“Home-made” Honey

In earlier posts, I have talked about planting flowers to attract bees to the garden,  and my decision last spring to rent a beehive to make sure I was getting lots of good pollination for my increasing numbers of fruits and vegetables.  Over the summer I enjoyed watching the hard work of my bees (and the beekeeper) in my garden.

I really started to appreciate the amazing process of making honey and the wonderful symbiotic relationship that humans have with bees when I read Manuka: the biography of an extraordinary honey.

All this led to great anticipation of when I would be able to enjoy the fruits of these labours.  I recently was rewarded in the form of several kilos of my own ‘home garden honey’ being delivered to my door.  This honey comes as part of the rental package.  It isn’t just the honey from ‘my’ bees as it would be nice to believe but is mixed with honey from the general area as part of the extraction process.

It was perfectly timed for the start of the winter cold and flu season: I was able to medicate with lemon and honey drinks from my own garden!  I’m also starting to look for good recipes including honey.  In the meantime, I’m having honey sandwiches and honey on toast on a regular basis – delicious!

With a spate of birthdays at this time of year, I also discovered that a jar of honey is a great gift.  I sourced some gorgeous little jars from Arthur Holmes, some wooden honey dippers, and made some labels to go with them – and they look wonderful!