2013-summer-magazine

LiKE A BEE TO
HONEY CElEBraTE
SwEET alBErTa
By Heather Egger
The snack of “honey spoons” started at our
house during flu season. My toddler was
too little for cough syrup, so I gave him a
teaspoon of honey to calm his cough.
Now, given a choice between honey and
marshmallows, honey spoon always wins.
And I’m certainly ok with that.
Honey is easily digested, packed with
vitamins and minerals and it’s locally farmed.
In fact, Alberta produces about 40 per cent
of Canada’s honey. Bees love our long
summer days and clover, canola and alfalfa
crops. And farmers love them back –
honeybees are important pollinators and
critical to the agricultural industry.
So this summer, celebrate Alberta honey
with us. Visit a honey farm, whoop it up at
a honey party or just grab a jar and spoon.
How sweet it is!
Tour the Chinook Honey Apiary
Before you approach the hustle and bustle
of Chinook Honey’s (chinookhoney.com)
observation hive, you’ll hear the buzz.
Looking close through the mesh, you spy
the big queen laying her eggs (up to 2,000
of them a day!), dancing workers delivering
their goodies and a brand-new baby bee
emerging from the wax comb. You could
watch them all day but you’ve got a
beekeeping demo next, a honey wine
tasting in a few minutes and a lot of fresh
honey to buy at the store.
The Chinook Honey farm is in Okotoks, just
20 minutes south of Calgary. Here, a tour
guide will lead you around the observation
hives, show you how beekeepers keep their
colonies happy and share some cool
honeybee facts, like this one: did you
CALLING ALL
HONEY LOVERS
GAIL’S HONEY CAKE
A passionately regional chef, Chef Gail Hall
(seasonedsolutions.ca) is all about
cooking with fresh local ingredients.
Her yummy honey cake will bring back
memories of mom.
iNGREDiENTS
• 3 large eggs
• ½ cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup sugar
• 1½ cups liquid Alberta honey
• 1 tsp vanilla
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1 cup strong tea
• 1 tbsp cocoa
• 3½ cups all-purpose flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 1 cup raisins, plumped
DiRECTiONS
Beat eggs, oil, sugar and honey well
together. Add vanilla and lemon juice.
Mix tea and cocoa together in separate
container. Sift dry ingredients together.
Add dry ingredients alternately with tea/
cocoa mixture to egg mixture. Fold in
raisins. Line and grease a 9” x 13” cake
pan. Bake at 300º for 1½ hours. Serve with
sweetened whipped cream or lemon
yoghurt spiked with icing sugar.
Try not to eat it all at once!
know that a queen bee can decide whether
to lay female worker or male drone eggs?
Bees are awesome. The farm also houses
a meadery, where you can tour the honey
wine fermentation room and have a
taste or two.
Paint the Town
Yellow and Black in Falher
Each year for the past two decades,
honeybee fans have donned bobbing
antennae headbands and yellow-and-black
stripy tees for the Falher Honey Festival
(falherhoneyfestival.ca). Falher is two
hours south of Peace River and smack
in the heart of Alberta’s world famous
clover honey region, which at its peak
produced 10 million pounds of honey a year.
Being the Honey Capital of Canada totally
explains the 6.7 metre bee statue.
In between eating a free pancake breakfast,
watching live bands, playing in the big slow
pitch tourney and shopping at the Alberta
honey market, pause to behold the Honey
Festival’s bee beard demo, where a few
brave souls don waggling beards of live
bees! Amazing. You’ll also find lots of fun
things for the kiddies – magic, balloons,
bouncy castles and a bike parade – so by
the time the fireworks are over for the night,
you’ll be carrying a blessedly sleeping
toddler back to the car.
46 travelalberta.com 1-800-ALBERTA 47