It’s been almost a year since we brought four hives of Canadian Honeybees to White Oaks and I know you must all BEE on the edge of your seats wondering how they’re doing!

As we mentioned in our previous post, we helped bring a combined total of 750,000 bees into Niagara-on-the-lake, and hooray no one was hurt! Okay fine, if you ask our Head Chef, Michael Price he may have been stung a few times but he’s still here to tell us about it so all is good in the world.

Here at White Oaks we love to keep it local any way we can. We are passionate about giving these bees a great home to buzz around in, all while providing us with some delicious honey to use. What do we do with this honey?

We first start by extracting each frame of capped honey. (Warning: do not do this unless you have been trained and have one of those fancy beekeeping suits!) Then, we use a special slicing tool (capping scratcher in case you’re curious) to remove the wax cappings and expose the delish honey. Now for the fun part – place the frame into your extractor and hit the power button. Check out the cool slow-mo video we took of the extractor! Don’t be fooled though, this spins at a rapid speed and fills the tank with honey.  Now that we’ve gathered all the honey, we jar it and voila! It is ready to enjoy.

Currently, you can find a scrumptious honey cake on our new LIV Restaurant menu using honey harvested from our own hives! It’s a must try this summer.  If you’re attending a conference you will see our fresh honey on our coffee break stations, ready to sweeten your tea!  Our kitchen team utilizes the honey in a variety of recipes over the course of a year and we are starting to package our honey and give it out as sweet little gifts!

We love our bees and the best part is, the great feeling we all have while helping to do our part in preserving Canada’s Honeybee population. Visit https://www.ontariobee.com/ to find out how you can help too!