Prairie Bee Meadery offering wide selection of honey-based beverages
What started as a way to make use of extra honey from a local pick-your-own farm has become a unique and award-winning Saskatchewan producer of top-quality meads and wines. Prairie Bee Meadery – which first opened its doors in June of 2016—offers a wide range of products through their storefront and online sales. Since then, the business has taken off.
There was a time, not that long ago, where Prairie Bee could produce and supply everything they needed to create their tasty libations right there at Grandpa’s Garden, the large farm located just outside of Caron. That’s not possible any more. And for good reason. “We’re doing a lot more wine production that we can possibly provide fruit for,” explained Crystal Milburn with Prairie Bee Meadery. “So it depends; we still have sour cherries and raspberries and we have a machine that harvests them. That’s fairly easy for us to get a fairly decent harvest, but it’s not enough. So we have to supplement our fruits from elsewhere and as much as we can, we try and use local growers.” As an example, their haskap berry production is currently limited to around 100 young plants that have limited production. Enter Northern Lights Orchards near St. Louis, Sask., who are now their main supplier of the tart and tangy berry outside of what they can produce themselves. An on-site apiary takes care of much of the aforementioned honey production, which comes from their many fruit and vegetable blossoms along with clover, alfalfa and wildflowers. From honey wines flavoured with cherries, rhubarb, cranberries, raspberries and even chocolate, their
line includes a half-dozen award-winning products from the international Drink Outside the Grape contest, in addition to new flavours showing up on a regular basis. Prairie Bee Meadery is able to produce their products year-round, largely due to the way they go about things – honey keeps indefinitely, and they freeze all their fruits in order to help break them down. That means summer wines in winter are always a possibility. “Our limiting factor has been wanting to use natural products instead of flavouring, and we’re committed to using fruits you can find in Canada,” Milburn said. “So you won’t find us making a pineapple mead any time soon, for example. It’s what can we get that’s Canadian grown. A key part of their business is their comprehensive website at prairiebeemeadery.ca, which offers plenty of information on their product line as well as online shopping options for their dozen-plus honey wines currently available. For those who prefer a more personal touch, Prairie Bee sells their meads and wines at liquor stores all over Saskatchewan, including their Moose Jaw storefront located at 23B Main Street North, across from the Tunnels of Moose Jaw. And if you’re looking for a more in-depth look into how mead and honey wine is produced, Prairie Bee is currently in the midst of building an hour-long
Prairie Bee Meadery proprietor Crystal Milburn in their Main Street storefront.
tour that takes patrons from hive to tank to bottle, running through every step of production along the way. That will be up and running this summer and promises to be a must-stop for anyone interested in large-scale mead and winemaking. For more information, stop in at Prairie Bee Meadery any time during business hours, visit their website, check them out on Facebook, give them a shout at (306) 692-MEAD (6323) or e-mail at inquiries@ prairiebeemeadery.ca.
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