Anicet Honeys
Miels d’Anicet, a beekeeping farm founded in 2001 by Anicet Desrochers and Anne-Virginie Schmidt, produces a range of organic honeys in the Hautes-Laurentides while taking care to have the smallest possible footprint on the environment.
Although Anicet was born into a family of beekeepers, it took a trip to the Île de la Réunion where he met a family of Creole beekeepers who harvest lychee honey for him to decide to dedicate his life to bees. This experience proves to be a revelation for him, and he then decides to study bee biology in Vancouver. Upon his return to Quebec, he settles in the region where he grew up and creates his business for wild honey production and hives, as well as for breeding queen bees. Two years later, Anne-Virginie, his girlfriend who is trained as an accountant, joins him in the adventure.
Located at the foot from the Mountain of the Devil, this honey farm offers raw and unprocessed honey, that is to say without filtration, which allows for the preservation of traces of pollen, propolis, and beeswax. It also undergoes a cold extraction that ensures the preservation of aromas, as well as nutritional values. The product is harvested with the utmost respect from the 1500 hives scattered throughout the Ferme-Neuve countryside, a forested region that has preserved a nearly unique diversity of wildflowers in Quebec. This location plays a significant role in the unique taste of the product: surrounded by fields free of any pesticides, the bees are free to roam and forage on a varied flora: cherry, wild cherry, and dandelion in spring; linden, clover, vetch, raspberry, crucifer, and sweet clover in summer; eupatorium, goldenrod, and aster in autumn.
Anicet honeys produced between 60,000 to 75,000 kilos of honey annually and "commercialize several varieties, each showcasing a particular universe of flavors. Discover this diversity of complex aromas that evolve with the seasons with the" Autumn honey which offers a delicate and fruity taste with notes of vanilla, apricot, and beeswax or the Summer honey which has a rather delicate and fresh taste, with floral and menthol notes. In any case, the recipe is simple: avoid human manipulation and leave the honey in its pure state.
We also use their aromatic organic honey in the marinade of some of our products, as is the case with our pre-cooked chicken with candied lemon and rosemary, or even our marinated beef flank from Prince Edward Island.