August Newsletter: Summer Market, Summer Honey,E-learning, Buzz at the Hon
Summer Market: We are pleased to announce our honey can now be found at the Venice year-round market at the Bliss Nut Butter booth, Saturday, 8am to noon at the Venice City Hall. Venice Market’s summer vendors are offering amazing produce, our local raw honey, fresh baked goods including breads, pies, bagels and pretzels, wild caught seafood, Florida grown mushrooms, boutique cheeses, locally roasted coffee, kettle corn, hand crafted soap, essential oils, nursery plants, and fresh cut flowers. In addition, your favorite local artists will be attending the market offering award-winning photography, clay art and jewelry, hand designed clothing for children and adults, and much more. Face coverings will be required for those visiting the Venice Farmers Market at City Hall. If customers do not have a face covering, cloth masks will be provided for them by the Market, while supplies last. Market staff and vendors have gone to great lengths to create a CDC compliant and safe socially distanced outdoor shopping experience for our community. Please follow the posted signage. All staff and vendors wearing masks and gloves and sanitizing stations will be available. The market is located at 401 W. Venice Avenue, Venice Fl 35285. Tell Jane at Bliss Butters we said hi!!!
Summer Honey: You are what you eat. Many of our customers can taste the difference from of our honey from one location from another because the flowers are different. Our honey will and can change from one year to the next because it IS made from 100% nectar. We don’t feed our bees a corn syrup water to make more “honey”. Other honey producers may do this to be able to have their honey sold at for $6 a pound at local grocery stores. The change of honey taste and color due to environmental changes was most apparent in our bay honey. Over 6 years ago our bay-front honey was very rich in taste and almost black in color. Every year the honey became lighter and lighter in color as commercial development increased and natural flowering vegetation decreased due to professional landscaping along Sarasota County Bay areas. An interesting thing happened this year, the honey is darker, and the flavor is over the top AMAZING! Our theory is that due to Covid-19 many projects halted, vegetation the would be either manicured or removed before their bloom remained and thrived. The bees were able to forage on flowers that were not available in recent years creating a wonderful and unique honey this year. The bay honey will be available at our store and our website: www.sarasotahoney.com by September 1st.
Online Learning:
Webinars: Sarasota Honey Co is now offering online learning through beekeeping webinars and free YouTube videos. One common mistake we see people do is get bees and have no idea on how to care for them or base their skills on books or videos on you tube. Unfortunately, there are no books or videos on beekeeping in the south…moreover the tropical south. Alma, who is from east Texas had to relearn everything to successfully keep bees in Florida. The wood-ware, equipment, protective gear, manipulations are different here then what is written in books. Prior to Covid-19, Alma would give Saturday beekeeping seminars teaching her students not only what she does, but what other beekeepers do. This is important so that you as a new beekeeper, are not confused when going to beekeeping meetings and experience beekeepers giving conflicting information. Alma would end each seminar unable to speak from hours of teaching and still feel that she should have taught or spoken more about a certain topic. Once Covid-19 hit and due to the increase interest in beekeeping Alma felt lead to make webinars to provide future beekeepers with skills to be successful. The beautiful thing about the webinars is that Alma was able to get all the information she felt necessary by making a variety of webinars. They can be access via our website and clicking on “webinar/calendar” tab. Some of the webinars are free
Free YouTube Homesteading Videos: If beekeeping isn’t your thing….no problem. We have created a youtube channel, many of the videos will include some of our products but other videos will be on canning, food preservation, and homesteading skills in general. Some examples would be DIY crafts, sustainability projects, cooking recipes, gardening, herbs, urban farming and chicken-keeping tips. To find our youtube channel just do a search on Sarasota Honey Company and click on the channel with the ORANGE honey bottle. It will help us tremendously if you share with your friends and subscribe for free to our channel. Please feel free to send us any topics you would like to see. If we don’t know how to do it…we have a lot of friends that are in agriculture, master chefs, gardeners, homesteaders, and holistic health provider
Free Teaching Guide and PDF Workbook for Grade Levels 4-6: We will be offering a free pdf workbook on our website in September for grade levels 4-6. You can download the workbook for free and register for a live hive inspection, presentation, and live honey sampling. The live demo will go over topics in the workbooks and youth participants will have the opportunity to win free prizes for answering questions correctly. The curriculum will go over the following topics: Pollination, Honey, Beekeeping. We will also be offering the opportunity to participate in a live virtual honey sampling. To participate in the honey sampling, you would need to register online and pick up your samples for the live sampling. For the most up to date information please follow us on our facebook page.
The Buzz at the Honey Shop: We have updated our inventory and brought in some really cool new gift items and products! We are open Tuesdays-Saturdays. Thursday – Saturday you will need to wear a face mask to enter the store or we can assist you out of our service window on the front porch. We are in a unique position; in that we are a retail store but also have a program at the store for people with special needs. For the peace of mind of the families of our young adults we are following guidelines for programs like the one at our store. Therefore, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays we are only operating out of our service window. We are encouraging our customers to come on Tuesday and Wednesday so our young adults can still work on their communication, money, and customer service skills. They love interacting with our customers and would love to serve you! Our young adults will be selecting items in the store as a “deal of the we
Rosh Hashana is Coming! Rosh Hannana is the Jewish New Year that is celebrated with apples and honey. On Sunday, September 13, from 4-5 pm,Temple Sinai will be presenting a special virtual honey tasting with 4 types of honeys, cheese, and biscuits put together in a kit. To pick up a free kit please email: bleinweber@templesinaisarasota.org
