BC Honey Producers Conference

For the past 4 years while running the Motel, i sat and watched (and whined a little, ok  a lot!) how people got to go the BCHP's conferences. I was envious and swore once retired...I would go too damnit.
So I was pretty excited when the PG beekeeping club was going to host the next conference in Prince George in October.
James and I registered and were set to go for 2 of the 3 days. We opted to drive in each day since staying at a motel wasn't really going to work with our clingy 14 year old dog who howls when ever you leave. So this was easier.

Conference

They had a great line up of speakers from all over Canada and the US. The one i was really excited to hear was Ian Steppler from Steppler Farms in Manitoba. I follow him on You Tube and really have learned a lot from him. So to see and hear him in person was pretty neat. The conference was 3 days long but we only attended the Sat and Sunday. During one of the talks, we had a lesson in honey tasting. Like wine tasting but not quite as fun...heheheh. We were given  6 different samples of  honey to analyze by taste and aroma then write down what you tasted. It was amazing when you really concentrate what you can taste and smell. My favorite honey that day was from Meadowfoam flowers and it tasted like chocolate, vanilla and maybe a little caramel thrown for good measure. Each honey tasted so different.

 Ian Steppler,

For fun i had decided to enter some honey and Mead into the competition. I had never entered anything like this before so i was completely out of the loop on how it worked. The first thing i did was put the honey in too big of jars (it was suppose to be 500g or a pound) according to the rules. Then i didnt fill the jar full enough to hide the level under the lid. Oh and i didnt filter the honey through a fine enough filter to get the specks of pollen out.The honey were critiqued but disqualified because of the bottle size. But saying all this, i learnt so much and now i know better for next time. But we did get full points for taste and aroma, so i was pretty pleased about that!

But my mead looked good, it was clear and the right size bottles, so i felt good about that. But i entered it without any expectations since this was only the second time i had ever made mead...i didn't even know what it was suppose to taste like....but we liked it so that's what i went with.
Well Saturday night on Facebook a friend who was at the Banquet posted that my mead won 1st in its category....what??? Really??? No it couldn't of.
But sure enough when we arrived Sunday morning...i was given a blue ribbon. I was shocked.

Mine are the ones with no professional label or fancy bottle. (far right). Yup these were recycled Cattle Boyz BBQ sauce bottles!

Photo Credit: Bini Ball

The rest of the conference was great. The speakers were really informative and we brought home a ton of info and some goodies. One of the best things of the whole weekend was meeting in person, some of the folks i had only chatted to one some beekeeping pages i belong too. We even brought home a gift of 2 jars of honey from friends in Terrace. Thank you Tavis and Christine. We are loving this very interesting mystery honey of yours.

But now its back to getting ready for winter and putting the bees to bed. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Until next time......