Friday, February 15, 2008

Honey & Cheese Class



























For those of you who missed this fabulous How Sweet It Is: Cheese and Honey Class at Murray's Cheese Shop down on Bleeker Street, here are the pictures! Guest were treated to a Tasting and Pairing of 7 of Murray's finest artisan cheeses and 7 varietal honeys from us at Red Bee Honey. Amy Sisti, Murray' mail order manager is seen on the left and Taylor Cocalis, Murray's Class coordinator on the right and me in the middle.Take a peek at how these ladies set up each place setting for the event. All 24 place setting were spectacular each with its own red and white wine and Lurisa Italian bottled water. The cheese were set up in a clockwise fashion beginning at 12 noon and the honeys presented in line to pair up with each cheese. For more detailed information about the cheeses and honeys visit our Recipe pages.



Honey & Cheese Class



























For those of you who missed this fabulous How Sweet It Is: Cheese and Honey Class at Murray's Cheese Shop down on Bleeker Street, here are the pictures! Guest were treated to a Tasting and Pairing of 7 of Murray's finest artisan cheeses and 7 varietal honeys from us at Red Bee Honey. Amy Sisti, Murray' mail order manager is seen on the left and Taylor Cocalis, Murray's Class coordinator on the right and me in the middle.Take a peek at how these ladies set up each place setting for the event. All 24 place setting were spectacular each with its own red and white wine and Lurisa Italian bottled water. The cheese were set up in a clockwise fashion beginning at 12 noon and the honeys presented in line to pair up with each cheese. For more detailed information about the cheeses and honeys visit our Recipe pages.



Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Help The Honeybees, Plant a Garden!


I can't believe its snowing! There is already 4 inches on the ground and my red jeep is completely covered. Tomorrow is my big day at Murray's Cheese Shop on Bleeker Street, I am co-hosting a pre-Valentine Honey and Cheese Tasting class with their mail order manager, Amy Sisti. All my bottles of honey samples and beekeeping paraphernalia are packed up and ready to go into the city. This class has been full for almost a month now and it's SNOWING!

But I am thinking Spring and earlier this week I designed this sweet little postcard to give to our customers. Each card would have a packet of seeds from our own Red Bee Honey Gardens and a list of additional flowers honeybees love. By planting this packet of seeds in a sunny place in your yard, a garden pot or window box, you can help the honeybees by creating your own honeybee garden. Honeybees not only make our sumptuous wildflower honey, they pollinate over 100 crops and flowers that provide almost one third of the food we eat. So more flowers means more honeybees, a healthier world and more real food. Simply put honeybees are vital to the survival of the human race. So when you order Red Bee Honey or any products from out web site you will receive a gift of a simple sweet postcard with a packet of seeds. Help the honeybees, Plant a Garden!

You can help the honeybees with a few simple techniques. Plant your flowers in clusters that are colorful and contrast well with their environment. Purple and blue are bees' favorite colors, followed by yellow and orange. Native flowers that bloom successively over the spring, summer, and fall provide pollen and nectar sources vital to the survival of bees. They will need a source of water like a pond, birdbath, or even dripping faucet. Choose non-toxic or organic pesticides, and do so in the late evening when most bees have gone into the hive for the evening. Piles of undisturbed leaves or brush create a natural place for wild bees to nest. Lastly, bees will appreciate your weeds like clover and dandelions so let them be.

Help The Honeybees, Plant a Garden!


I can't believe its snowing! There is already 4 inches on the ground and my red jeep is completely covered. Tomorrow is my big day at Murray's Cheese Shop on Bleeker Street, I am co-hosting a pre-Valentine Honey and Cheese Tasting class with their mail order manager, Amy Sisti. All my bottles of honey samples and beekeeping paraphernalia are packed up and ready to go into the city. This class has been full for almost a month now and it's SNOWING!

But I am thinking Spring and earlier this week I designed this sweet little postcard to give to our customers. Each card would have a packet of seeds from our own Red Bee Honey Gardens and a list of additional flowers honeybees love. By planting this packet of seeds in a sunny place in your yard, a garden pot or window box, you can help the honeybees by creating your own honeybee garden. Honeybees not only make our sumptuous wildflower honey, they pollinate over 100 crops and flowers that provide almost one third of the food we eat. So more flowers means more honeybees, a healthier world and more real food. Simply put honeybees are vital to the survival of the human race. So when you order Red Bee Honey or any products from out web site you will receive a gift of a simple sweet postcard with a packet of seeds. Help the honeybees, Plant a Garden!

You can help the honeybees with a few simple techniques. Plant your flowers in clusters that are colorful and contrast well with their environment. Purple and blue are bees' favorite colors, followed by yellow and orange. Native flowers that bloom successively over the spring, summer, and fall provide pollen and nectar sources vital to the survival of bees. They will need a source of water like a pond, birdbath, or even dripping faucet. Choose non-toxic or organic pesticides, and do so in the late evening when most bees have gone into the hive for the evening. Piles of undisturbed leaves or brush create a natural place for wild bees to nest. Lastly, bees will appreciate your weeds like clover and dandelions so let them be.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Hooray for Honey

Honey is nice on toast and yes, on band-aids. Many would think you were mad if you told them you put honey on a cut or scrape and earlier this year the Food and Drug Administration would have agreed. But this past July, Derma Sciences, a manufacturer of products for wound and skin care, received FDA clearance for its Active Manuka Honey product called API-MEDTM. This will be the FIRST time a honey-based product has been approved in the United States as a medical treatment specifically for 1st and 2nd degree burns, traumatic and surgical wounds.

Largely unknown to Americans, honey especially Manuka, has been used for years as a medical treatment in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Manuka honey is gathered in New Zealand from the Manuka bush, Leptospermum scoparium, which grows uncultivated throughout the country. Beekeepers set their hives close to tea trees for only 6 weeks and the bees gather the nectar to make Manuka honey. It has been documented that the ancient Egyptians already knew that honey had miraculous healing powers. The world’s oldest known medical treatise, a papyrus dating from the 17th century BC, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is written in hieratic script, a more abstract form than hieroglyphics. It recommends using honey on open wounds, revealing that the benefits of honey have been understood for a very long time. Today, beekeepers and apitherapist value the use of honey to further good health and to treat a variety of illnesses like sore throats, allergies, ulcers, eczema and burns.

All raw honeys have health benefits but certain kinds of Manuka honey have a higher antimicrobial healing property and are rated with a Unique Manuka Factor number. The higher the UMF is the higher the concentrate and expensive the honey. A honey with a UMF rating of 10 is the lowest to qualify as a UMF honey. Honey helps wounds because its thickness provides a protective barrier and reduces inflammation. The hydrogen peroxide it produces, when the enzyme glucose oxidase is met with oxygen and bodily fluids, is released slowly, killing germs in the wound. While amino acids and vitamin C speed the growth of healthy tissue. Honey even makes wounds smell better. At last, honeys health applications are slowly gaining respectability. There maybe no such thing as a miracle cure but Manuka honey is coming really close and besides honey is the only product you can eat or wear.

Hooray for Honey

Honey is nice on toast and yes, on band-aids. Many would think you were mad if you told them you put honey on a cut or scrape and earlier this year the Food and Drug Administration would have agreed. But this past July, Derma Sciences, a manufacturer of products for wound and skin care, received FDA clearance for its Active Manuka Honey product called API-MEDTM. This will be the FIRST time a honey-based product has been approved in the United States as a medical treatment specifically for 1st and 2nd degree burns, traumatic and surgical wounds.

Largely unknown to Americans, honey especially Manuka, has been used for years as a medical treatment in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Manuka honey is gathered in New Zealand from the Manuka bush, Leptospermum scoparium, which grows uncultivated throughout the country. Beekeepers set their hives close to tea trees for only 6 weeks and the bees gather the nectar to make Manuka honey. It has been documented that the ancient Egyptians already knew that honey had miraculous healing powers. The world’s oldest known medical treatise, a papyrus dating from the 17th century BC, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is written in hieratic script, a more abstract form than hieroglyphics. It recommends using honey on open wounds, revealing that the benefits of honey have been understood for a very long time. Today, beekeepers and apitherapist value the use of honey to further good health and to treat a variety of illnesses like sore throats, allergies, ulcers, eczema and burns.

All raw honeys have health benefits but certain kinds of Manuka honey have a higher antimicrobial healing property and are rated with a Unique Manuka Factor number. The higher the UMF is the higher the concentrate and expensive the honey. A honey with a UMF rating of 10 is the lowest to qualify as a UMF honey. Honey helps wounds because its thickness provides a protective barrier and reduces inflammation. The hydrogen peroxide it produces, when the enzyme glucose oxidase is met with oxygen and bodily fluids, is released slowly, killing germs in the wound. While amino acids and vitamin C speed the growth of healthy tissue. Honey even makes wounds smell better. At last, honeys health applications are slowly gaining respectability. There maybe no such thing as a miracle cure but Manuka honey is coming really close and besides honey is the only product you can eat or wear.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

You really need Honey


Did you know there are more than 300 different varieties of honey here in the United States? Each with a unique flavor and color depending on the blossoms visited by the bee. Did you know that raw honey and bee pollen relieves allergy symptoms? sinus pressure? sore throats? can boost your immunity? and is a quick source of energy? By ingesting local, raw honey and bee pollen you build up a natural immunity to dust, mold and pollen. Bee pollen supplies protein, amino acids and B vitamins! Honey is naturally antiseptic, antibiotic, antifungal and antibacterial and it never spoils!
Honey is gathered first by the female worker bee, which draws up the nectar with her long, tube-like tongue and stores it in her honey sac stomach. This is then flown back to the hive, mixed with a special enzyme and stored, while other workers fan the liquid with their wings--this helps to evaporate the extra water and thus thicken the honey.

Research has indicated that honey neutralizes acids in foods and in one's stomach as well. It is a mono-saccharide (or 'simple sugar') and since it is pre-digested by the bee, it requires no digestive changes before one's body can assimilate it: thus, it is *the* quickest source of energy for the athlete. Bacteria cannot live in honey, and this quality has led to its use as a dressing for wounds, ulcers, and even gangrenous tissue.

Dry skin? Honey can add softness and fresh beauty to the skin. Because of the hydroscopic qualities of honey, it causes the skin to hold moisture. Honey's unique water-drawing quality makes it a wonderful dressing for burns of all kinds thus it is the ingredient of many cosmetic preparations such as facial masks, cleansers, lotions, soaps and conditioners: an excellent moisturizing mask is made from beaten egg whites and honey, for example. Flaky, dull completions can benefit from a light scrubbing with crystallized honeys gentle granules. Honey has been used as a healing aid for burns and scrapes since the days of Cleopatra. Honey is not just a mythological nourishment for the gods, actual Egyptian medical texts dating from 2600 to 2200 BC mention honey in at least 900 remedies. Many early cultures hailed honey for its sweetness, nutritional value, and its topical healing properties for wounds, sores, and skin ulcers. During wartime, honey was used as an antiseptic for wounds by ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Chinese, and modern Germans as late as World War I. Bacteria cannot live in honey, and this quality has led to its use as a dressing for wounds, ulcers, and even gangrenous tissue. Honey is *the* quickest source of energy for the growing child, athelete, or health conscious adult. Today, people use honey for cough preparations, to induce sleep, cure diarrhea, and treat allergies and asthma. Many kinds of honey are high in hydrogen peroxide, a common household disinfectant and kills bacteria. Honey also contains propolis, a compound in nectar that can kill bacteria.