• ¼ Cup finely crushed Pecans
• 1 ½ Cup Flour
• ½ Teaspoon Salt
• ½ Cup Brown Sugar
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract, could substitute almond extract
• ½ Cup Butter

Spray muffin ( honey tart )pans (4) with “Pam” or grease then sprinkle the finely crushed pecans over all the greased pans.
Mix dry ingredients and then knead in wet ingredients for two minutes.
Line the honey tart muffin pans with dough to form a shell.

Tart Filling

• ¾ Cup Chopped Pecans
• ¾ Cup Blackberry Honey• 2 Eggs
• ½ teaspoon Salt
• ½ Cup Brown Sugar
• 2 Tablespoons Melted Butter
• 5 dozen pecan halves

Beat the eggs then add the balance of the filling ingredients. Place one tablespoon of filling in each tart shell. Top off with one pecan half on each honey tart. (You may eat any of the pecan halves left over.

Preheat oven to 375°F and bake for 15-20 minutes.

Blackberry honey has a robust taste that is not lost in the cooking process. I highly recommend only blackberry honey for this recipe!

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By Cleo Hill, Churchill, Montana

Honey Cherry Pie filling Ingredients:

1 pint sour red cherries
¾ cup Star Thistle Honey I don’t substitute
4 teaspoons cornstarch
¼ teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon butter
¼ teaspoon almond extract

Making a cherry pie without the “can of pie filling” seems to be a lost art. I tell my girls that making a honey cherry pie is simple, quick and the results are “no comparison!” I can cherries so I use a pint of of my canned sour cherries, drain the juice from the cherries and save the juice. In a saucepan, combine cherry juice, cornstarch, star thistle honey, (I can’t say enough about this wonderful star thistle honey, it is my favorite to eat and I bake with it when I want delicate taste that does not overcome my recipe!) and salt. Stir over medium heat until liquid is clear. Now add almond extract and butter, stir and then add the cherries. Pour the complete honey cherry pie filling into your favorite unbaked 9″ pie shell. Place your top crust and affix, remember to pierce the top crust for vents with fork or your custom designs. Place the pie in a preheated oven of 400 degrees F. and bake until crust is golden/brown.

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By Cynthia Herbison
Hastings, New Zealand

Honey Recipe Collections were started by my Dad listening to a radio show called Aunt Daisy. Father passed away in 1947, I have kept them ever since then.

We use lots of honey and our family.

• One tablespoon honey mixed in one pint of milk and frozen for ice block treats
• A large tablespoon of honey for each pot of soup.
• Droplets of honey, on the babies pacifier.
• Honey applied directly to burns, sores and bites,
• Plant cuttings for rooting dipped in honey to prevent rot.
• Honey for bee stings
• Honey for sweetener in herbal tea, black tea and green tea.
• Lemon and honey drinks, hot for colds or just a hot drink before going to bed; cold for refreshing summer drink.
• Equal quantities of honey and vinegar for that persistent cough, especially at night also to help one sleep on those restless nights.
• Honey, butter and toast for breakfast.
• I get most proved especially apple slices in a solution of honey and water before drying in the dehydrator.

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Gourmet honey has graced the tables of local apiaries since the beginning of civilization. Honey from a specific area or local usually was collected by the beekeeping families of many generations. The beekeeper found out which flowers of the area made the best honey and then sold that honey at a premium. Seldom was a surplus for export ever collected.

Commercial beekeeping today centers around pollination, honey is the by-product. Blended flavors of honey from the areas and flowers that the beekeeper visits in the honey flow make up a blend of “table honey”, “cooking honey” and “wildflower honey” all of which are non-descript, sweet honeys. The beekeeper may start in Florida, move to California then to the Midwest and north as far as North Dakota and Montana then back to Florida for the winter. This is a similar practice that Egyptian beekeepers participated in every year. The barges were loaded with beehives and floated down the Nile to a new location as each flower source produced nectar.

Today there are fewer permanent apiaries as there are fewer single family farms. Home use and hobbyist beekeepers are no longer vogue. Those smaller apiaries have the distinct flare of carrying on the tradition of producing gourmet honey from single flower sources. A few commercial beekeepers have honey flows from yellow star thistle, tupelo, blackberry and palmetto to name a few that are harvested separate.

The next step in defining gourmet honey is that during harvesting, storing and processing the honey temperature does not raise above 120 degrees F to insure natural color, flavor, essence and original nutrition.

The Gourmet Station has defined gourmet honey perfectly in saying that like wine, honey has “nose”, different hues of colors from crystal clear as water to an opaque dark brown. The flavors range from tupelo honey that taste like a floral arrangement smells to star thistle honey that dances on the buds to heavenly music, daintily leaving only footprints of floral nuances as it skips from the palate. No this no ordinary honey found on the syrup aisle of the grocery store, this is gourmet honey defined! The Gourmet Station has long been touted as an authority of gourmet foods. Gourmet Station specializes in Fine Dining Delivered. Birthday Dinner, Anniversary Dinner, Thank You Dinner, Thinking Of You Dinner, or Congratulations Dinner all delivered to your door. If you are seeking exquisite food gifts, check out the Gourmet Station!

Gourmet honey can still be found even in the face of bee decline. The shortage of bees is a global threat to our supply of food. 30% to 40% of all our food is pollinated by bees. Support of your gourmet honey beekeeper, by buying gourmet honey, is a direct benefit to your next meal. The food you eat next year will have its’ seeds pollinated this summer!

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Over one million honeybee hives are used to pollinate the US almond crop that can exceed $1.9 billion this year. Half of these honeybee hives will have to be imported from states as far away as Florida. Finding enough honey hives to pollinate the almond crop becomes more difficult each year. Each year the almond growers plant more almond crops, and the beekeepers have to deal with a barrage of bee diseases such as mites, beetles, foul brood, wax moths and CCD, but the absolute worst is bee rustling. An establish beehive is worth $185 to $225 and the pollination fee is averaging $140 to $150. The bee hive robberies have become epidemic nationwide. Help the beekeeper, if you see strange activity around bee hives at night call 911. Honey production requires that the beehive be stimulated early in the year to increase the number of bees in the hive. For commercial beekeepers this “buildup” of bees for honey gathering is accomplished with the almond pollination season. The honey gathered for this early build up is completely consumed by the newly hatched bees in the hive. Bees need pollen as well as honey to feed the newborn honeybees. The benefit of the honeybees for this pollination event starts with honey bees gathering pollen from an almond flower and depositing the pollen on the next flower to fertilize the seed (almond nut), which in turn gives the tree a signal to build the fruit around the new almond nut.

Next, bee hives are moved to Oregon, Washington, Texas, Kansas and other midwestern states, on up to the Dakotas, Montana, Utah and finally back to Florida or Texas fto pollinate ”winter crops”, produce honey and a stay for a warm winter. This pollination migration for other nuts, vegetable and fruit crops such as cabbage, spinach, squash, apples, cherries, apricots, avocados, strawberries, blackberries raspberries, melons, sunflowers, grasses and other crops that produce seeds for next year’s harvest is repeated every year to produce American honey and the bounty of food we require.. After the bees have increased their population in the early spring to adequate numbers to harvest surplus honey, they begin to store more honey than they consume.

Surplus honey is the honey bees will not need to consume to survive the winter. The surplus honey is harvested by the beekeeper. This Honey crop accounts for only 60% of the beekeeper’s annual income. However this is where you come in. By supporting your local beekeeper, you are ensuring that the food that you will need next year will be available. Researchers have found that honey is far more healthier than sugar. Use honey in your cooking recipes, add honey to your dining table and look for healthy honey remedies. You can see that honey is a source of survival in your neighborhood. Support your beekeepers, eat more honey!
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The real benefits of honey come as a byproduct of honey gathering. Alfalfa hay and grass has to be pollinated to grow a crop. Without alfalfa, beef and dairy cow products would be in short supply. Pollination is the greatest of all benefits of honey! One third of the world’s grasses, fruits, nuts, beans and vegetables must be pollinated every year to assure that man can eat the products grown AFTER pollination. Our foods are benefits of honey.

Honey bee disaster has come and gone for years. There has been mites, viruses, intestinal diseases and the hybrid of Africanized bees to diminish our honey production and limit the benefits of honey. Most of the causes were identified and hybrid bees would attack the genetically weak links or weather would improve for the honey bee disaster to wane, but not so this time!

Colony collapse disorder (CCD) has struck worldwide. The beekeeper can lose from 30% to 90% of his beehives in 12 months. It has been theorized that the intense use of cell phones confuse the bee’s built in navigation system causing the worst honey bee disaster in recorded history. Even though Haagen-Dazs has donated a half million dollars for research and Penn State University is working full time to crack the code of mega honey bee loss we are about to face the 3rd year in a row of expediential loss of beehives and their sharing the benefits of honey with mankind.

Gourmet honeys are benefits of honey. Digestion problems, burns, and remedies flourish as benefits of honey and will be addressed in later articles but for today we wanted to alert you to support the ongoing research for healthy bees that can only result in more benefits of honey.

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Another factor creating honey shortage is that the honey crop in Argentina and other countries in the southern hemisphere’s from last summer was poor. Honey has become a world commodity and prices worldwide are affected.

An anti-dumping suit legislated more honey shortage by saying giving limits to how much honey can be imported. China has almost been shut out of US honey markets because of the duties imposed. Wales had a cold damp summer which affected their total honey production. Bees don’t go looking for nectar when the weather is bad. Bad weather is another reason for honey shortage.

In recent years, low honey prices cause many bee keepers to stop their beekeeping, which created another factor of honey shortage. Huge price increases have nearly doubled the price of honey as a result of the honey shortage. Tom Sanford, a beekeeping specialist at University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences says prices have risen from 40 cents per pound to around 80 to 90 cents per pound for unprocessed wholesale honey in 650 pound increments.

Pests are another problem that contributes to a honey shortage. An exotic mite is wiping out whole colonies of honey producers. This mite feeds on the bees. Introduced to Florida ten years ago, these mites have impacted wild bees.

The African bee was feared to really hurt US production creating another honey shortage. Florida, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas are the states impacted by this pest, but have not created as much honey shortage is they did in Australia, Canada and Mexico.

Honey shortage is not the only concern. With prices skyrocketing, honey producers are focusing on honey production rather than renting bees out to farmers for pollination of crops such as watermelons, squash and cucumbers. Most vegetables and fruits can only grow as a result of bee pollination. Honey shortages and bee shortages are concerns for us all.

Gourmet honey is available even with the honey shortage. HOWEVER, we expect to sell out early because we don’t have as much to sell as years before. Order Gourmet Honey NOW!
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How will the honey shortage affect the average consumer that says, “Oh it doesn’t affect me, I don’t eat honey”? Ice cream is sweetened with honey. The biggest consumer of honey is bakeries. These industries receive the fuel cost increase and now the sweetener cost increase. The honey shortage is only the FIRST indicator that we have a HUGE problem. It is true that many people do not consume the preferable healthy honey for sweetening. However poor weather and hive decline directly affect our food sources globally! Many fruits and vegetables are dependent on honey bees to pollinate the plants before a fruit or vegetable can begin to develop. Without honey bees pollinating the flora our food sources would shrink to 1/2 in two years worldwide. We must discover the cause of hive decline before disaster falls.

Honey shortages will continue to drive the cost of honey up. China and Brazil, the two largest exporters of honey to the US declare that poor weather and hive decline has caused poor crops of honey again. To prevent the global honey shortage from getting out of hand we need a bumper crop of honey in 2008. Honey shortage can be overcome if there are regional bumper honey crops. However our honey reserves have been tapped and now need to be replenished. Gourmet Honey, Raw Honey and monofloral honey that sell for premium prices because of the extensive labor to produce will see prices go even higher as less honey is produced.

To compound the honey shortage, China honey was found to have traces of antibiotics in the honey and this has caused the Chinese honey to be banned for sale in Britain and the US. Most supermarket honey is a blend of 75% foreign honey with the remainder gathered domestically. Fewer beekeepers are in the honey business as the result of hard work and low pay for long hours. Support your local beekeeper, buy specialty gourmet honey and raw honey to show your support for such a vital link in your future food source!
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If you buy comb honey there is a 100% assurance that your honey is “raw”! If the comb honey is surrounded by liquid honey there is a 90% chance that the liquid honey is pasteurized. If the beekeeper has stored raw honey in the comb until just before selling the raw honey, there is a less chance of airborne spores contaminating the raw honey. This is one way that raw honey is sold after the fall harvest. If your beekeeper elects to offer comb honey, please realize what happened in his beehive. It takes over 8 pounds of honey to produce a pound of wax. All comb honey is sold in “new wax”, wax made the same year as the honey. Wax comb is normally reused every year, and will result in more honey to the beekeeper as no honey was used in wax production. These methods of caring for raw honey are deliberate extra work details for the beekeeper. If it is extra work then of course the price per pound of honey will go up. Is the extra money paid for raw honey worth it? Absolutely! The benefit to the body and your good health is the same as eating raw vegetables compared to eating over cooked vegetables. Raw honey has more nutrients, vitamins and enzymes than pasteurized honey.

Processing raw honey is the most expensive feats of processing honey. The honey does not exceed 125°. The viscosity of honey at this temperature does not allow the honey to flow as freely as 150° pasteurized honey. The honey will not flow freely through a commercial filter so the raw honey slowly runs through a strainer allowing pollen and some wax particles to be included in the raw honey. This is not an unhealthy issue but the clarity issue of raw honey will be less than the commercially processed honey. The taste of raw honey is fabulous! The floral nuances are preserved with a smell of freshness. If you get a chance to hug your beekeeper, do so and tell them how much you appreciate the EXTRA they do to bring you RAW HONEY. Your beekeeper can be stung an average of 3 times a day all summer long while plying the beekeeping trade.

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Raw honey is preferred over pasteurized honey because the raw honey has all its natural enzymes that aid digestion and good health. The reason a beekeeper would not store all his honey as raw honey is the raw honey has airborne spores in it that could in time cause the honey to ferment. The honey would then have to be dumped. Most honey worldwide is cooked to 140° and is no longer a raw honey. This pasteurization of honey allows the sealed honey to be stored at 60° for at least 3 years without spoilage. Honey that crystallizes (turns solid) has not spoiled. All honey will crystallize, but can be returned to the liquid state by warming the glass bottle of honey in warm water not to exceed 125°.

Raw Gourmet Honey is one huge step further than just unpasteurized honey. Keeping the single flower source honey separate from all the other honey that the bees bring into the hive is a vigilant task performed by the beekeeper. Much more time and trips to the apiary are required in addition to labeling stored honey supers at the honey-house before extracting. If the beekeeper was to sell raw gourmet honey for $15 a pound it would still be a wonderful price compared to the costly efforts that went into presenting Gourmet Raw Honey to the consumer!

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