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 environmental footprint.
Although Anicet was born into a family of beekeepers, it took a trip to Réunion Island where he met a family of Creole beekeepers harvesting lychee honey for him to decide to devote his life to bees. This experience proved to be a revelation for him and he then decided to study bee biology in Vancouver. Upon his return to Quebec, he settled in the region where he grew up and created his wild honey and hive production business, as well as queen bee breeding. Two years later, Anne-Virginie, his partner who is an accountant by training, joined him in the venture.
Located at the foot from Devil’s Mountain, this honey house offers raw and unprocessed honey, that is to say unfiltered, which allows traces of pollen, propolis, and beeswax to be preserved. It also uses cold extraction which ensures the preservation of aromas as well as nutritional values. The product is harvested with the utmost respect in the 1500 hives scattered across the countryside of Ferme-Neuve, a forested region that has preserved an almost unique diversity of wildflowers in Quebec. This location plays a major role in the unique taste of the product: surrounded by fields free of any pesticides, the bees are free to roam and forage a varied flora: wild cherry, cherry, and dandelion in spring; linden, clover, vetch, raspberry, cruciferous plants, and sweet clover in summer; boneset, goldenrod, and aster in autumn.
Miels d’Anicet produces between 60,000 to 75,000 kilos of honey annually and markets several varieties, each unfolding 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 vanilla, apricot, and beeswax notes 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 handling 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 preserved lemon and rosemary, or even our marinated beef flank from Prince Edward Island.