The new crops of northern honey are in ! We are now sharing Apitherapy raw honey from this region and blueberry honey from Maine. After almost three months of rain, the First Fruits of the new crops are in the honey house, and we are grateful to be able to send this delicious honey to you.

What I learned from the bees (# 1 in a series)

patience

Working with the honey bees helps to stretch and fortify one’s patience. While we do all we can to help the bees make a crop, such as give them mite resistant queens that have been selected over the years, make sure they have enough room to raise brood and make honey, give them equipment that has light wax or foundation to help them keep their home clean, follow other organic support procedures that encourage them to be stronger in the midst of mites and other environmental challenges, wrapping them well for the northern winters, etc. , the ultimate control of a honey crop is not in our hands.

In Northern Vermont, we are blessed by five months of sunny summer weather, often cool and seldom hot. This is the weather that allows for the good crops, and encourages flowers to make nectar. Where the summer temperatures are hotter, this production of nectar may be shut down. This year it has been raining for much of the last six weeks. While this has been a challenge and hardship to a vegetable farmer, for those that are growing strawberries or tomatoes, or those who plant fields of corn, things are different in the world of honey bees. The rains have allowed the plants to grow larger and stronger, producing many flowers that will offer nectar. The soil is loaded with water. When we get sun now, and if it is in the time when there are flowers on the clovers, milkweed, knapweed, goldenrod, or other flowers, the bees could make a good crop.

In many years of working with the bees, I often found that the crops were made in the last week of the five month season. As a young commercial beekeeper, there were weeks of great anxiety and worry in the years when the bees did not make a crop for the first 95% of the season. Imagine a profession where there was not a weekly paycheck, but the whole year’s income was primarily made on a few days at the very end of the season. This has happened over and over again, and has helped me grow in patience and faith in this work, and also in life itself. I feel grateful to have experienced a string of miracles where there is no surplus honey on the bees one day, and ten days later when you come back to inspect, three or four boxes of honey are found on the upper areas of the hive.

Over the years, I have become very sensitive to the moment in time, when, after all the waiting, watching, and prayers, I first saw that a crop was made. I call this the “turning point”, always so thankful for the day. I will never forget the minute in a particularly dry year – I walked up to the bees in the “Glake bee yard” in the St. Lawrence River Valley of Northern New York. Upon opening the first three colonies, I saw that all had made an average of 60+ lb. of honey where there had been no honey two weeks earlier. Each hive in this yard was the same. Then I heard the “click clack” of the horses as they drove by, pulling a cart with an Amish family, the men all dressed in blue shirts and their straw summer hats. This was a very special moment I will never forget.

As beekeepers, we do all that we can to help the bees; we give them room, keep them in areas where we believe they will be able to gather nectar and pollen, be protected from the bears and the winter winds, and help them with their queens. Then, we have to let go, and let them do their work.

A life of beekeeping has given me a great peace about the things that I cannot control. Every season we are given daily opportunities to understand the prayer of serenity more fully:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change.
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference. “

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. With this thought, many people are discovering super-foods. Super foods contain highly concentrated nutritional and healing compounds. Many feel these potent foods are our best immune and emotional shield, in a rapidly changing world, that finds us far from a natural balance. Around the world people are on the path of discovering the very best super foods our planet has to offer.

Raw honey and other bee products are showing up on several Top Ten Super Foods lists. According to David Wolfe in his new book “Superfoods” The Food and Medicine of the Future, the only other food that comes close to richness in history and legend is chocolate (cacao). From cave drawings in Spain,13,000 BCE to Google searches in 2009, bees have been associated with health, healing, legend, myth and magic.

Raw Food

Many people are discovering the benefits of a raw diet. Eating raw is an amazing lifestyle movement that includes such dishes as raw Red Beet Ravioli with cashew cheese filling and raw lime tart with macadamia crust. These foods are healthy, delicious and full of beneficial enzymes.

Our health increases when we rely on the foods we eat to provide enzymes. Raw foods have enzymes. Foods cooked at 113 degrees for 3 minutes, will kill all enzymes present in the food. The lack of enzymes in our foods will cause the liver, pancreas, and intestines to work harder to produce the enzymes required to catalyze functions that break down food and help to assimilate nutrients. Enzyme rich foods can slow the aging process, increase longevity, and aid healthy digestion.

milkweed in bloom Photo by Ann Watson 2009 copyright

Healthy Honey

Raw honey is filled with minerals, enzymes, antioxidants and probiotics. Research indicates that raw, unprocessed honey is the richest source of live healing enzymes found in nature, and can promote reflexes, and mental alertness.

Honey is very soothing to our digestion and increases absorption of minerals. It elevates our blood sugar levels slowly. As our blood sugar elevates, a rise of insulin causes the amino acid tryptophan (found in raw honey) to create an increase in the serotonin levels in our brain, a hormone that promotes relaxation. It also increases our melatonin levels. Melatonin, secreted by the pineal gland in response to darkness, has long been used to cure sleeping disorders. Recently, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration, the equivalent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, approved raw honey as a” therapeutic medicinal food”. Much research is being done on the anti-fungal, anti-microbial and anti-viral compounds found in raw honey. For researchers the list of benefits is long and growing.

We trust that science will continue to reveal the nutritional wonders that raw honey has to offer, proving empirically what our early ancestors intuitively responded to, honey is great tasting and good for us in ways we can hardly imagine.

Dana Matthews Honey Gardens Winery and Caledonia Spirits

Recipes by Dana Matthews

Honey Mustard Dressing

Yields 1 1/8 cups of dressing ¼ c raw honey ¼ c Dijon mustard ¼ c raw apple cider vinegar ¼ c cold pressed olive oil 1 clove crushed garlic 1 tsp Celtic sea salt

Place honey, mustard, garlic, vinegar, & salt in blender or food processor, pulse for 10 seconds, Set to medium/high setting and gradually add oil so that it incorporates and thickens slightly (about 15 seconds). Store in refrigerator until served.

Enzyme Shake

Serves 2 to 4 2 c diced pineapple 2 c diced papaya 1 ½ c coconut water 3 tbs raw honey 2 tsp vanilla extract squeeze of lime juice pinch of Celtic sea salt

Blend ingredients in blender until smooth.

An adult female sea lion that was admitted with a wound on her back. It is a contaminated wound and is quite deep involving several muscle groups along the spine. The honey seems to be very effective in lifting debris out of contaminated wounds. The animals tolerate bandage changes well and I am under the impression the bandage changes with raw honey are not very painful to them. The honey dressing doesn’t adhere to the injured tissue. With wounds like this bacteria can be transmitted to other parts of the body via the blood stream or lymphatics and oral antibiotics should be used in addition to all topical treatments.

The use of honey as a remedy has been recorded in several historical references. As a wound treatment honey has received renewed attention in the medical community for several reasons; honey does not appear to induce bacterial resistance, many species of bacteria appear susceptible to honey, and wound healing is often more rapid than with standard treatments. Honey has several properties that accounts for its antibacterial properties including low pH, high osmolarity, and production of low levels of hydrogen peroxide that do not induce damage of healthy tissue. In addition, honey has been demonstrated to stimulate tissue repair by increasing the cellular response to a wound site. There are numerous testimonials as well as an increasing number of clinical trials that support the use of un-pasteurized honey as an effective wound treatment in both humans and animals.

When I started to use honey on the wounds I took a lot of jokes …. do you need any peanut butter with that bandage, doc? or ” too bad you don’t have two slices of bread to go with that…” but after everyone saw the results, the jokes have pretty much subsided. Now mostly people are just amazed at the results. I use raw honey almost exclusively now to treat surface wounds of this nature.

Thanks again,

Lauren Palmer DVM
The Marine Mammal Care Center Fort MacArthur
3601 S Gaffey St.San Pedro, CA 90731, (310) 548-5677
www.marinemammalcare.org

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BVT ( Bee Venom Therapy ) APITHERAPY AND ME

BOB HARDY, VERGENNES, VT 05491-9070
My connection to BVT apitherapy began about 15 years ago when I came down with an inflammation in my hip joints. We were at some cocktail party and I was complaining to someone whom I cannot recall about my condition which at that time was at my age of about 65 years young. The condition really bothered me as I love to walk and to ski! Anyway, the person said, “see that lady over there, that is my wife and she had bad hip arthritis and now look at this photo of her hiking in the high mountains carrying a 65 lb. back pack.. She got rid of her arthritis by bee sting therapy”. “WHAT!” I said I went on a bit about being allergic to bees I thought. He said, I doubt it, get hold of Charlie Mraz whom I had not the slightest idea of who and where he was. So next day, I found that Charlie Mraz lived in Middlebury, the next town and I called him and explained my situation. He said, “come on over we’ll test you. I have some people coming this afternoon anyway.” So began my life continuing symbiotic relationship with honey bees. Bottom line, by working with Charlie, he proved to me I was not allergic to honey bees, only wasps. He started me off on applying bee sting therapy to my hips and then taught me how to gather the bees in a jar so they would live to help me. Karin and I applied bee stings on and off about 3 times a week to each hip. After about six weeks of this, the hips one day became very itchy, red, and hot. The next morning all of that reaction was gone, and the hip inflammation along with it. Since that moment I have never felt any recurrence of the hip inflammation. Unfortunately Charlie has left us but he left behind his legacy “Bees don’t get arthritis” and the Apitherapy Society.

To this day, I consult with the Todd Hardie who applies bee sting venom therapy with care and precision, and making us appreciate the sacrifice the bees are making to make us healthy. Some other benefit of bee sting therapy I have found to be helpful and ameliorating cover the subjects of the following.
• SAD – Seasonal affected disorder. Bee venom therapy applied once or twice monthly when the days are short in Vermont uplifts the body to be more positive.
• Immunity – The long winters compromise one’s immune system in Vermont. The use of bee venom therapy can help maintain a strong immune system.
• Wound Recovery: I have had a recurrence of a melanoma which we treated entirely with holistic powerful herbs as the establishment medical procedure was not reliable as I learned to my dismay. In order to assist in the healing process of the herbal destruction of the cancer cells, we applied bee venom therapy near the cancer site which helped the healthy skin tissue to be rejuvenated more rapidly. (Charlie Mraz said that bee keepers do not get cancer!)
Cause and effect. It is our anecdotal belief that the application of bee venom therapy catalyzes the natural defense systems of one’s body to bring enhanced natural cortisone which everyone has, to the site of the bee sting for enhanced healing. The bee venom also marshal the body’s natural defense systems to get to work.