever it takes to protect their queen and their hive, including attacking and killing the intruding bee.
As territorial as bees can be of their own hive, bees can happily live in separate hives right next to each other.
Can I customize my host hives?
Yes! Because each hive needs to be customized visually, we can add a decal to your hive that says “Welcome to our garden” or a picture or design. When you’re ready to host a hive, we are happy to discuss design details to customize your hive perfectly to fit your garden and your personality!
Honey is not just a delicious product from bees that goes perfectly on toast with peanut butter, or drizzled on your morning cereal; it also has health benefits that make it sweet to the tongue, while benefitting the rest of your body.
1. Antioxidants
Antioxidants remove potentially damaging oxidizing agents in a living organism. In plain words, they stop your body from absorbing too much oxygen, reducing oxidization (the same process that causes rust on metal). According to WebMD, the antioxidants found in honey have been associated with lowering the risk of heart disease and cancer
Antioxidants have also been linked to lowering high blood pressure, and we consider the taste of honey to be naturally relaxing.
2. Sugar Alternative
Even people who jokingly argue that sugar is a vegetable because it grows as a plant realize that reducing white sugar intake is beneficial to your health. If you have a sweet tooth, try substituting honey in your tea, baking and in your cereal to satisfy your sweet tooth, and reduce your white sugar intake.
3. Natual Throat Coat
Next time you feel that tickle in your throat, before reaching for your cough syrup with a list unpronounceable ingredients, enjoy a teaspoon of honey. The honey tastes delicious while moisturizing and coating that sore or irritated throat.
If you’re experiencing vocal fatigue from speaking or singing, a teaspoon of honey in warm water is the perfect way to comfort your throat, loosen your vocal chords and reduce irritation from dry spots.
4. Burn Treatment
After rinsing a burn in water, apply a small amount of honey to cover the surface area of the burn. It’s not entirely clear how honey specifically aids in burn treatment, but the US Natural Library of Medicine shows a reduced healing time.
Their findings when applying honey to the wounds of burn victims:
Honey dressings make the wounds sterile in less time, enhance healing, and have a better outcome in terms of hypertrophic scars and postburn contractures, as compared to other dressings.
5. Local Honey May Counter Allergic Reactions to Pollen
The theory is this: Honey naturally contains pollen, and local honey specifically contains many of the pollens that you may be reacting to. Like a booster shot or anti-venom dose, allowing your body to consume the pollen causing a reaction (in small doses through honey) creates a resistance to the reaction.
Healthline points out both a study that showed no difference in small amounts of honey intake and a study that showed a reduced reaction over an 8-week period.
While we can’t say for sure and the results have been varied, whether you experience relief or not, you’ll enjoy the flavour during the process.
Every one business of residence that hosts a hive receives honey from their own backyard each season. If you don’t have the space to host a hive, you can order honey from The Great Canadian Honey Company!
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