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mediashark
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Joined: 04 Nov 2004
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 Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 3:43 pm Post subject: Ain't that sweet! (The All-Russia Honey Exhibition) |
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Ok folks, the annual honey fair organized by the Beekeepers' Union is on again in Moscow! Now get to taste the real stuff--not that diluted crap with sugar added etc.
There is always a jar of pure, natural, Russian honey on my kitchen table and it has been great to add a little sweetness and flavour to tea, give an energy boost in the morning, to soothe a sore throat, bring down a fever etc. stuff which only pure honey can do.
The All-Russia Honey Exhibit runs daily from August 26th-October 5th, 8am-8pm.
39, Prospect Andropova.
Metro Kolomenskaya
Not much of a honey expert? Check out this site www.honey.com for general information on honey. |
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cyndy22
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Joined: 15 Oct 2004
Posts: 1076
Location: massachusetts
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| Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 5:55 pm Post subject: |
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| I hear that honey is a natural remedy for allergies. |
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mediashark
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| Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 6:57 pm Post subject: |
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Article from Moscow Times on last year's honey fair
There's nothing locals love more than their honey, and no better place to sample it in all its varieties than at the All-Russia Honey Fair.
13/02/2004
Got a sweet tooth? Looking for the perfect topping for your pancakes? Whether you conduct daily raids on the honey jar or simply like a little extra flavor in your tea, you won't want to miss the 11th All-Russia Honey Fair. Organized by the Russian Beekeepers' Union, the fair typically takes place three times a year -- spring, fall, and, in tune with the pre-Lent festival of Maslenitsa, winter. Among its brightly colored stalls this year is a honey lover's dream, with beekeepers from 52 regions displaying over 60 types of honey, from blackberry to acacia to mint. Besides buying honey of every description, visitors can sample and purchase an assortment of honey-related products, including different sorts of honeycomb and mead, a honey-based alcoholic drink, as well as propolis, a product made from the secretions of bees that is often used in homeopathic medicine.
While the vast arrays of honey can be confusing to the novice buyer, the general guideline is that lighter colored honeys are mild in flavor, while darker honeys are more robust.
Vladimir Filonov / MT
Russia's love affair with honey is not surprising for a country that keeps bees in almost every clime, from the sub-arctic to the sub-tropical. A popular sweetener for tea and topping for desserts, honey also serves a variety of functions in Russian folk medicine, treating everything from anxiety to pneumonia. Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov are among Russia's noted beekeepers.
According to the president of the Russian Beekeepers' Union, Arnold Butov, one of the reasons that the fair is so important is that it gives Moscow residents a chance to buy honey that has not passed through a middleman, as opposed to elsewhere in the city.
"Much of the honey available in Moscow's stores has been artificially sweetened, diluted or in some way tampered with," he said. "It's gotten to the point where many people, especially those who have tasted the real thing, are afraid to buy honey."
Butov also said that all of the honey sold at the fair is guaranteed to be pure, fresh and good for consumption and medicinal purposes.
In addition to offering visitors a cornucopia of bee products, the fair will also feature seminars on everything from technological advances in beekeeping to honey's uses in cooking and folk medicine.
Ira Iosebashvili
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mediashark
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| Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 6:58 pm Post subject: |
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And one more article on Russian honey from Moscow News:
White Honey On The Black Market
By Natalya Alyakrinskaya
Despite inflated prices and widespread fakes, Russian honey is in great demand
While most everyone in Russia seems to like honey, its per capita consumption is a mere 700 grams, or three to four times less than in Germany or Japan. Paradoxically, Russia is Europes leading honey producer (the runners-up are Ukraine and Turkey) but is unable to provide enough honey to meet even the internal demand. Why is that?
Honey is 100 to 350 rubles (about $3 to $10) a kilo. To a foreigner, this is cheap (in Europe, a kilogram of honey costs on average E15). Not so in Russia. Yet beekeepers cannot cut prices for economic reasons.
Sergei Statsenko has been in the honeybee-breeding business for 28 years now. His family-run apiary is in the Khoper nature reserve, on the border of the Saratov and Volgograd regions. An average beekeeper has 40 to 60 bee families. Sergei keeps 200. His is a mobile apiary, producing twice as much honey as a fixed-site one. Yet not even high honey yields can cheer the beekeeper up.
"We used to get a word of thanks only when our bees pollinated the plants," Sergei says. "But now land is mostly private. So when you go into the field, you actually have to pay for pollination."
The situation is simply inconceivable elsewhere in Europe. In the "wild" West a beekeeper, quite the contrary, is paid for pollination and gets most of his income from pollination of plants rather than from honey sales.
A beekeeper has to buy stock, tools, and implements, unrefined beeswax, lease transport facilities, pay for gasoline, and provide wintering conditions for the bees. This accounts for the high prices of honey. As if this was not enough, "alien" bees have been invading Russia. Today they are being brought into the country on a mass scale and without any control. Bee colonies are bought in Uzbekistan and sold to inexperienced beekeepers in Russia as "Carpathian" bees. These bees bring new viral diseases, and with the onset of winter, unaccustomed to Russian cold conditions, they die like flies.
At the same time big money is being made on the honey market - only not, as a rule, by beekeepers but by middlemen. The latter buy honey from apiarists at 30 to 40 rubles per kilogram and then resell it at five times the price.
Furthermore, according to the Russian Apiarists Union, up to 30 percent of honey sold in Russia is adulterated with syrup. This mixture can easily mislead a buyer: It looks and smells like real honey.
Generally, Russian apiculture is in a deplorable condition. In recent years Russia has lost one-third of its apiaries. This year about 70,000 tonnes of honey has been produced - a drop in the bucket for such a vast country with such exceptional natural resources.
Luckily, the Moscow mayor happens to be a bee-keeping enthusiast. Even Luzhkovs opponents have to admit that the traditional honey fairs in Moscow have brought our apiculture out of a coma. Recently, the Ninth All-Russia Honey Fair has been held under the auspices of the Moscow city government and the Russian Apiarists Union, in the Moscow district of Kolomenskoye, with apiarists from 49 regions taking part. With only 500 slots available, the organizers had to choose from 2,000 aspirants.
Arnold Butov is president of both the Russian and the European Apiarists Unions. His motto is: Work like a bee, and youll be happy. He sees a major advantage of the traditional honey fair in that both sellers and buyers get a chance to do business directly, without intermediaries. In the honey business, it is the middlemen, many of them linked to the criminal world, who inflate prices. Not surprisingly, these "businessmen," who control the capitals honey market, have repeatedly tried to pay off Butov in exchange for a promise to scrap honey fairs, and then started threatening him. But the president will not give in. He takes pride in having dealt middlemen a telling blow, protecting the market against fakes.
Meanwhile, in other countries, honey is widely used to build up a nations health. Arnold Butov, who has just returned from Japan, says that schoolchildren there receive budget-subsidized honey and pollen every day. In Spain, 122 baby foods with honey are produced. The pharmaceutical industry makes active use of honey products: In Romania alone, 58 honey-based medical preparations are made.
In Russia, honey is still produced under extreme circumstances. "It makes you ashamed of your country," Butov says. "Russia could produce up to a million tonnes of honey a year. It has all it takes for that: 40 percent of European forests are in Russia - they are Europes lungs. We have 3,300 nectariferous plant species. No other country can match this. Three years ago, Russia took part in an international honey exhibition in Belgium, bagging all gold medals." |
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cyndy22
Lounge Wizard
Joined: 15 Oct 2004
Posts: 1076
Location: massachusetts
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| Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 8:06 pm Post subject: |
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| One movie I liked very much was about a Bee Keeper. The movie starred Peter Fonda and is called Ulee's Gold. While the main plot was not Ulee's honey business, it did show the business nicely. The honey he produced in the movie was Tipalo honey, which is apparently a very fine grade. I probably spelled Tipalo wrong. |
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