Smirlholm Farms — From milk to honey

Agriculture has always been my passion. In 1991, I took over the operation of my grandparents' small dairy, and continued it for 25 years. Changes to the dairy industry made a small operation unsustainable, so it was time for me to diversify. My fascination with honeybees was the reason I took an apiary management course when I attended the University of Guelph, from 1986 to 1989. When I left cows and milk , bees and honey seemed like a natural transition.

Bees make honey amazing, and we keep it that way! By maintaining a small, non-commercialized, sustainable apiary we can personally oversee all our hives and their care. Our bees forage on alfalfa, sweet clover, sunflowers, and several species of wildflowers native to Dundas county. This allows them to produce a high quality honey with exceptional taste and aroma unique to this region. We extract direct from the hive, without high temperature or pressurized filtering systems to ensure the maximum amount of pollen and all of honey’s healthful properties remain untouched.

“No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”
Albert Einstein

Smirlholm Farms is located in Morewood, ON (40 minutes south east of downtown Ottawa) and is honoured to have been voted best honey by the Eastern Ontario Beekeepers Association. We are a family-run operation — myself my wife, and my daughter — and we are members of the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association, and a proud participant in the Operation Pollinator Program. The focus of this program is to promote the health and well-being of bees and other pollinators, given their essential role in agriculture and nature. We have dedicated sections of our farm exclusively to the cultivation of native wildflower mixes, which we continue to expand on every year. That, along with annually lining some of our fields with sunflowers, is a small part of what we do here to help provide an ideal environment for pollinators.

We invite you to try our honey and add some sweetness to your day!