Sep 18, 2014
When people think of honey, they mostly think of it as something to spread onto your toast. Yet, here are many products made from honey and beeswax out there that cater to a wide number of wants and needs. In fact, here are just four examples of honey products. 1. Lip Balm If you want to keep your lips soft and healthy, buying lip balm that includes honey as an ingredient can help. Many lip balm honey products contain a number of oils and other ingredients to boost the nourishing power of the honey, such as shea butter, canola oil, propolis, and more. For those that want to make their own products, you can find DIY guides online to learn from. However, to keep it nice and simple, you can use honey alone applied directly to your lips. 2. Cleanser For people that want to add that extra radiance to their skin, using honey as a moisturizer or cleanser can help. Using honey as a cleanser helps to gently remove dirt without stripping your skin of essential oils and leaves it feeling soft and smooth. Raw honey is gentle enough that it can be used by people with sensitive skin, rosacea, and eczema. However, using honey to wash your face will not remove makeup, so you will need to use other products to do this first, if you wear makeup. While you can buy moisturizing honey products on the market, you can also make your own at home. Fortunately, there are a number of DIY recipes you can find online to work from. 3. Medicine Honey has been used for centuries...
Aug 16, 2014
Many people know that honey can be used for medicinal purposes or as a tasty topping, but there is so much more to honey that most people are never introduced to. Here are a few facts you may not know about honey that can be easily used as conversational pieces at your next cocktail party! 1. Honey was of great value in ancient civilizations. Not only was honey used as a sweetener and to help promote good health, but it could be found in furniture polish, varnish, and even cement. In fact, honey once was so great in value that: In 30th century B.C. Egypt, honey was often used as payment or tribute and fed to sacred animals; In 7th century B.C. Greece, honey was used as a sacred offering to gods and spirits of the dead; In 11th century A.D. Germany, peasants were required to give their feudal lords a payment of both honey and beeswax. 2. Honey stored in airtight containers has an indefinite shelf life. Honey has a number of attributes designed to prevent it from spoiling (as long as it has been properly sealed). For example, the supersaturation of honey kills bacteria and also prevents yeast and other fungal spores from forming. Since honey doesn’t go bad, and considering how valuable honey was in ancient civilizations, edible honey (as well as honey combs) have been found in tombs thousands of years old. 3. A typical beehive of 50,000 honey bees can make up to 500 pounds of honey per year. In order to make just one pound (or 0.45 kilogram) of honey, two million flowers have...
Jul 8, 2014
Making mead is a tricky business since creating a consistent product can prove to be difficult when you’re heavily dependent upon flowers and the hard-working population of honeybees. Depending on the time of year, honey tastes different due to varying nectar sources used for pollination. For example, honey produced earlier in the year may come from wildflowers rather than berries (you could call this mutt honey, since bee keepers aren’t sure which flowers bees are visiting of the many different types of wildflowers available to bees at this time!). Since honeys produced from different crops naturally have different flavours, mead makers strive to determine the best ways to incorporate seasonal flavours into their product lines. It’s also important to know that even nectar from the same location may vary in taste depending on rainfall and temperature. With hundreds of unique varieties available with their own strengths and weaknesses, there is a honey out there for everyone to enjoy. For example, honey varietals available in Canada include (but are not limited to): Alfalfa — everyday table honey Blueberry — sauces and baked goods Buckwheat — BBQ sauces and baked goods Canola — honey is mild with a peppery flavour to it Fireweed — dessert honey since it is very sweet Purple Loosestrife — greenish in colour White Sweet Clover — sweet, flowery flavour If you don’t know exactly what variety of honey you have, the general rule of thumb is that light-coloured honey tends to be milder in taste while dark-coloured honey tends to be...
