Traditions that date back
Alpine Honey
As Nature Intended
Alpine Apiary wildly remote locations mean our honey has a unique taste all of its own. From our hives to your hands, we treat honey with the respect it deserves. 100% Full Circle – Biodiversity-positive honey. No overheating, no pasteurizing, no artificial anything. Alpine honey is fully traceable to source and free from GMOs and GE, with no added sugar or water, and absolutely, passionately, no chemicals. That way, you know it’s 100% natural … just as nature intended.
100% Natural Honey
SPREAD THE GOODNESS
Alpine Apiaries cool, mountain climate, and determination to protect our environment means our honey has a unique taste all of its own. Rich and golden, smooth and creamy, sweet yet mild … and so good for you! Made from the nectar of the world's most remote flowers, Alpine honey is revered for its unique medicinal qualities. And emerging research shows that it’s even more active than previously thought.
NATURE’S GIFT KEPT NATURAL
At Alpine Apiaries, we believe that alpine honey is an incredible gift from nature, and should stay that way. Common commercial honey is highly filtered to remove all pollen and microscopic particles, which damages its natural composition and can start the crystallization process. At Alpine Apiaries we eliminate the need to aggressively filter our honey, in contrast, commercial runny honey has been subjected to high temperatures and aggressive filtering; without this, they would crystallize.
Authentic & Assured
SPREAD THE GOODNESS
With two levels of security, our ultra-secure packaging is designed to ensure it’s impossible to tamper with – or imitate – the purity and potency of Alpine honey. Sure, it may take a little longer to open (spoons at the ready!), but once you do, you know you’re getting the real deal. Our new micro-secure foil is not only tamper-proof, but it also features our unique branding so you can be sure it’s authentic Alpine honey. Next, you’ll see a second seal over the honey itself: further proof that the contents are untouched. Lastly, our label is a complex, bespoke design, so (imitators beware), it’s very difficult to reproduce.
WHY SO FUSSY?
Because our premium honey is precious – we want you to know you’re buying genuine Alpine honey, every time. Our super-premium honey already features our new micro-secure foil and we’ll be rolling it out onto all Alpine jars in the near future.
PLANET FRIENDLIER PACKAGING
We’ve consciously chosen glass jars for most of our honey, rather than plastic. Why? Glass jars are made in Canada, so to import and export the jars would have a massive carbon footprint – the opposite of Alpines’s ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ philosophy.
GOING ONE BETTER FOR NATURE
Glass jars represent the quickest recycled-packaging process, as a jar can be recycled and back on store shelves in 30 days. Unlike most materials that lose their quality over time, glass can be recycled infinitely with no loss in purity. We also offset our (comparatively light) carbon footprint through planting and wetland restoration. It’s our way of going one better for nature, in every way we can.
100% Full Circle – Nature Sanctuary
To replenish our lands to a more natural state, we’ve sourced dozens of plants and trees, primarily from local ecosystems. As well as plants that offer food for birds and bees, we’ve also planted a number of rare Canadian species. One of the first plants to establish on bare ground in Canada is fireweed. It’s the first pioneer in a natural process of re-afforestation and a foundation for producing our Alpin honey.
To help re-establish Alpine Apiarys’s native forests, we plant between 10 and 20 trees a year, as well as another 100 plants of other species, including many rare plants and many that produce nectar for birds and bees. We grow most of the plants from seed and cuttings are taken from our existing site.
THE LIGHTEST OF FOOTPRINTS
Alpine honey is eco-friendly, carbon-neutral, and biodiversity positive, with 100% of profits going directly towards conservation, community, and culture. By planting dozens of trees and restoring nearly 10 acres of forest, we fully offset our carbon footprint (including our jars of honey).
HONEY WITH PURPOSE
Sustainably produced on the world's most remote, restored sanctuaries, Alpine Apiaries honey as it’s meant to be: 100% natural, pure, authentic, and delicious. We gather our honey from bees that feed freely on the nectar of wild flowers throughout the mountain, harvest it ethically, and treat it minimally to retain the high pollen levels that make Alpine honey so highly prized around the world. Alpine Apiarys honey represents ecology, intention, and passion. It’s about making the right choices for your health, for the environment, for the community, and for the bees.
Ethical, in Every Way
OUR FRIENDS, THE BEES
We respect and care for our bees. This means our honey is as natural as nature meant it to be: with no added sugar water, corn syrup, antibiotics or chemicals. And our bees seem to respect us in return. We hardly ever wear gloves when we’re working with them, which is sign of a well-cared-for hive.
IT'S WHAT WE DON'T DO THAT MATTERS
At Alpine Honey, we don’t use pollen traps because they can damage bees’ delicate wings, nor do we collect bee venom as it can harm or even kill bees. And, rather than stripping our hives of honey, we leave our bees with a box of honey per hive to keep them well fed over winter months – because healthy bees make healthy honey!
BEEKEEPING IS IN OUR BLOOD
Our family’s love of beekeeping (and the environment) goes back many generations. Together with our hard- working team, we’ve spent over a decade restoring Alpine Apiaries into a world-class wetland sanctuary and ecological retreat that benefits our local community today – and leaves a legacy for future generations.
Ethically Managed, Responsibly Harvested
Alpine Honey is ethically gathered from a range of diverse, wild habitats around some of the world's most remote locations. Typically, when honey is extracted from hives, many commercial companies remove all the honey and pollen, leaving nothing for the bees to feed on over winter. At Alpine Apiaries, we leave a box of honey per hive so that our bees are sustained over winter by eating their own rich, natural honey and pollen – just as nature intended. This honey contains the critical natural and diverse sources of carbohydrate and protein they need to remain healthy.
No pollen traps, No bee venom for us
Many commercial companies remove most pollen from the bees as they enter the hive, through the use of pollen traps. The bees are then fed artificial sources of pollen.
At Alpine Apiaries, we DO NOT subject our bees to this practice, as we believe that pollen traps damage the delicate wings of bees. More importantly, it doesn’t make sense to us to deprive our bees of their health! Stored pollen is the nutritionally rich currency used for colony growth.
You see, bees, like all creatures, require 10 essential amino acids for development, brood rearing and reproduction. For bees, the source of these amino acids is pollen1. Since 1977, it’s been known that bees that are provided with pollen live more than twice as long as those without. Researchers found that colonies lacking pollen had high worker mortality, no interest in caring for their queen and remained weak
Our ethical management of bees extends further: Alpine Apiaries do not collect bee venom as we believe it can harm or even kill bees.
The more pollen, The more bees
Research has shown that honey bee larvae need enough protein in their brood food to ensure proper development and to optimise their growth during the winter. In 1936, Farrar showed that the quantity of stored pollen within a colony in the fall (autumn) significantly correlated with its spring adult bee population. In other words: the more pollen, the more bees. Other studies have further reinforced the importance of natural pollens on hive health.
What’s more, experts such as Christina Grozinger, Professor of Entomology and Director of the Center for Pollinator Research, Penn State University, USA, have found that feeding honey bees a natural diet of pollen makes them significantly more resistant to pesticides than feeding them an artificial pollen diet.
Why Alpine Apiary bees don't pollinate crop
Alpine Honey comes only from hives placed in wild, natural habitats, and never mono-floral commercial orchards. We DO NOT use our bees for commercial pollination to ensure that high levels of natural pollens remain in Alpine honey.
Why? Because intensive farming of monofloral crops reduces bee habitats and replaces multiple food sources with single, often less nutritious, sources. It’s believed that this, together with exposure to pesticides and fungicides, may create environmental stressors that are factors in the die-off (Colony Collapse Disorder) of bees. Many studies have shown that that pollen from a variety of sources makes bees more resistant to stress by enhancing their immune systems.
Pollen from different plants varies in nutritional value. Some pollen, like sunflower pollen, has insufficient nutritional value for bees. Therefore, sound practice is to ensure a wide range of pollen is available.
Recently researchers discovered “that most of the crops that the bees were pollinating appeared to provide their hives with little nourishment”. In fact, when researchers in the USA collected pollen from bees foraging on crops such as blueberries and watermelon, they found the pollen came from other flowering plants in the area, not from the crops.
No chemicals please for our bees
Research has shown that honeybees used to pollinate crops are exposed to a wide variety of agricultural chemicals, including common fungicides that impair the bees’ ability to fight off potentially lethal parasites.
Pollen samples from these hives contained nine different agricultural chemicals, including fungicides, insecticides, herbicides and miticides. Sub-lethal levels of multiple agricultural chemicals were present in every sample, with one sample containing 21 different pesticides. Honeybees are known to entomb this pollen to remove it from consumption in the hive.
Many crops are treated with systemic insecticides by dressing the seeds or treating the soil. Plants like fireweed and clover absorb these insecticides and secrete them in nectar and pollen; bees then collect this and take it back to their hives.
All good reasons to choose honey from bees that roam freely in some of Squamish’s most remote, untouched environments: with no added chemicals and in fact, no added anything.
Guides and Guardians
At Alpine Honey, we follow a sustainable philosophy we call the ‘4Cs’: community, culture, conservation, and commerce. These guide us in every decision we make: from conserving wildlife to using 100% renewable energy; from preserving local culture to teaching future generations to take care of our planet – and our bees.
As well as encouraging the return of native birds and fish, our wetlands help recharge groundwater and ensure we have adequate water to keep our farm, flora, and fauna hydrated through British Columbia's drier summer months.
Community Matters
Alpine Honey is all about community and partnerships. We work with local landowners so that we can place our hives on some of the most beautiful, untouched land in the world (and we believe in paying them fairly). We support local businesses, create local jobs and we’re big believers in helping to preserve local culture too.
As Nature Intended
Harvested with love
