HONEY

from The Wellingtonian....

Wholesale Boot Company (WBC) serves homemade honey from own hives

Wholesale Boot Company serves from the hive

By AMY JACKMAN | 12:01PM - Thursday, 19 March 2015

AT THE HIVE: WBC owner Tom Hutchison with a full frame of honey from the restaurant's hives.
— AMY JACKMAN/Fairfax NZ.

WELLINGTON's Wholesale Boot Company (WBC) is all abuzz about one ingredient coming soon to its menu.

The Willis Street restaurant recently harvested 35 litres of honey from its five rooftop hives.

Once tested to ensure it is free from disease, the sweet golden product will be served in the restaurant.

“It's great. When we did a small harvest last year people loved it,” owner and chef Tom Hutchison said.

“We tell them there is a hive above their heads and that's where the honey has come from.”

“People get a real buzz from that.”

The flavour profile of honey depends on the nectar used by the bees and the time of harvest.

Hutchison said early summer honeys were floral and light in colour compared to autumn honeys, which were darker and had a maple syrup-like quality.

“The more we harvest the more we will be able to understand the different flavours that come along.”

“The early honey will be much nicer in a salad dressing or on fruit, but the darker and richer honeys can be used with chocolate, red meats and veal and give them all more depth of flavour.”

“It's going to be a lot of fun to pair up the different flavour profiles.”

SWEET NECTAR: Honey from the hives on
the roof of WBC spills out of the extractor.
— Photo: TOM HUTCHISON.

Hutchison set up the hives after noticing a lack of bees in New Zealand.

“I was on holiday with my family and were walking along the grass and Kate [his wife] shouted out to the kids, ‘Look out for bees’,” he said.

“It was then that I noticed there weren't any bees. My kids don't need to watch out for them and that's sad.”

“When I was growing up that was part of life. It was one of the galvanising reasons for setting these up — my kids need to experience some bee stings, damn it!”

Local Flavour Urban Honey's Cenna Lloyd is his bee expert.

She sets up the hives, expands them when necessary and helps him with the harvest.

Frames full of honey are removed from the hives and the bees brushed off. More than two-thirds of the cells need to be full of honey and capped (covered in wax) for the frame to be used.

Any less and there is too much water content in the honey.

Not all the honey in a hive is removed. The bees use it for food, so a full or semi-full box needs to be left to sustain the hive over winter.

One look at the frames of honey will have people licking their lips, with the natural product dripping off the frames, the comb perfectly formed and smelling like flowers and sugar.

Lloyd said the WBC honey was left raw, giving it a greater depth of flavour because heat-treating the honey kills flavour.

She has set up hives all over Wellington, including new ones in Civic Square and Island Bay community orchard.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/local-papers/the-wellingtonian/67443913/Wholesale-Boot-Company-WBC-serves-homemade-honey-from-own-hives