Our
Tenth Newsletter | !NEW! Rare Variety of Wild Honey and Wild Honeycomb |
New Gift Packs | New Four Packs | Trade Show News | Salvaging, Milling
and Brewing | Stock up for Winter | Honey and Beekeeping Updates and
more |
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Winter Bees and Stringybark Trees
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~•*•~
'Take from my palm, to soothe your heart
a little honey, a little sun,'
The Necklace, Osip Mandelstam (1920, translated from the Russian by Christian Wiman)
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Greetings Emma,
We hope this finds you well and enjoying this very warm winter/early spring.
We
have been remiss in sending newsletters this year so as a reward for
your patience, we now have quite a long newsletter to share with you.
The main purpose of writing this missive is to advise that we have a new batch of a very special variety of Wild Honey on offer in various sizes and packs, and Wild Honeycomb of the same variety available for the first time!
We
are also keen to share some news about our collaborations with other
artisans and Tim will update you on his typical beekeeping winter (or
atypical winter in this case).
Read on for more details as to how the new variety was produced and to snaffle some before it sells out!
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Something Red, Something New
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Red Stringybark Wild Honey
A very special batch available in all sizes
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A
small Warré apiary in the high altitude Central Tablelands where our Red
Stringybark is produced
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We’re
thrilled to announce the release of a special batch of one of
Australia’s rarer varieties of Wild Honey. Red Stringybark is a fabled
honeyflow among apiarists; a honey so rare and beautiful that beekeepers
have been known to shed tears when talking about it.
The last
time 'Stringy' flowered profusely in our part of the Central Tablelands
was in 2006, and before that in 1981! It’s a natural phenomenon that
leaves a life-long impression.
We
have been waiting (and waiting….and waiting….) for the trees to flower
again, particularly as this honey has only once before been produced in
Warré hives (by yours truly).
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We are excited to report that the local trees flowered very late in the season (March/April) and we were able to produce a small amount of this exquisite honey before a cold snap finished the honeyflow.
This harvest is a mix
of honey pressed from virgin comb and 5 year aged post brood comb,
giving it an incredibly pollen-rich, sumptuous flavour and thick, creamy
texture. A truly epicurean terroir honey.
The honey is not only rare but has a very unique flavour profile and an extremely high medicinal activity rating. Our last batch tested at TA39+ (the highest rating Manuka honey tests at around 20+ to 25+).
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2 x 500g Gift Packs featuring our new Red Stringybark
available on our website now
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 New
4 x 200g Gift Packs with Red Stringybark - only available
in our online shop
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We have bottled this nectar of the gods in all 3 jar sizes, 200g, 500g and 1kg, and have added a few
new gift packs and 4 packs so you can sample this unique honey alongside our other popular varieties.
•*•
'An
intense, generous aroma and flavour profile leaning into richer,
confected characters. Concentrated, deeply flavoured and curiously and
wonderfully spicy. A hedonistic honey for savouring.
Colour: Bronze gold, hazy-cloudy, flecked
Texture: Ultra creamy/sticky textured, silty finish
Aromas: Toffee apple, dried rose hip, caramelised sugar, cinnamon, faint eucalyptus
Flavours: Richer, toffee and caramel flavours, red berries, cola, light chilli, cinnamon, faint minty-peppery lift'
*
Mike Bennie, Wine Writer, Public Speaker and Journalist
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Red Stringybark Wild Honeycomb
For the first time in 300g & 750g Wooden Sections
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Red
Stringybark honey is something of a ‘unicorn’ variety - a rare honey
with incredible attributes and almost impossible to come by (photo ©
Michael Wee)
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As equally exciting is the release of
a very small amount of Red Stringybark Wild Honeycomb in 300g and 750g wooden sections.
If
you are a fan of honeycomb, and particularly our wild honeycomb, you
are in for a treat. As mentioned above the variety is unique and hard to
get as pressed honey, let alone honeycomb straight from the hive.
In fact,
this is the first time we have ever produced Red Stringybark Wild Honeycomb. The bright amber colour, white virgin wax and rich bold flavour makes for an incredible gastronomic experience.
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Tim will
elaborate further on this exciting new product and how it was produced
in his beekeeping update below so be sure to read on.
We are excited to offer you this very special Wild Honey and Honeycomb but advise that you
get in quickly as it will sell out and may not be available again for a long time.
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Something Milled, Something Brewed
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Collaborating with Aussie Artisans
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Salva Me
'Good timber does not grow with ease: The stronger wind, the stronger trees'
Good Timber, Douglas Malloch, 1922
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You
might not be aware that all of our hives are made from salvaged timber,
we’re an outlier in this regard, as nearly all beehives in Australia are
made from imported plantation timber, plastic or polystyrene. Despite
their popularity, they are terrible homes for the bees and have a high
carbon footprint.
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Dan from Clarence Siding Sawmill milling the Cypress
into planks for drying
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This particular species of cypress is light and durable,
ideal for the construction of sustainable beehives
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Salvaged
timber hives are better for the bees (the interior roughness and
imperfections of the timber resemble that of a tree hollow and
encourages antiseptic propolis production by the bees, resulting in a
germ free nest atmosphere), better for the beekeeper (timber hives are
often preserved in toxic chemicals) and better for the environment
(extremely low carbon footprint compared to all other options and
entirely chemical free. Plastic and polystyrene hives have a high
environmental burden).
However, sourcing salvaged logs is
something of a lost art - requiring patience, knowledge and a good
network of arborists, saw millers, carpenters and beekeepers.
Salvaged
timber is also around four times the cost of the imported
timber/plastic option - but it’s something we’re passionate about for
the reasons listed above.
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The finished product from the mill - rough sawn timber
from salvaged logs, ready to be graded and crafted into long lasting
Warré hives
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All of
our hives
are made from salvaged timber - they are the perfect home for
honeybees, look beautiful and have a low carbon footprint compared to
other options
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Thanks to Dan at the newly re-opened
Clarence Siding Sawmill in the Blue Mountains for help with sourcing and milling this gigantic Swamp Cypress salvaged log (and his photos!)
We cannot wait to turn this incredibly special timber into beautiful, long-lasting Warré hives!
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Wild Flowers and Wild Bees
Salvaged Post Brood Honeywax
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Bottles of
Hive beer are sealed with pure beeswax - the wax is derived from the pressed comb the beer is made from (photo © Topher Boehm)
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Our exciting ongoing collaboration with
Wildflower Beer has resulted in the release of batch #6 of their extraordinary
Hive: Post Brood beer.
Incase
you have missed some of our previous newsletters, after pressing the
combs to harvest our wild honey, we are left with what Tim calls
'honeywax'. As honeywax yields very little honey or clean wax to sell,
Tim suggested Topher try using it as part of his fermentation process:
'Hive: Post Brood
is a barrel aged golden mixed culture ale refermented with natural
formed Warré hive post-brood wild comb from the Blue Mountains and
Central Tablelands of NSW. Each bottle is dipped in the same wax
post-refermentation in this beer, there may be small residue still of
propolis in the wax leaving black specks in the golden yellow beeswax.
A
unique and rare honeyflow gave Tim and Emma a wholly different aroma
and flavour profile of their Post Brood honey in 2020. They decided to
keep it aside and express it individually as a limited edition 'Mountain
Meadow' bottling. Hive #7 is made with the honeywax from these combs.
Made by refermenting Tim and Emma's honeywax with our aged Gold and
bottling with their honey as priming. Bottles are then sealed with the
rendered wax which once fermented with the beer.'
Wildflower Brewing,
Hive: Post Brood Blend #7
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The Wildflower team process the wax in house after
brewing the beer - a complete cyclical process with no waste (photo ©
Topher Boehm)
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A pressed ‘cake’ of post brood honeywax - full of bee
bread and propolis - which we reserve for Wildflower to make this
special brew
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Batch #6
sold out immediately and batch #7 has just been released - it’s another
impressively complex and delicious brew - head on over to
Wildflower to secure some before it sells out!
While you are there you can read about the recent
batch and all about this
unique collaboration.
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We are always so grateful to our distributor,
Two Providores,
for ensuring our wild bee produce makes it to Australia's illustrious
kitchens, and to the restaurants and chefs for their support over the
years.
Tim has
just been to Two Providores HQ for a staff training session on the finer
points of our Wild Honeys and will be in Sydney again this August for
the annual Two Providores trade show.
It is one of his favourite
days of the year as he gets to chat with our chef friends and retailers
who showcase our Wild Honey, Honeycomb and beeswax in their restaurants
and outlets around Australia.
It’s an amazing day hanging out
with good friends and other artisan producers, and really puts a spring
in our step at the start of the bee season, reminding us of the great
people that support and respect our work.
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Tim had a great time at the Trade Show last year,
catching up with chef’s and talented hospo folks who support us
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We are
so humbled and proud at the same time when we see how such talented
people have transmuted the incredible work of our bees into a brand new
creation.
With
that in mind, please find below a selection of recent mouth watering
creations by our friends in the fine dining industry that champion our
produce - they consistently leave us gob smacked!
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Josh Niland's
Calamansi Madeleine with Wild Honey cream at
Petermen, St Leonards
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View
more inspiring creations by some of Australia's (and the world's) top
chefs using our bee produce on our
Awards and Recognition page.
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The Honeycomb's red, The Post Brood's blue, Our Wild Honey is sweet, and so are you! ~•*•~
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Winter
tends to be one of the most popular times of year for enjoying honey and
we have just spent this one bottling so you can stock up again!
This month, as mentioned above, we have a brand new product in the ranks. Be sure to order some of our
300g Red Stringybark Wild Honeycomb sections soon (as numbers are limited) and be among the first of our customers to taste this exquisite produce from our bees.
We also have
750g Wild Honeycomb sections in the Red Stringybark variety available for the first time to the general public.
Our usual bounty of
Wild Honey is available in 2 or 3 jar sizes for the majority of our award winning, medicinal and pure varieties.
New packs featuring Red Stringy bark and our existing
Mixed Wild Honey Four Packs are still on offer for those who prefer to buy in larger quantities at a reduced price.
Additionally, our Wild Honey
Gift Packs in 200g and 500g sizes (now featuring Red Stringybark) make the perfect gift for any honey connoisseur.
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Please
note when ordering that it can take us up to a week to process orders as
everything is done in house, from the production of the goods all the
way through to the packaging and posting of your order.
We
generally allow another week for goods to be delivered as we live in
Regional Australia. Make sure to take this into consideration when
finalising any orders.
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~•*•~
This Month's Select Products
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Wild Honey 1kg
Mixed Region
Four Pack
Now $252.00
$280.00
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Wild Honey 500g
Mixed Region
Two Jar Gift Pack
$78.00
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Wild Honey 200g
Mixed Region
Four Jar Gift Pack
Now $82.00
$88.00
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Wild Honeycomb 300g
Red Stringybark
4 x Wooden Section
$176.00
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*
Please note we are bound by Australian Biosecurity regulations so are
not permitted to send honey to TAS, NT or WA
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Tim's Warré beekeeping adventures in the Blue Mountains and Central Tablelands
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Tim in
2009 - holding one of the first Warré combs we ever produced - on Red
Stringybark no less
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The last
beekeeping season was a strange experience as it was shaped by
persistent cool temperatures, rain and minimal flowering throughout its
entirety. These conditions meant the development of the colonies was
delayed and they lost momentum going into the summer months, a critical
time for colonies to ‘make hay while the sun shines’. Thankfully there
were some minor flowering events to keep them active and healthy,
however very little honey was harvested and it ended up being one of the
leanest seasons on record in the Blue Mountains.
In the
Central Tablelands it looked like the season would turn out to be
similarly frustrating however the bees were saved by a very late
honeyflow on Red Stringybark, resulting in some surplus honey of this
rare variety and the colonies heading into the colder months with rich
Red Stringybark pollen and nectar to keep them warm and fed all winter
long. More on that rare flowering event below.
While
reflecting on the season past, it struck me that one of the key benefits
of Warré hives, locally adapted bees and Natural Beekeeping principles
is that colonies are able to cope with poor conditions without the aid
of a keeper. Resilience is implicit in the Natural Beekeeping ethos and
despite the poor conditions we did not have to intervene to feed bees,
re-queen or manipulate the hives in any way to increase vigour or
survivability. We simply paid close attention to their health, tried to
be ‘in tune’ with the climate and flowering patterns and left nearly all
the honey on the hives this season to hold them in stead until future
times of abundance.
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Winter is the time for shed work which includes wax
processing
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Our wild honey is bottled during the winter months - the
cool temperature causes the liquid honey to set into a smooth creamy
consistency
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As
part pf our natural beekeeping journey, we have been visited by aspiring
professional natural beekeepers from around the globe and it’s a joy to
still be in touch with all of them.
This
season we had a special visitor, our colleague and friend from Germany,
Uli, who has travelled here to learn from us (and us from him) a number
of times over the years. He was lucky to catch the start of the Red
Stringybark autumn flow before flying home to prepare for spring in the
northern hemisphere.
Uli
manages modified Warré hives in the Berlin area, producing high quality
artisan honey from strained combs. The honey samples he brought to share
were phenomenal, so I suggest if you’re based in Germany and on the
look out for bee-friendly Warré honey to get in touch with him to be
added to his waiting list (if the Berlin chefs don’t get their hands on
it first!).
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The bud and blossom of the Red Stringybark tree
(Eucalyptus macrorhyncha), a species from the Central Tablelands
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Our natural beekeeping colleague from Berlin,
Uli Beckmann, trying to find shade under a towering Warré hive
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The Red
Stringybark tree is something of a touchstone in my life. In 2006, we
experienced an epic honeyflow from this rare species in the Central
Tablelands when I was working part time in my father’s beekeeping
operation. It was an intense few months of work and I distinctly
remember driving for hours in the middle of the night to rescue Dad and
my mate Lewin who had bogged the truck getting out of one of the apiary
sites during torrential rain. Pre-GPS, driving muddy country roads in
the dark, trying to locate the drenched bee men. Fun times!
During
the Red Stringybark harvest in 2006 I remember thinking the honey
quality and flavour was phenomenal. Even after a lifetime of sampling
different varieties, I’d never tasted any honey quite like it.
Unfortunately due to the situation at the time in the honey industry,
most of it was sold below production cost to a large scale honey packer
who heated and blended it to appear under a generic label. It was a
deflating end to an incredible experience; I still have jars of that Red
Stringybark from 2006 and each time I taste it the memories come
flooding back.
The excitement of the honeyflow and subsequent
disappointment of not being able to share it with anyone was one of the
triggers for establishing our honey label Malfroy’s Gold. Long before we
had our ‘Eureka!’ moment discovering Warré hives in 2009, we were still
focussed on providing the community with rare, seasonal, organic honey
direct from our hives and telling the story of these unique flowering
events that don’t occur anywhere else on earth.
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Post brood aged comb from Red Stringybark has a glorious
purple hue - each comb is rich with propolis and bee bread
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The glistening amber nectar of Red Stringybark in fresh
virgin comb, a beautiful sight!
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Fast
forward to Autumn 2010: Emma and I populated the first Warré hives built
in Australia on a short, intense honey flow of - you guessed it - Red
Stringybark. The swarms built four boxes of comb in two weeks and I fell
in love with Red Stringybark (again) and Warré hives, setting us on the
Natural Beekeeping journey we’re still on today. Since that time, there
has only been one other minor flowering event of Red Stringybark. As
mentioned above, last season was really frustrating as we spent the bulk
of it waiting for conditions to improve. You can understand our sense
of hope when we saw that the trees would flower this Autumn '23, and the
historical weight behind the anticipation. I’m happy and somewhat
relieved that it did go to plan in the end, and we were able to harvest
some amazing Red Stringyark Wild Honey, produced in Warré hives. A dream
that is 13 years in the making!
With the autumn flow happening
so late in the season, we’ve been flat out harvesting and pressing the
Red Stringybark combs all winter. We’re the only professional beekeepers
in Australia using 100% natural comb, and we do not use centrifugal
extractors to process the combs.
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Red Bloodwood (Corymbia gummifera) in the Wollemi
Wilderness, oozing kino (resin). Bees gather resin to make propolis, an
antiseptic substance integral to the ‘social immunity’ of the colony
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The Blue Mountains is a Kino-rich environment,
contributing to the health of our colonies and giving our Wild Honey an
intoxicatingly spicy note and medicinal qualities
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Instead
we press and strain the entire comb, meaning that our Wild Honey has 4
key elements compared to the 1 found in conventional honey: honey, bee
bread (fermented pollen), propolis and wax. Some of the combs we press
are up to 5 years old and are dark in colour from years of use by the
colony. Bees gather propolis - an antimicrobial sap exuded from plants -
from the environment and polish the cells of the comb and coat the hive
walls with it to maintain a germ free nest. This process gradually
darkens the comb from pristine white virgin comb to a purple hue.
We
usually bottle our annual harvest during the cold months, partly because
that’s when we have the time to do it, but more importantly - bottling
in cool temperatures means our pollen & propolis rich wild honey
sets into a fine, creamy texture. We bottle in the honey room at around
18 - 22°C, but the temperature in the shed rarely gets above 10 - 12°C
in winter (-10° to +10° outside), causing the liquid honey to thicken
into its unique consistency over a matter of weeks. In between
processing comb and bottling honey, we’re melting and filtering our pure
beeswax - made from 100% natural comb.
We have high hopes for a bountiful spring, with many plant
species heavily budded. However we are also anxious about what lies
ahead this summer, with forecasts leaning towards a return to a hot, dry
‘El Niño’ weather system (an extreme contrast to last season). The
spring flowering is 4-6 weeks early this year, so by the time our next
newsletter is released we’ll be deep into the beekeeping season. We’ve
had a few lean years in terms of Wild Honeycomb production, so we have
our eyes set on a few specific honey flows in the Blue Mountains and
Central Tablelands in spring and summer to produce this beautiful
product again. I look forward to sharing more beekeeping news in the
next missive from the mountains!
If you
enjoy reading our newsletters you can view archived copies of them
here, as well as articles that I’ve written which I hope to add to when there is a spare minute.
~•*•~
Tim will
continue to fill your feed with updates from the field about the ever
changing and unique flora of the regions, bee biology, our wild honey
produce and other interesting things - all bee related - follow along
below!
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Thank you to everyone who contacted us or purchased items after reading
our previous newsletter - your ongoing support of what we do is very
much appreciated!
We hope you enjoyed our tenth newsletter and are always happy to hear
your thoughts. (If you missed our last newsletter and would like to read
it you can do so
here.)
Thank you for reading,
Tim, Emma and the Daughters of Light
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Roasted figs, chestnut cake and wild honey parfait, Flying Fish, The Star, Pyrmont (Photo ©
@adam_hall89 )
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