Honey Cookbooks: Great Gifts for Beekeepers and Honey Lovers!

'Tis now officially "the season,"  and I thought I'd post some gift ideas for the beekeepers, honey lovers and bee boosters on your lists this year: 

Honey Flavor & Aroma Wheel
This makes a unique gift (and, at $10 each, an inexpensive one, too!).  The folks at the Honey & Pollination Center at the University of California at Davis developed the flavor and aroma wheel to help honey tasters identify the many nuances of different types of honey.  It includes suggestions for how to hold a honey tasting.  Orders can take some time to fill, so don't delay if you want it by the 25th! Click on the link above for more information

Honey Cookbooks
Way back in 2011 when I started this blog, I did a series of honey cookbook reviews for beekeepers looking for honey recipe inspirations.  Most of the honey cookbooks then were, alas, not very inspiring.  I'm happy to report that a spate of new cookbooks have since been published that I'm happy to recommend:

Sue Doeden (2015). Homemade with Honey. (St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press). $17.95 paperback.
Sue Doeden hosts a cooking show on Lakeland Public Television and is a beekeeper.  This is a nice little cookbook with black and white photos.  Recipes range from "sips, starters and snacks" to breads, salads, savory entrees and sweets.  It includes a nice recipe for honey simple syrup for cocktails, a stir-fry brown sauce that she uses in many dishes, and a recipe for hot and sweet roasted broccoli that looks like a winner (I'll let you know). 

Hattie Ellis. (2014). Honey:  A Selection of  More than 80 Delicious Savory & Sweet Recipes. (New York: Sterling Epicure). 191 pages.  $19.95 hardback.
Hattie Ellis is the author of Sweetness & Light:  The Mysterious History of the Honeybee (2004) --which would also make a great gift for a beekeeper or bee-lover!  Her cookbook is gorgeously illustrated with color photos and includes guidelines for tasting honey as well as list of 90 different honey varietals.  Her descriptions of the recipes give the impression she's cooked them herself, which is helpful and reassuring.  We tried out her "Honey-Lime Salmon with Noodles" (look for the recipe in a future post!) and it got rave reviews.There's also a recipe for Drambuie fruit cake that I'm hoping to test out for Christmas (I'll report back!).

Laurey Masterson. (2013).  The Fresh Honey Cookbook:  84 Recipes from a Beekeeper's Kitchen. (North Adams, MA:  Storey Publishing). 208 pages.  $14.95 paperback.
Laurey Masterson founded Laurey's Cafe in Asheville, NC and served as a spokesperson for the National Honey Board.  The book is organized by month and identifies a different honey variety for each month, including information about how to get those special varieties (like sourwood, eucalyptus, or avocado honey).  Many--but not all--of the recipes use honey, which was a bit disappointing to learn and makes it my least favorite of this batch of books. The color photos are lovely, she offers a nice guide for how to taste honey, and provides a list of foods pollinated by honeybees.  Her recipe for Russian tea, which is alternative to chai, looks like it will be a cozy drink on a cold afternoon.

Beeswax and Honey Craft Book: Last, but not at all least, here's a great book to help you make your own gifts from beeswax and honey. It's not too late to start!
Leeann Coleman and Jayne Barnes. (2013). Honey Crafting: Projects for Your Home Straight from the Hive. (Avon, MA:  Adams Media). 160 pages. $17.95 paperback
This is a great little book with clear instructions and color photos for a range of projects: making poured, dipped or rolled beeswax candles; a "beeswax lantern," which are impressive and smell great (see photos and shameless bragging of some I made below); castile soaps, a variety of lip balms, hand creams, bath scrubs, vapor salve and cold syrup.  It also has some wonderful recipes that would make nice honey gifts, like cinnamon-, chili-, ginger- or garlic-infused honey.   Leeann Coleman operates Lee's Bees and Silverspring Farm in New Jersey. Jayne Barnes runs Honeyrun Farm in Williamsport, Ohio. 

 

Annual Gift Ideas for Bee Loving and Beekeeping Dads!

If you're like me (and if your dad is like my dad), finding the right gift for Father's Day can be a real challenge. My dad isn't really into "stuff," which is one of the many things I love about him.   If your dad's a  beekeeper (or a bee lover), though, I have a few ideas for some cool stuff that will really impress him!  

For the bee loving dad:

Your dad doesn't have to be a beekeeper to be able to enjoy his very own pollinator garden. Here's a link to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette column by Sandy Feather, who works for the Allegheny County Cooperative Extension.  Her column offers a nice list of plants in our region that are great for bees.  Sandy's column also offers excellent suggestions for how to be a bee-friendly gardener.  

If your dad is a bee lover, then make (or buy) him a mason bee home. Mason bees are solitary bees and don't require the tending that honeybees do.  They're lovely pollinators, though!  Here's a link to information about how to make a mason bee hotel from a gardener in the UK. You can find bee houses for sale at Amazon and many other places on-line, most are less than $20.  Search for "mason bee house" or "bee house."

For the beekeeping dad:

If your beekeeping dad lives in the Pittsburgh area, then you'll really impress him if you give him a local queen raised by one of our area's Master Beekeepers, Steve Repasky! You don't have to actually obtain the queen--Steve can give you a gift certificate to give to your dad--but I guarantee this gift will blow your dad's veil off!  Email Steve at meadowsweetbees@gmail.com (and tell him you got the idea from Jennie and Robert!).

If your beekeeping dad has beeswax he needs to filter, another idea is to make him a solar wax melter.  If you search the internet for "solar wax melter" you'll find a number of plans, some elaborate and some quite simple. Here's a link to Linda's Bee Blog for how to make and use a simple solar wax melter.

Getting a gift certificate for a honeybee queen or making a solar melter a bit too out there for you?  Here are a few more traditional ideas:

One handy item that we use regularly is a cleaning caddy, which I've picked up at thrift stores around the area.  They're big enough to hold hive tools, a lighter, some tape, extra gloves and other items that are nice to have in one place when working on a colony. They're not expensive at all (especially if you get them at a thrift store!).   Add a nice j-hook hive tool to the cart and a fancy bow and you're good go!  

If you're looking for something a bit more splashy, consider a garden cart with sides that can pull down (available in many "big box" stores like Home Depot, K-Mart and Loews).  Carts like these make it easy to haul bee boxes to and from the apiary as well as all of the sundry items beekeepers need while tending their hives.  They range in price from about $75 to $150.  

Still need more ideas?   Take a look at these previous posts:  

2011 Father's Day Gift Suggestions

Honey Cookbook Reviews 

  

Father's Day Gift Ideas for the Honey and/or Honeybee Lover

Looking for some unique gift ideas for your hard-to-buy-for dad? Look no further! (And don't worry, Dad: We're getting you a tie this year!)

For the bee-curious dad (who may or may not be a beekeeper):
He's likely to enjoy Thomas D. Seeley's 2010 book Honeybee Democracy (Princeton University Press) and recently featured on NPR. Seeley is a professor of biology at Cornell and a passionate lover of and advocate for honeybees. In this latest book, he describes how honeybees make collective decisions about where to locate a new colony when they swarm. From this, Seeley draws some delightful conclusions about how humans can make better collective decisions. The writing is lively and fascinating. The book is available on-line for about $20.

For the dad who loves honey and wants to know more about it:
Check out Kim Flottum's The Backyard Beekeeper's Honey Handbook. I reviewed this book in Review of Honey Cookbooks, Part I. It's written for beekeepers, but provides a very nice discussion of honey varieties, talks about how to treat honey well and includes some great recipes, too. You might also look for Gene Opton's Honey: A Connoisseur's Guide, (reviewed in Review of Honey Cookbooks, Part II), though it's out of print, and may take some searching to find.

For the beekeeping dad who like gadgets:
One of the handiest gadgets we've added to the many beekeeping gadgets we've purchased over the years is a simple and compact cigar lighter that makes lighting a smoker a dream. If your dad's a beek and doesn't have one, he'll thank you for it! You might also look for a "frame holder" or "frame perch" which is a handy when you're beekeeping on your own. They're available at all major beekeeping supply places. (Joe Z. at Country Barn Farm is a local distributor for Brushy Mountain. Blue Sky Bee Supply in Hiram, Ohio is another small and fairly close source.)