The owners of Muskoka Honey Bee Products, a family enterprise in Dwight, are celebrating a $10,000 FedNor grant to help them bring honey wine, also known as mead, to Muskoka.
Fourth and fifth-generation beekeepers Annmarie Boehm-Tapley and Ross Tapley have passed the art of beekeeping to their daughters Sonya and Samantha.
You’ve probably seen their products such as honey, candles, soap, and balms produced from their beehives in Dwight at your local farmers’ markets. Stay tuned as the family embarks on a business expansion and opens a meadery on a 3.5-acre property on Hwy 35 purchased just before the pandemic started.
Planning approvals are still in the works as the family continues to navigate through red tape exacerbated by COVID. Those bumps along the way have put them behind by about a year but when the building does go up, it’s going to be a 4,500 square foot building which will include the winery, their retail store, and a commercial kitchen, as well as their daughters’ vegan ice cream business.
The building will also include two retail spaces for lease to “hopefully help some other small businesses get their foot into Dwight because there’s nothing here for commercial lease spaces,” said Annmarie, adding that she hopes the venture will also create some jobs.
The family is hoping to break ground this summer with the building going up in the fall. From there, their honey wine production will begin as soon as they get the final federal approval for the wine-making facility.
The grant will help them purchase winery equipment such as fermentation tanks as they prepare to start production. Annmarie said the plan is to start producing about 4,500 litres of honey wine at any one time with an expansion planned down the line. Their company’s new division will be called Muskoka Mead and include a traditional mead, a mead made of caramelized honey used for fermentation known as bochet, and a cranberry and raspberry mead. “It can be sweet, it can be dry—it all depends on what we do with fermentation,” she said.
“We’re trying to stick to Muskoka-based flavours, especially at the start before we kind of go off into other directions of flavours,” she added. “We may even get into different plant flavours. It’s all going to be experimental and see how it goes. We’re excited to try different things as we get going.”
Annmarie is hoping to have their first production as early as next winter. It’ll be available for purchase at their Dwight facility and possibly at some area farmers’ markets. She’s already been contacted by some restaurants interested in carrying the products.
In Canada, unlike in the U.S., producers are required to have a minimum of 100 hives to apply for a federal licence to manufacture the wine. While in the U.S. anybody can produce it, in Canada “you actually have to be a beekeeper,” said Annmarie. “I think the Canadian way of doing it protects the farmers, which we are a farmer, our livestock is bees… I think that’s not a bad thing.”
“We’re really fortunate,” she added. “The honey that is created here in Muskoka from our hives, it’s just fantastic.”
Once Muskoka Mead is up and running, they’re hoping to hire four people in the first year to help with production.
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