HOG BAY APIARY
Most days of the week you'll find Betty McAdam on one of the back roads of the north coast. She knows every dusty turn off to every stand of sugar gum along this stretch of coastline. With Investigator Strait and Althorpe Island in the distance, she drives across another farmer's cut canola field and zeros in on her target for the day.
"Sugar gum down that way"
No, this is not Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, but Kangaroo Island, a pristine environment for a very natural product.
"Now that's a beautiful sugar gum"
"And it's full of honey"
"It's full of honey, I can feel the weight and it's a lovely sugar gum honey"
For an apiarist this is the perfect combination, a clean island environment, sugar gums in blossom, and the famous Ligurian bee, which dates back to the days of the Roman Empire. Those on KI are now the only pure strain left in the world.
"And I believe there are about 15 references in roman literature to people who kept bees"
"Virgil was a beekeeper"
"So how did some bees from Italy find their way to a place called Cape Dutton on Kangaroo Island?"
"It was actually an act of foresight from the time of the early beekeepers who came to Kangaroo Island. They understood the problems that are caused by hybridising bees when you have two races of bees in the same area. You lose the characteristics that you've been breeding for over thousands of years. And you must separate bees in order to have pure mating. So they convinced the South Australian Government of the day that Kangaroo Island should be set aside as a bee sanctuary just for the Ligurian bee".
"So Kangaroo Island is the oldest bee sanctuary in the world"
That was established back in the 1880's and then they were doing what Betty does now, using a smoker to trick the bees into remaining in their hive.
"The bees believe there's a fire in the vicinity and fire and flood are their great enemies so they rush to their honey supplies in order to fill up their stomachs. Because if the fire destroys the hive, the bees must flee and try and start again somewhere else. They won't flee if they have to because they're abandoning their young if they do that".
When you see something like this, that old description "a hive of activity" takes on new meaning. Betty's Hog Bay Apiary has fifteen sites scattered around the island and sometimes the locals get a bit of a shock when they see her collecting honey in a farmer's paddock.
"I have in fact been told I look like the alien from Mars".
Despite the precautions, bee stings are a regular occurrence, something which Betty has developed a partial immunity to. But she's never tired of harvesting what must be one of the most natural foods available.
"And that's what it's all about"
"So that is ful of honey?"
"That is full of honey"
"You can smell the fragrance"
"It doesn't need anything done to it apart from taking it out of the frames. It can be packed just like that".
The heavily laden combs are later placed in an centrifugal separator with this honey going into Betty's Kangaroo Island Pure Honey Range, just one of many from the Hog Bay Apiary at Penneshaw. They're available from a variety of stalls at the Adelaide Central Market and Muggleton General Store at Hahndorf. For more info email info@postcards.sa.com.au
