Native bee honey
$35.00

 

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Sorry but we are not producing sugarbag honey until further notice. We are focussing on producing more hives, both for sale and to build up numbers. While we are doing this, we cannot produce honey. It has been poor conditions for bee growth the last few years with all the wet La Nina weather so hives do not have much honey to spare.

Sugarbag is honey made by Australian native stingless bees. Normal honey is made by honey bees introduced from Europe. Both types of honey are a natural sweet substance originating from the nectar of flowers, which bees collect and transform. But sugarbag has its own special flavour. Try it drizzled over vanilla ice cream or other dessert. Only tiny amounts of sugarbag are produced, less than 1 kg per hive per year and so it is a special product, to be savoured and relished.

Sugarbag was, and continues to be, a highly prized food for Indigenous Australians who hunted it from wild nests; it’s real bush tucker. Read an extract from The Native Bee Book about indigenous peoples and stingless bees. 

Our hive designs that allow us to extract honey sustainably, without harming the colony. Extracting honey from a hive with a dedicated honey section is simple: we just pry, pierce, drain and strain. First, we remove the honey section by loosening it with a hive tool or other lever and prying it open. Then we invert the honey section so that the open side faces up, and pierce the honey pots (after waiting for the bees to fly out). We use a tool that resembles a miniature bed of nails to do this. Next we turn the honey section over onto a plastic container to catch the tide of liquid gold that issues forth. We allow the honey to drain for at least five minutes. Our final step is to strain the honey again using a finer gauze to filter out any impurities. That's it, no more processing is involved.

Be sure to store your liquid gold in the fridge.