Campbell's Honey

This honey season has been cool and wet, and our Purple Loosestrife Honey is coming in with a high moisture content. Fortunately we have the equipment to dry it down to a exceptable level.

In order to store honey in its pure natural state, the moisture content must be below 19%. A high level of moisture in honey will produce a fermentation, which destroys the flavor and  renders the product inedible.

Small honey producers avoid this problem by  extracting the fully capped frames, and leaving the uncapped  (probably high in moisture ) frames in the hive to be dried, and capped, by the bees at a later date. Commercial operators with  many colonies, have a limited time frame in which to get the honey off the hive and extracted. This makes it necessary to have a setup in the honey-house to dry the honey as it comes in from the hive.

As we bring the honey in, its wheeled off the truck on skids, and left in the cooling room overnight. As it cools,  the few bees remaining in the honey supers vacate, and fly to the window where they cluster. Next day the skids of honey are wheeled into the heating room and set in rows over a slatted floor.

The heating room  is connected to an oil furnace which blows warm air up through the honey supers as they sit on open center skids on the slatted floor.  This arrangement will lower the moisture of the honey by approximately 1% each day. We also have the option, on a hot summer day, of circulating hot air from the attic, through the honey, via the furnace fan, which helps the environment by saving oil, while drying the honey.

Multinational Honey Packing Companies who buy honey from the beekeeper, prefer a low moisture honey. They process our fine Canadian Honey by pasteurization and filtering. The filter takes out the natural pollen, ( and most of the health benefits)  while the pasteurization assures the keeping qualities after they add enough water to bring the product up to 22% moisture. The finished product is a blend of filtered Canadian Honey, water, and a percentage of low quality off shore honey. However the water and filtering  give it a nice clear sparkle in the glass, and the uneducated consumer, happily, scoops it off the grocery shelves.

The moral of the story is - if you want pure natural Honey, read the label on the container. Look for the name and address of the Beekeeper who produced it.

Buy local honey!

You don't need the water, the off- shore honey, or the artificial sparkle in the glass!

Campbell's Honeyhouse store is open for honey sales from Aug 1st, to September 30th each season. We have a special offer that our customers appreciate during that time. When they bring their own containers, we fill them directly out of the honey  tank. This is economical for them, as they have no need to buy plastic honey containers, plus, it's good for the environment. We are open for bulk honey sales (by the drum), most of the year, and we have just recently sold the last of the 2008 honey crop.

In years past, the bulk of our product was exported by Truck  to the much larger American market. Large 'Product of USA' Honey Packers quite openly desire Canadian honey which, because of its light color and gentle flavor, mixes well with cheaper off-shore honey varieties. At the present time there is a world-wide shortage of honey, due to CCD ( colony collapse disease),several years of unfavourable weather, plus the fact that many beekeepers, both in Canada, and the US, have been unable to cope with low honey prices, and huge honeybee losses due to CCD.

Eating locally is becoming vogue in rural Ontario, and we are already noticing a rise in local demand as the trend grows. The '100 mile diet' is fast becoming fashionable, as people choose to consume food produced within one hundred miles of their homes.

Locally grown food including Honey is being promoted by the  Local Fall Fairs as a food product of the '100 mile diet,' and this is encouraging the rise in consumption.

At the present time we are suppliers to a Packer who has a contract to supply local supermarkets and other food stores. We also supply another local Producer / Packer who runs several hundred colonies of his own bees, but who always needs extra honey to fill his contract with a food manufacturing company. Several other smaller Packers, and or Honey Producers, often ask for one of more drums to fill their needs at Fall Fairs and  Farmer's Markets.  One 45 gal. drum of honey weighs 600 lb. net.