Innovative honey products create buzz

 In Business

Innovative products like dark chocolate and triple lemon honey made the Heritage Bee Co. booth a popular destination for visitors attending the One Of A Kind Winter show in Toronto.

Those flavours are the creation of the Mulmur-based beekeepers who offer hive hosting programs, produce Ontario wildflower honey and also sell liquid, creamed and infused creamed honey products.

Heritage Bee Company’s Debbie Gray and Jeff Chalmers tapped into the Canadian Agricultural Partnership to help bring their flavoured honeys to market. With support from the Canadian Agricultural Partnership (the Partnership), they’ve accessed the marketing support and production technology required to serve an emerging market for tasty, flavoured honeys and longer shelf life.

“The first time we were at the One Of A Kind show in Toronto, we had exposure to over 120,000 people, and people were constantly coming up to us asking what other flavours of honey we had to offer,” recalls Chalmers. “At the time, we had a liquid honey and a creamed honey, and we realized there was a huge opportunity for us to develop a whole new product line of flavoured honeys.”

Following advice from their accountant, the beekeepers checked out the partnership to better understand how it could help their business.

After attending a Growing Your Farm Profits and a Biosecurity workshop, Gray and Chalmers believed their honey would be aperfect fit for the program. They were right. Their application was approved and with support from the Partnership, they were able to access technology and marketing support required to create and package their new honey products.

“It was a really exciting process for us, which involved engaging with some of the top graphic design people and packaging experts,” explains Gray. “Our vision was to create a gift set that actually looked like our hives… it also involved purchasing some quite expensive and intricate creaming equipment to make these amazing products.”

When Heritage Bee launched their new products at the One Of A Kind show in November, innovative flavours like ginger, cinnamon, lavender, dark chocolate and triple lemon honey were quickly snapped up.

What began as a simple idea to increase farm gate sales and support efforts at local farmers’ markets has grown way beyond their expectation, says Gray. “Thanks to the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, we’ve been able to launch new products, we’ve gone direct to the consumer by enhancing our social media account, we’re participating in events such as One Of A Kind and consumers love it.

“We feel we’ve filled a market need with some innovative products, and it’s all direct from the bees,” adds Gray.

Find out about the Growing Your Farm Profits workshop: www.ontariosoilcrop.org/growing-your- farm-profits/

The Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association (OSCIA), a provincial not-for-profit farm organization, who delivers cost- share funding programs and educational opportunities that support Ontario’s farmers in implementing best management and sustainability practices on their farms. The Canadian Agricultural Partnership (the Partnership), is a five-year, $3 billioninvestment by federal-provincial and territorial governments, which will strengthen the agriculture, agri- food and agri-based products sector, ensuring continued innovation, growth and prosperity.

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