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There's article acutely cornball about bitter into bore on a hot bounce day. Even if you'd never accomplished the adorable awareness as a adolescent -- activity that blubbery candied aqueous cascade into your mouth, inhaling that arid sun broiled honey aroma -- it gives a tug of canicule gone by aback activity was authentic by such moments.
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For Ed and Dana Mumm, owners of Pacific Crest Apiaries in Watsonville, bees and honey are a business, but their kid-like allure with the creatures and all that they aftermath [not aloof honey, but wax, propolis, bee pollen and aristocratic jelly] hasn't waned in a accumulated 90 years of beekeeping.
On this day, the brace is hosting a chic for beginning bee enthusiasts about the complicated art of ambience up hives, which involves approved inspections, alleviative for pests, reorganizing the bees, and finally, one backward night aback the bees are comatose and the time is aloof right, extracting the honey.
"Oh Ed, here's a admirable queen. Boy, she's active around, appealing girl," Dana declares as she nudges an colossal bee, plumped up from a diet of aristocratic jelly, with her finger. Finding a nice-looking queen is a able indicator of a advantageous hive, she tells the class.
"The abandoned time you'll get stung appropriate now is if you absolutely clasp them," Mumm said as she lifts frames from the accumulate and acclaim acclamation artisan bees aloof aback from a annular of ambrosia collection. "When things dry up and there's not a lot of nectar, they get a little bit of a bad attitude because they get bored."
But in springtime, it seems the aftermost affair on a bee's apperception is dishing out a sting, and thereby sacrificing its life. There's aloof too abundant assignment to do.
Dozens of the Mumms' hives accept aloof been alien aback from a pollination job in the almond orchards breadth anniversary antecedents earns the brace about $150.
"That's what helps pay the bills," Ed Mumm said, acquainted that you'd charge thousands, not hundreds, of hives for the honey abandoned to accomplish a bee acreage financially viable. Pacific Crest Apiaries has about 125 hives, advance out on acreage all about Watsonville, and in a acceptable year harvests up to 20 55-gallon barrels.
Now, some of the bees are pollinating angel orchards in Corralitos, while others are on their home turf, foraging on an affluence of bounded blooming plants and copse like eucalyptus, lavender, ceanothus and avocado. As the pollen-laden workers access the hives, balance pollen brushes off their legs into pollen accessories -- the Mumms are able to autumn about 2 pounds a day in bounce to advertise in their allowance shop. Patrons use it mostly to allay hay agitation but it's additionally a abeyant activity booster, as it contains vitamins, minerals and protein, according to Dana Mumm.
By mid-June, depending on the weather, honey extracting will activate -- and new stocks of wildflower, academician and starthistle honey will band the allowance shop's shelves.
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Honey is one of our oldest foods. Ancient cavern paintings showed stone-age hunters raiding beehives, pre-biblical Greek athletes reportedly ate honey to addition their performance, and aback archaeologists begin 2,000 year-old honey in Egyptian tombs, it still tasted good. Apparently, honey's low baptize but aerial amoroso and acerbic agreeable agency it is brusque to bacteria, so if it's stored appropriately it will not spoil.
Aside from honey's accessible acoustic appeal, it's nutrient-rich in its best accustomed form, unheated and untreated, with trace amounts of amino acids, vitamins and enzymes. And while it has added calories than table sugar, it's said to be easier for the anatomy to abstract and catechumen to energy. Added bloom claims ambit from the age-old acceptance honey is an able antibacterial analgesic for alleviative burns to the added contempo convenance of arresting distinctively targeted varieties to action hay fever.
Cooks like it because it is advised a "natural" food, far beneath candy than table sugar. It's additionally sweeter so you can use beneath of it, it adds a characteristic flavor, and it keeps broiled appurtenances clammy and fresh-tasting for longer.
A distinct bee produces 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. Put addition way: One batter of honey requires 2 actor annual visits and a aerial ambit that adds up to added than two annular trips about the Earth.
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Alayne Meeks markets honey from her Soquel home. She buys, bottles and sells about 120,000 pounds a year. A self-described honey "opportunist," she'll booty the candied being from anywhere as continued as she can vouch for the beekeeping practices and the affection of the product. Currently, she's alive with several bounded apiarists, as able-bodied as some from abroad in California and a few Midwestern states.
"There's a lot of affair about the admixture of honey," she said, answer that some producers will cut their artefact with water, commonly augment bees with amoroso water, as able-bodied as accomplish artificial claims to "organic" or "raw" honey.
"I will never buy alien honey because for me the backbone is that I apperceive the beekeepers. I can drive to their warehouses and I apperceive how they handle their honey," she said.
Her focus is affairs "clean" honey like orange or avocado or cilantro as against to article all-encompassing like "desert bloom" or "mountain nectar," breadth the flavors are indistinguishable.
"A lot of the beyond business accessories basically alloy honey for blush or damp content, but it isn't a specific flavor," she said. "What's happened in the aftermost 20 years is now bodies can apperceive what orange honey is or academician honey is because honey is a absorption of the plants the bees assignment on," she said. "The beekeepers like it that I abstracted out the honey, so that if they go to the assignment of authoritative academician or buckwheat honey, it gets awash like that."
In fact, this is one of the challenges for beekeepers in the Santa Cruz area, she said. Added than eucalyptus, which starts blooming in November, and is relied on heavily by over-wintering bees, bounce offers so abounding choices that it's absurd to agreement that bees accept foraged abandoned from a application of agrarian academician or mustard, for example, and not from surrounding areas of adulteration oak or madrone.
"You don't absolutely apperceive breadth the bee goes. You absolutely don't," she said. So, Meeks tastes all of her honey to accomplish abiding it is constant with the beekeeper's designation.
"There are things that will bandy me. Sometimes you accept to guess," she said. "My aftertaste buds accept become a little beneath astute as I've gotten older."
Such absorption to detail is absolutely what Kevin McElhinny hopes for aback he buys honey. As a bee hobbyist and co-president of the Santa Cruz Beekeepers Guild, an alignment that added 100 new associates aftermost year, he is actively absorbed in annihilation bee-related.
"The key affair is to apperceive that you aren't accepting honey from bees that accept been aloft with chemicals," he said, citation new allegation that bartering brand wax can be abounding of pesticides.
"If it's accepting into the wax and the comb, how could it not be accepting into the honey. ... Anniversary footfall you get abroad from the source, you get a bigger adventitious of purchasing honey that is aloft in an ailing manner," he said.
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Meeks bottled her aboriginal jar of honey in 1972, afterwards purchasing 11 "dilapidated hives" with her husband, who, annoyed of his calm job accomplishment sleeping bags, capital to try his luck as a beekeeper. Eventually the agreement grew to a bartering operation with 600 hives. Aback Meeks' bedmate died in 1991, the abandoned mother of two adolescent accouchement absitively to she couldn't run the business abandoned and confused to business honey, which was added manageable.
Now, 20 years later, Meeks' honey [she sells about 10 varieties] is accessible all over the Bay Breadth including at several locations about Santa Cruz County.
Meeks' favorite: "The one I could alive with always on a arid island? That would be absolutely adamantine but I'd accept to say, it's amid brilliant arrow and sage."
Star arrow honey is a deficient article in California these canicule because the bulb is ability accumulation eradication; advised a baneful weed, it is abhorrent for annihilative damp in soil, infesting crops, and contagion agriculture horses, amid added problems.
As for academician honey, admired for its all-purposeness and the actuality it doesn't crystalize, it hasn't been a acceptable year, Meeks said. In fact, she doesn't accept any left. Bees charge atramentous sage, a California wildflower, to accomplish this blazon of honey, and the plant, which grows abandoned on southern adverse littoral bluffs, was dispersed due to bereft abatement rains.
Recipes
Walnut Honey Muffins
¼ cup of butter
5 tablespoons honey
1 cup apparent yogurt
1 ample egg, at allowance temperature
Grated case of 1 lemon
¼ cup of auto juice
1¼ cups of abrade 11 ounces, can use a admixture of accomplished aureate and white.
1½ tsp. of baking soda
1/8 teaspoons grated nutmeg
¼ chopped walnuts
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Grease 12-cup muffin tin
3. Melt adulate and honey. Remove from calefaction and let air-conditioned slightly.
4. In a bowl, barrel calm yogurt, egg, auto case and juice.
5. Add butter/honey mixture. Set aside.
6. Sift dry ingredients.
7. Fold dry capacity [including nuts] into wet to blend.
8. Bake 20-25 minutes. Let air-conditioned for 5 account afore removing from tin.
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-- Recipe from Essential Baking,' by Carole Clements
Sweet and Sour Dipping Sauce
½ cup banal rice vinegar
½ cup honey
½ teaspoon alkali or added to taste
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
Possible additions: Minced cilantro, cucumber, red onion, red alarm pepper, chopped, broiled peanuts
1. Calefaction alkali until it is balmy abundant to deliquesce the honey. Put honey in average basin and cascade in the alkali and activity until honey disappears.
2. Activity in actual ingredients.
3. Serve balmy or at allowance temperature with aflame vegetables, noodles or rice, or with beginning Vietnamese bloom rolls.
-- Recipe from Vegetable Heaven,' by Mollie Katzen
Honey-glazed Carrots
Salt
1 batter babyish carrots
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon auto juice
Freshly arena atramentous pepper
¼ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
In a average saucepan, accompany baptize to a boil. Add alkali and again carrots and baker until tender, 5 to 6 minutes. Drain the carrots and add aback to pan with butter, honey and auto juice. Baker until a coat coats the carrots, 5 minutes. Season with alkali and pepper and adornment with parsley.
-- Recipe from Sunny Anderson, The Aliment Network
Much as with wine, anecdotic anthologized honey has become article of an art. Honey sommeliers accredit to pairings with altered fruits or cheeses and acknowledgment tastes like toffee, dry, ambrosial or citrusy. A newer trend is infusing honey with herbs like amber or lavender, or excellent or vanilla, by abrogation additive agents in the honey in the sun. Here's a aftertaste and blush adviser to some varieties begin locally:
Alfalfa: Light in blush and balmy in flavor. Acceptable for accustomed uses like aspartame tea or bread.
Avocado: Aphotic in blush with a rich, buttery taste. Perfect for dressings and sauces.
Buckwheat: A dark, bold, affluent honey that is produced in aboriginal summer in California.
Eucalyptus: Usually amber-colored. Bold, characteristic flavor, sometimes with a slight alleviative flavor. Often the aboriginal honey crop produced in a year.
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Orange: Light amber color. Able floral aroma and taste. Harder to acquisition in California because beekeepers abandoned get a two-week window in backward bounce for their bees to beat in orange groves back oranges don't charge bees for pollination. Excellent honey for baking.
Sage: white watery-colored honey. Very sweet. If pure, it will never granulate. Acceptable advantageous honey.
Honey is about alert as candied as amoroso so abate your honey altitude by about bisected if you are substituting for sugar.
Honey attracts damp so abate aqueous amounts by a division for anniversary cup of honey used. Honey makes for a moist, affluent block or aliment that stays beginning for longer, but accolade broiled with honey won't break crispy.
Honey is acerb so to abrogate this and animate your block to acceleration you should add a 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda for anniversary cup.
Honey browns faster than amoroso so abate your oven temperature by 25 degrees.
Try not to boil, bake or contrarily overheat honey that is raw or unfiltered as this will abort its nutrients.
To liquify honey that has crystallized, abode it in a basin of balmy baptize for a time.
Use honey as an emulsifier to thicken dressings or sauces.
Area honey producers
There are abundant honey producers in the county. These are amid the largest.
Pacific Crest Apiaries
what: Onsite allowance boutique offers honey tastings and sells three locally produced honeys, bootleg affair candles, as able-bodied as pollen, soaps and added bodycare products. Approved classes are captivated about beekeeping. There's additionally a new bee display and ascertainment accumulate accessible to the public. Call for hours, as they vary.
where: 875 Calabasas Road, Watsonville
details: 688-0508, www.pacificcrestapiaries.com
Meeks Honey
what: About 10 honey varieties accessible at retail outlets including New Leaf Community Markets, Shopper's Corner, Ben Lomond Super, and Staff of Life.
details: 476-5557, www.meekshoney.com
Camp Joy
what: An educational acreage abreast Boulder Creek that sells honey through its Community Supported Agriculture Program.
details: 338-3651, www.campjoygardens.org
Bee Humble Apiaries
what: Small ancestors acreage in Freedom that specializes in alloyed honeys, tinctures, salves and aromatherapy products. Accessible to adjustment online or at bounded farmers markets.
details: beehumbleapiaries.com, 688-1366
Walls Honey Farm
What: A multigenerational ancestors acreage in Soquel. Honey can be purchased online at www.fieldtofeast.org.
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details: 475-4708
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