Bees Wax Encaustic Art at White Silo Winery

Kismet is another word for fate. It is derived from the Arabic term qisma, modified in Persian as qismat and then from Turkish, it came into English usage. We all know that moment when two different things in our daily lives that seems random meet up and harmonize together. I found kismet when my illustration style met up with a new found media called encaustic painting.

I was unexpectedly drawn to encaustic painting 8 years ago when I first became a beekeeper; this highly provocative medium has its rich roots in the ancestral land of my forefathers, Italy, specifically the paintings at Pompeii. Encaustic, meaning “burned in” is beeswax, a natural wax produced by honeybees mixed with pigments that is melted on a heated palette. It is applied to a surface to fuse the bees wax and paint together. Bees wax has an illustrious history from the paintings in the cave at Lascaux to the Egyptian mummies, it was so valuable in ancient Rome that it was an acceptable form of payment for taxes.

The beauty of encaustics is the unpredictability and flexibility that gives the artist its own voice. To me, there is nothing more seductive than the smell of pure bees wax melting in my studio or in the bee yard. Encaustic painting lends itself to my whimsical sense of color, texture and pattern that were my signature as a commercial illustrator. The works seen here are my personal attempt to translate my illustration style into unrestraint and freedom from art direction and manic deadlines.

June 20th - July 6th, 2008
Exhibition of Encaustic Art at The White Silo Winery
32 Rt. 37 East, Sherman, CT 06784
Tel: 860.355.0271

Bees Wax Encaustic Art at White Silo Winery

Kismet is another word for fate. It is derived from the Arabic term qisma, modified in Persian as qismat and then from Turkish, it came into English usage. We all know that moment when two different things in our daily lives that seems random meet up and harmonize together. I found kismet when my illustration style met up with a new found media called encaustic painting.

I was unexpectedly drawn to encaustic painting 8 years ago when I first became a beekeeper; this highly provocative medium has its rich roots in the ancestral land of my forefathers, Italy, specifically the paintings at Pompeii. Encaustic, meaning “burned in” is beeswax, a natural wax produced by honeybees mixed with pigments that is melted on a heated palette. It is applied to a surface to fuse the bees wax and paint together. Bees wax has an illustrious history from the paintings in the cave at Lascaux to the Egyptian mummies, it was so valuable in ancient Rome that it was an acceptable form of payment for taxes.

The beauty of encaustics is the unpredictability and flexibility that gives the artist its own voice. To me, there is nothing more seductive than the smell of pure bees wax melting in my studio or in the bee yard. Encaustic painting lends itself to my whimsical sense of color, texture and pattern that were my signature as a commercial illustrator. The works seen here are my personal attempt to translate my illustration style into unrestraint and freedom from art direction and manic deadlines.

June 20th - July 6th, 2008
Exhibition of Encaustic Art at The White Silo Winery
32 Rt. 37 East, Sherman, CT 06784
Tel: 860.355.0271

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.

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.

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.