On Friday nights I have a tradition: I bottle honey and make soap. I began with the basic melt-and-pour glycerine soaps, adding honey and other yummy ingredients. But as time went on, I discovered that not all soaps are created equal. There's a nasty ingredient or two that make their way into most soaps and shampoos, going by the acronym SLS. That's Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, and it's sidekick, Sodium Laureth Sulfate. These are foaming agents which cause a host of health problems, and are in practically everything!

Here are some of the fun facts I discovered about this dastardly duo:

 Shocking, isn't it! What was even more shocking was when I discovered that my melt-n-pour soap base contained SLS. I quickly did some homework, and found another formula or two. My soaps are now SLS FREE, and instead they're based on Coconut oil and other happy, healthy (delicious) ingredients. I always add honey, and frequently add things like cinnamon, nutmeg, oatmeal, or poppy seeds and lemongrass, or turmeric and olive oil. Did I mention Shea butter? Cocoa Butter? My Friday night explorations include all the best kitchen goodies I can find!!! The smell is incredible. The soaps are moisturizing enough to use on your face,  I've heard from my daughter that the soap tastes good, too, although I prefer to use it just for washing!!!

Don't ask me about bees! Unless you have some time....i get really excited about them and will drone on for twenty minutes, at least. Sigh. I try to slow down and take a breath, but no, the listener is going to find out an awful lot before they get an opportunity to escape....

At least I've focused this tendency for the good of the community. Now I do outreach programs and lectures at events, schools, etc. It's a ton of fun... On Tuesday night I trudged up to Fort Lauderdale beach in the pouring rain to do an informal presentation for the South Florida ISES meeting (International Special Events Society).  

I set up a tasting table, so everyone could get the opportunity to experience the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between honey varieties. We had several, including Tropical Wildflower 1 & 2 out for comparison.

That was really satisfying....In my last harvest a couple of weeks ago, I took two supers filled with frames of honeycomb from a single hive. Because the bees start from the bottom box and work upward, the top super was the most recently harvested nectar, and the super below it was from a few weeks before.

So I had two kinds of honey from the same hive, harvested on the same day. One was light and fruity, the other was dark and bold. I figure that's because this hive is right next to my avocado tree, which would have still been flowering when this honey was made.

I also shared my honey soaps, gave everyone an "I Love You Honey" sticker, and then we made honeycomb candles, which are really quick and easy and require no heat. You just roll them up with a wick. A preschooler can do it. (Well, with a little help!)

If you have a group, camp, or organization in need of a speaker, just give me a buzz.... 

Are you passionate about passionfruit? I know I am! When we were looking at houses, once upon a time, one of the first things we noticed was a huge passionflower vine climbing up a large tree in the yard. We bought that house! And we had passionfruit drinks, sorbets, jellies and ice creams until the parrots discovered the vine.....after which all we got were empty husks that fell to the ground after the parrots had their party!

I found the most wonderful all-natural passionfruit flavor that was originally meant for gelato. (Rolf's a chef, so I have access to all kinds of cool and unusual ingredients...) I tried infusing some raw Orange Blossom honey with a tiny bit of the passionfruit essence and WOW!!!! It's more subtle than the Key Lime Sublime, and really yummy!

I'm a stickler for purity! And my honey is this holy sort of thing that I don't mess around with. No heating, just from the hive into the bottle. But based on customer demand for high-end flavored honey, we have experimented just a teeny weeny bit with excellent results. Still all natural and still totally raw, but you can't deny "delicious".  And so, we have begun to bottle our "Passionfruit Pizzazz". It keeps selling out, so I guess we're onto something....sweet!

As I sit here at the computer, just outside my window is a hungry blue jay, wondering why my bird feeder is empty and soggy. We just finished a record breaking five days of rain, which rarely happens in our locale except maybe in August as a tropical storm. Spring is usually dry as a bone, and we had actually been suffering a bit of a draught.

The honeybees get very unhappy when it rains! They can't fly, so they all sit crowded in the hive and buzz. Feed the babies. Fan their wings at the nectar. Even when there is a small break in the rain, the showers have washed the nectar out of the flowers so they get cranky.

I had a small container of honey mixed with honeycomb. Cappings from my last day of extracting. I took it out to the bees for them to recycle. I'm sure that cheered them up.

Meanwhile, I am pretty cheered up. Not only did it stop raining, but we have a nice spring harvest of Orange Blossom honey. It's so sweet and thick. Nice and smooth. And a very good base for having some fun.

My fiancé is a chef, so he has access to ingredients that we mere mortals never see. He had an awesome, all natural Key Lime flavoring that I think was originally developed to flavor gelato. Anyway, I had been waiting anxiously for months because last year, Rolf took a little of this Key Lime deliciousness and mixed a small amount with some Orange Blossom honey. A marriage made in heaven, that's all I can say!!!

Philosophically, I don't like to do anything to honey. We never heat it, never filter it, never add anything to it.....it's nakedly pure and unprocessed. I do make an exception, however, to allow for an all natural bit of collaboration between the sweet sisters and ourselves, every so often. Like now.

We are the happy lovers of a bucket of Key Lime Sublime. And...we're willing to share. Want a taste? Let me know. You can come visit the bees while you're at it. Or just come say hi at the Coconut Grove Market on Saturdays. We'll give you a spoonful!

A busy day today....I'm bottling up lots of honey and making soap for the Food & Garden Festival at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden this weekend. It's the first time I've been a vendor there, although I attend events there all the time because I'm a member. So I'm busily labeling jars, shrink wrapping soap, and getting all kinds of handouts and literature ready for sharing.

Also, on Saturday morning at 11:30 AM I'll be doing an event for kids. It'll be a short version of my "What's the Buzz?" program. We'll be tasting honey and making honeycomb candles, which is always fun.

So come see me! It's Saturday and Sunday, April 14-15, 2012, from 9:30 AM - 4:30 PM.  Address: 10901 Old Cutler Road, Coral Gables FL  33156.

See you there! 

Spring has Sprung! And the Oranges have blossomed!!! We wait all year for this! The first of the orange blossom honey is IN and today I am spending the day bottling it up. Orange blossom is a premiere honey, and there are many who prefer it to all others. That zippy citrus mellowed by the smooth sweetness makes it a favorite.

We don't have orange groves here in Miami, but Steve keeps several hundred hives in various groves upstate. On Monday morning he got up at 4:00 AM (not at all unusual for him), got in his truck and drove a couple of hours north to harvest the beginning of this year's crop.

I met him at the "honey house" at about 6:00 PM. Weary and exhilarated, he tipped the drum of fresh honey into as many buckets as my little red Jeep would hold.

His truck was still full of supers filled with honey, and the air was thick with buzzing bees. It might have been terrifying to some, but the drone of the bees as they flew swiftly by was rather comforting. A celebration, really, that Spring has come at last, and there is nectar and honey for all! 

Zombie Bees? Sounds like an idea for next year's Halloween costume! So now, in addition to worrying about toxic flowers and pollen caused by systemic pesticides, we have another culprit to add to the mix.

Apparently, there is a parasitic fly, known as the phorid fly, or apocephalus borealis, which lays its eggs in the bees abdomen, causing the bees to exhibit "zombie like" beehavior, and destroys their sense of direction. It also causes deformed wings, another symptom of Colony Collapse Disorder.

Not to be gloom-and-doom oriented, truly I am an optimist by nature. However, all of this information helps to give us an understanding of the widespread group of challenges experienced by today's honeybee.

To see the whole article, go to: http://www.capitalpress.com/content/AP-colony-collapse-010412 

 As we all know, our honeybees are having a terrible time, and while there are many factors to consider, the one that is most critical is the use of systemic pesticides. Systemic basically means that the active insect killing agent is within the plant itself. Therefore the flowers and the pollen are toxic to the bees. 

Here's an excerpt of a great article that you should totally check out:

Of particular concern is a group of pesticides, chemically similar to nicotine, called neonicotinoids (neonics for short), and one in particular called clothianidin. Instead of being sprayed, neonics are used to treat seeds, so that they’re absorbed by the plant’s vascular system, and then end up attacking the central nervous systems of bees that come to collect pollen. Virtually all of today’s genetically engineered Bt corn is treated with neonics. The chemical industry alleges that bees don’t like to collect corn pollen, but new research shows that not only do bees indeed forage in corn, but they also have multiple other routes of exposure to neonics.

Here's the link to the rest of the article:

 http://grist.org/food/2012-01-13-honey-bees-problem-nearing-a-critical-point/

Let me know what you think! 

A local reporter came out here on Monday to learn about bees and honey. She's a freelance food writer for the New TImes, and also hosts her own blog, called the Jam Garden. She did a great job, and posted some video and great audio as well. And so, to find out more than you ever knew you didn't know about bees, check it out:

http://thejamgarden.squarespace.com/food/2012/1/12/in-depth-article-the-buzz-on-honey-bees.html 

 This just in from my alert son-in-law, who is about to become the father of twins. It's a reprint from "Lifehacker" about why local honey is important. I couldn't have said it better myself!!

You'll see that they mention Local Harvest at the bottom of the article. Yay!

Buy Local Honey to Make Sure You’re Really Getting Honey, and Support Local Beekeepers

A report by Food Safety News earlier this week claims that the majority of the honey available in most grocery and department stores in the United States doesn't legally meet the definition of "honey." It's been "ultra-filtered," in order to produce a super-clear product that won't crystallize. In the process, the honey loses any and all pollen, which is required to trace the honey to its origins in case of contamination and may have health benefits. Here's how to find the good stuff.

This week's report by Food Safety News sampled honey at grocery stores around the country, and found most of it has been filtered to the point where it has no pollen at all. The World Health Organization (WHO), the European Commission, and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) all state that in order for a product to be called honey, there has to be some pollen content. The industry group that represents honey manufacturers and importers, the National Honey Board, says this is misleading, and says they're just doing what their customers want. Food Safety Watch disagrees, and says removing all of the pollen from honey removes any way to test for its geographic origins, doesn't improve shelf-life, negates the possible health benefits of pollen, and is actually being used to cover up the import ofunregulated and often contaminated honey from China through another country like India and finally into the US. In fact, in the EU, pollen must be listed as an ingredient on bottles of honey so consumers know what they're getting. The FDA, on the other hand, hasn't responded to the allegations, and doesn't currently inspect honey for pollen content.

The best way to deal with the controversy is to avoid it altogether. Real honey, sometimes marketed as "raw honey," is closer than you think. Natural food stores and farmers markets are far more likely to stock honey where the pollen has not been filtered out. They also tend to carry local honey, harvested by apiaries in your community that could use the support. Local Harvest, who we've mentioned can help you find a CSA, also can help you find an apiary or beekeeper in your area that sells their own honey. The closer to home you buy your honey, the better off you'll be until the honey-laundering matter is settled.

What's going on around here? Usually October signals the end of our rainy season, with a happy conclusion to Hurricane Season at the end of November. But the last couple of weeks have been marked by unseasonable rains.

Here's why we care: When it rains, it washes the nectar and pollen out of the flowers. Bees don't fly when it's raining, so they're all cooped up and cranky in the hive. When it finally stops, out they go, zooming towards the nearest blossoms. Only thing is....there's no nectar left, nor pollen.

And the timing was right at the height of a major honey flow. Devastating! My beekeeping partner, Steve, was expecting to harvest 100 drums of honey in a couple of weeks, but now is lucky if he gets 30. That's a big difference, at $1000 a drum!!!!!

We have far fewer bees--just thirteen hives, but it impacts us as well!. We DO have honey in stock, no worries, but it would be more bountiful with better weather. So keep your fingers crossed that the rain goes away and sunny days and warm nights resume. We want the honey, honey!!! 

Checked the bees....took the covers off all thirteen hives simultaneously. Not just a basic look/see, but a major breaking down and removing supers of honey, then removing the queen excluders and going right down into the bottom deep supers and looking at the community in action. Always an amazing experience!

Even after smoking them thoroughly, the bees were a big agitated. Several got caught in the folds of my bee suit, panicked, and stung me right through the fabric. My arm looks like I have bodybuilder biceps.....I don't usually swell up like that....oh well...bee venom is good for me!

It was such a surreal sight to see bees by the thousands, boiling over the tops of their hives, all of them at the same time. They were pouring out so quickly they really looked like liquid flowing. Smooth and overflowing. It was gorgeous, in a science fiction sort of way.  

Well, we're breathing a sigh of relief here in Florida, as Irene pushes farther out to sea. There's not much you can do with your beehives when a storm threatens. I've got 13 hives out in the backyard, and my beekeeping partner-in-crime, Steve, has 700 throughout the state. Think about trying to tie those down!!!! When the hives are full of honey, they're nice and heavy and will mostly stay put....although a few will topple over, but they won't blow away.

However, we just harvested, and our hives are as light as could be. Glad they'll be out of harms way......

This just in from China.......Laundered honey, tainted and passing through India on its way to the US, is becoming a big problem, and one the FDA seems unable to adequately handle. 

Here's the link to a very informative article on the issue:

http://www.grist.org/food-safety/2011-08-18-honey-laundering-tainted-counterfeit-from-china-in-US?ref=se

Check it out!!! I for one am stunned by these facts, and increasingly grateful for my hardworking girls out in the backyard.

So let the buyer bee-ware.....and buy from a trusted local beekeeper!

About a month ago a lovely older gentlemen showed up at my front door to purchase some honey. It was for his son, who was unfortunately suffering a debilitating skin disorder located on his face. 

He called up again this week. They were almost out of honey and needed a little more. When he arrived he told me that his son had just been to the dermatologist. Apparently, she couldn't believe the improvement! She said that she had planned on prescribing a special cream, but now saw no need to, and that they should just keep on doing whatever they were doing.

So, two pounds of honey later, he was on his way. The dermatologist is on vacation for the next couple of weeks, but I can't wait to talk to her when she returns.  I know honey is great for the skin, but want to learn more about it's effect on whatever his particular disorder is.

Seems like the number of ailments that are happily treated with honey continues to grow, day by day...