Summertime Nods Her Sleepy Head

Greetings Emma,

Welcome to our first newsletter for 2023! We have not written to you for a while but we have a good excuse for our tardiness - summer beekeeping has been in full swing since before Christmas and is a seemingly never ending mountain to climb each year.

As a result, Tim and our German Beekeeping colleague, Uli, have been very busy working through the summer's non-harvest related bee work while patiently waiting for the weather and trees to gift us with whatever they can. Tim will elaborate on his beekeeping adventures below.

We are also thrilled that Tim and his work are being included in the Australian Culinary Archive for the Powerhouse Museum - we will explain what that inspiring project is all about.

The most exciting news is that chemical residue testing results for our Wild Honey have just come back from overseas and the results are the best they could be. It's nice to be validated when stating we produce, arguably, the most natural and chemical free commercial honey available in this country.

Additionally, some of our most popular products are finally back in stock, though numbers are limited - read on for details!

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A Little Slice of Summer

Wild Honeycomb and Beeswax Available Now

As our bees' health and survival takes precedence over yield, we have been unable to produce very much Wild Honey or Wild Honeycomb this season.

So, we are very excited that after such a strange and difficult summer for humans and animals alike, our bees still managed to produce a little surplus for us to harvest.

As a result, the 300g Wild Honeycomb sections are now finally back in our online shop though numbers are very limited so you will need to grab them while they last.

We also have some beautiful 750g Wild Honeycomb frames which are great for cheese platters, desserts or entertaining larger groups.

We have beeswax from the Blue Mountains available in both 200g and 1kg blocks - some of the purest in Australia if our test results are anything to go by (read on for deets!)

Thank you to those of you who have contacted us over the past few months about availability for these popular products - we are grateful for your patience!

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Waxing Lyrical

Mid 2022, we sent our Blue Mountains Wild Honey overseas to be tested for 370+ chemicals (including Glyphosate). Earlier this month we received the results and, as with other tests carried out on our products to date, we couldn't be prouder of the outcome.

Ensuring that our bees can forage in pristine wilderness on native wildflowers and trees, has certainly proven to promote bee health as well as produce delicious, medicinally active, raw Wild Honeys packed with pollen and propolis.

Tim has written a short article to share our Wild Honeys' pleasing results in the chemical residue tests and examine how we achieved such a benchmark.

In addition to having our Blue Mountains Wild Honey tested we also sent a sample of our latest and second Post Brood Variety, Mountain Meadow to be tested for overheating and pollen concentration.

Again, the results were more than pleasing. They have been added to our two existing articles about these particular tests and are summarised below for your convenience.

Firstly, we tested the honey for Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), which is the main test for analysing whether a honey has been overheated during processing or storage. The FAO Honey Standard (United Nations) recommends a HMF limit in honey of 40mg/kg.

Our Mountain Meadow Post Brood Wild Honey tested at the very low level of 9mg/kg! You can read more about our Wild Honeys and the low HMF results we achieved across the range here.

Secondly, the pollen concentration was tested. The typical pollen concentration found in conventional honey is between 2,000 - 10,000 grains per gram. Our Mountain Meadow Post Brood Wild Honey was found to have 1.75 million grains per gram!

To further explain, we outline why we test the pollen count and what the results indicate in our article, The Proof is in the Pollen.

It's satisfying to have another of our Post Brood Wild Honeys doing so well on paper. We knew, based on our methods and hive locations, that this was a likely outcome but it is still wonderful to have our decisions to prioritise bee health, and honey quality, over yield validated.

Given these positive results, your decision to support our business by purchasing our Wild Honey produce is a testament to your commitment to a better planet, and better food for you and your family.

Tim will be writing more articles in the near future and commenting on papers released in beekeeping and scientific circles when he gets a spare minute, so we will keep you posted on any new articles in future newsletters and on Instagram.

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Our Legacy

Earlier this year Tim was contacted by Julie Gibbs (Australian book publisher) about including our unique beekeeping approach in the Australian Culinary Archive.

The Australian Culinary Archive, an initiative by the Powerhouse Museum, is the first nationwide culinary archive to collect the important histories of the Australian food industry including chefs, producers, writers and restauranteurs.

Julie says 'it's a big and exciting project - we are recording interviews with chefs, cooks, producers, writers etc and also preserving documents and items for future generations.'

We are honoured to have been considered for the project and recently Tim had a few spare hours to meet with Julie and Libby Travers (writer and food journalist) in the Blue Mountains for an interview to discuss our contribution to the Australian Food industry.

We will hopefully be donating some documentation and artifacts to the museum including one of our customised Warré Hives and information on our unique methods working naturally with bees in pristine Australian environments.

We are so grateful for the opportunity to provide information and artefacts for preservation by the Culinary archives staff. Stay tuned for more information as the project unfolds.

As mentioned in our previous newsletter, Ben from Leap Films has been filming the work in our apiaries. He has a great eye for detail and the beauty of the environment we are so privileged to work in. He visited one of our upper mountains apiaries recently and has begun capturing more footage of our work there.

We are excited to see his work when he is finished the rough edits and will hopefully have another vingette ready in the coming months to showcase what we do.

We have compiled one short vignette from his first batch of footage that we shared with you in our last newsletter (it's currently on our website in case you missed it).

As always we are so grateful to have such incredible Australian Chefs incorporate our produce in their imaginative dishes.

Over the past few months we have seen some wonderful creations coming out of the finest kitchens in Sydney and Melbourne, including those pictured below.

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For more information on Tim Malfroy and Malfroy's Gold in the public eye, visit our Social, Awards, Blogs and Media pages (the latter also includes recipes from some of Australia's finest chefs who champion our produce!)

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The Sweetest Gifts

Product News

This month, as mentioned above, we have some 1kg and 200g Beeswax blocks back in stock and a limited number of 300g Wild Honeycomb sections - just in time for Easter!

We also have 750g Wild Honeycomb sections available again (for a limited time) and our usual bounty of Wild Honey (which is available in 2 or 3 jar sizes for the majority of our award winning, medicinal and pure varieties).

Our existing Mixed Wild Honey Four Packs are still available for those who prefer to buy in larger quantities at a reduced price.

Additionally, our Wild Honey Gift Packs in 200g and 500g sizes (that have only recently joined the fold) make the perfect gift for any honey connoisseur.

As always we have E-Gift vouchers available for a convenient way to give the gift of honey this Easter.

Shipping

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.

We suggest that any orders you need to arrive in time for Easter be placed by the 20th March.

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This Month's Select Products

* Please note we are bound by Australian Biosecurity regulations so are not permitted to send honey to TAS, NT or WA

Wildflowers and Summer Days

Tim's Warré beekeeping adventures in the Blue Mountains and Central Tablelands

This missive from the mountains is filled with an air of slight frustration as, so far, the summer blooms have failed to materialise into surplus yields from our hives. However, we still hold out hope for a late summer/early autumn flow!

This ‘wait-and-see’ approach, which we have had to adopt for the entire season, has tested everyone's patience somewhat. Thankfully, the colonies are healthy and vigorous and more than ready for any honey flow that may occur in the near future.

The bees and I have our sights set on two particular species, which are just starting to break their bud: Red Bloodwood (Corymbia gummifera) in the Blue Mountains and Red Stringybark (Eucalyptus macrorhyncha) in the Central Tablelands. Both trees are notoriously sensitive to weather conditions at the time of flowering so even if full blooming does eventuate there is no guarantee that there will be a honey crop. The joys of beekeeping!

Looking back over the last few months, I'm pleased to report that a small amount of Wild Honeycomb has been produced, as well as lovely batches of Yellow Box, Blue Mountains Polyflora and Blue Mountains Post Brood Polyflora (coming soon).

So despite the rainy start to the season and the tiny honey flows now and then, our ladies have managed to deliver some of their pockets of sunshine for us to enjoy.

At this time of year I cast an eye to the next season. Many of the tree species the bees rely on for pollen and nectar have a budding cycle of 6-12 months so beekeepers can forecast which species may be particularly important for the bees (and us) in the future.

I also start planning the end of season work with the colonies - to make sure all apiaries are in a good place come wintertime and the bees have plentiful stores of pollen rich honey.

As soon as the bee work comes to a close, I'll be launching straight into bottling our honey and pouring beeswax ready for winter orders.

In this sense, the beekeeper becomes like the bee - the work never ends and I’m sure the late summer bees dream of winter slumber - as I do!

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.

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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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We hope you are finding the content in our newsletters of interest and appreciate you taking the time to subscribe and read our updates.

We also hope you enjoyed our ninth newsletter and are always grateful for any feedback or suggestions. (As always, 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