Tour at Munro's Honey

Oct 29, 2011

The Elgin Middlesex Beekeeper's Association organized a tour of the Munro Honey and Mead operation in Alviston, Ontario...just west of Strathroy.  This is a real honey operation.  They run 3,000 hives and have them placed in the countryside...some as far north as Clinton.  They also send hives to New Brunswick to pollinate the blueberry crops.  This business has been a family business since 1914 started by the Munro's and was bought by one of the workers in the 1950's.

We were taken through the extraction room, the processing stations and where the mead is made.  What an operation!  The scale of everything is amazing.  The extractor holds 120 frames at a time.  The system of moving the frames is motorized.  They have a special room that is chilled to keep the supers full of extracted frames.  Chilling them keeps the wax moths at bay but doesn't freeze the frames so they can be given right back to the bees in the spring.  The honey is heated to 90 degrees to let it run more easily through the machinery.  Honey is pasteurized at 140 degrees so Munro's honey is still sold as unpasteurized.  They also collect the wax and sell it for candle making etc.  The wax is collected in plastic basins and the pile of wax was truly humbling.  To put this in perspective, I have been moulding the little wax that I have collected in egg cups and custard bowls!

Extracted frames in supers stored in chilled room

Basins of collected wax

Piles of wax ready to ship

All the gear in the honey room is made of stainless steel and is sparkling clean.  The extractor was the first one the company made in stainless steel at the request of Munro's.

Extractor that  handles 120 frames

Barrels of honey

The honey room

After we toured the facilities, we were treated to various meads (honey wine) and creamed flavoured honey butters.  Yummy!  Some of the meads were very sweet and some dry.  The honeys were flavoured with jalapeno peppers, cinnamons and fruits.  Good for glazing meats or just as a dip on salted pretzels.

Mead tasting 

Honey butter tasting

It was a glorious fall day and perfect for a drive into the country.  The tour was so interesting for me even though this operation is so much bigger than my little beeyard.  On the ride back we stopped to take some pictures of a very cool tree on the side of the road.  I will leave you with this image.

On the way back to London from Alviston