NOTE: The 2024 Advent Calendar can be ordered now and will start shipping late October/early November!
Honey Advent Calendar Sampler contains a huge assortment (12 or 24 days) of raw VARIETAL HONEY in glass jars and several other honey bee related products (honey dipper, beeswax candles, honey candy, recipes, etc.). We recently added samples of Good Food 2022 award winning Anellabees honey caramels!
100% RAW & ALL-NATURAL honey colors, flavors, smells, tastes and textures. There have been no artificial ingredients added, infusions or blending performed on any of the jars and the honey varieties are each influenced 100% by the FLOWER BLOSSOMS from which the bees harvested the nectar. The honey in this sampler is truly unique and a great way to sample the amazing range of natural flavors honey can have.
Also, each honey advent calendar days box has a small “fun fact” card with a honey bee related question on one side and the answer to the question on the other. So not only do you get to enjoy fantastic varietal honey each day but you get to learn a bit about the honey bees in the process!
Available for local pickup OR can be shipped across the USA starting early November 2024 – Handmade and assembled at the Minooka IL apiary by our small family of busy bees 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝
The Honey Advent Calendar Sampler makes an awesome holiday gift!
Sample These Unique Honey Bee Related Items:
What is VARIETAL HONEY you ask?
It is honey produced from a single flower blossom source (these are sometimes referred to as mono-crop honey). To accomplish this feat the beekeeper needs several things:
• Typically 5 square miles of a single flowering plant
• Enough beehives to place into the center of the plant area when blooming starts to collect a good crop of nectar
• Cooperation with the weather to allow the bees to forage for enough time to produce excess honey that can be harvested
• Proper timing and ability to remove the honey as the specific blossom source flowers begin to fade
The beekeeper places their beehives into the blooming fields at step 2 and timing is critical in all the steps. Being too early or too late “taints” the honey with other plant blossom nectar. It is a lot of work moving the bees and honey into and out of the fields and sometimes all the effort produces very little harvestable honey if factors are not just right.
100% Raw Honey
The varieties in this honey advent calendar sampler pack are ALL-NATURAL with respect to the colors, flavors, smells, tastes and textures. There have been no artificial colors or flavors added to any of the samples and the varieties are each influenced 100% by the flower blossoms from which the bees harvest the nectar. Since the honey flavor is influenced by the blossom nectar and not the eventual fruit the BLOSSOM NAME does not necessarily indicate the end flavor of the honey. For example, Blueberry Blossom Honey does not typically taste like blueberries as it is the flavor of the blossom nectar and not tied to the flavor of the fruit. Some of the varieties are from early SPRING plants, some are SUMMER plants and others are FALL blossoming plants and these different plant nectar sources impact the characteristics of the final honey. The actual “liquidity” of the honey from thick and syrupy to light and runny is due to the specific nectar blossoms the bees gather from. To put together the varieties of honey included in this sampler can sometimes take a few years as there may not be enough nectar to gather up in a single season.
The honey in this honey advent calendar sampler are raw, unfiltered and have not been heated or pasteurized (heating can destroy beneficial enzymes, antioxidants and nutritional value). This means that small bits of pollen, wax particles, etc. may be present in the honey. Finding these items is totally normal in raw honey and does not impact the edibility of any of the samples. Since the honey has not been heated or pasteurized there is a chance that GRANULATION (sometimes referred to as CRYSTALLIZATION) may occur in some of the sampler jars and turn your liquid honey more solid. All raw natural honey will granulate over time and depending on the honey variety this process can happen in a few weeks while in others can take a year or more. The granulation process is 100% normal and it means you have pure honey with no additives like high fructose corn syrup or other fillers.
** Note that the exact items included in the honey advent calendar sampler can change as our stock runs low for a particular item and a new one must be substituted in. The samplers are put together by hand (bottling, printing, labeling, assembly) at our place in Minooka IL and we will update the list above if changes are made to the sampler.
