Celebrating 20 years: two of our own reach a milestone at Warral Maldon
In a time where everyone seems to bounce around to different roles every year or two, to have two of your own stay in your business for two decades is a very humbling thing.
When Lindsay’s been away chasing the honey flows in the Australian bush, it’s Melinda who has taken the reins of the business, stepping into the roles of sales, admin, HR, accounting, strategy, operations manager and more. It’s also been fantastic seeing her develop her skills into where her interests and passions are over time.
Kerrie has been our dedicated honey packer for nearly 20 years, a constant in the chaos that is often the world of beekeeping and honey-making: all our jars, buckets and squeezies would lie empty without her.
It’s more that just work of course; over 20 years you watch kids grow up, others come and go and there are good times and bad. We’re forever grateful for their dedication and support.
Maldon decides its best photographers
Lindsay got to meet the talent behind the stunning images we’ve been seeing as part of the latest Maldon Captured photography competition.
As a proud sponsor of the open Amateur division, Lindsay handed out the prizes (and a little sweet Warral gift) to the winners and honourable mentions who so beautifully captured the spirit of our unique town, and the wilderness around it that allows our bees to do what they do best.
Congratulations to Mark Polsen, our overall Amateur winner with his ‘Horse Whisperer’ image, snapping a stunning moment between a horse and a boy who seemed to understand each other. We’re looking forward to supporting this community initiative and more like it in the future.
The end of honey season is just the beginning
It was long and hard work, and very rewarding (with lots of honey) – but our summer and autumn honey season is over. The onset of winter in the beekeeping community meaning bees are packed down and kept warm. It’s not quite hibernation, but they do slow down and it’s a pretty comfy way to spend the colder months.
Our HQ in Maldon will be filled with the beautiful aroma of this season’s molten beeswax as we refine the other natural output of our bees’ hard work. This will also allow us to pre-wax our 30,000 new frames waiting in the wings; this is an important step when it comes to building hives, as the bees accept the new frames better when they have a coat of wax on them.
It’s exciting to see the sheer volume of material we need to build our hives, sitting in piles waiting to be assembled. Oh, and we also need another 1,000 new hive lids…shhh, don’t tell our maintenance manager Darren.
Warral Maldon backs hospitality as Golden Plate sponsor
In 2021 we’ve launched into something very new and very big by sponsoring Best Chef in the Golden Plate Awards. After a hiatus during 2020, the famous awards are back, celebrating the best of hospitality in regional Victoria.
Our food service network means our honey has long been served in some big names in restaurants, hotels, cafes and more around the state, but this will help get our honey under the noses (and on the plates) of the best of the best: foodies among us may recognise names like Higher Society in Ballarat, Jack Rabbit on the Bellarine Peninsula and Bistro Terroir in Daylesford.
We’ve already received fantastic feedback on our honeycomb and premium table honey, with restaurants dolloping it on desserts and cafes drizzling it into coffee (with their customers noticing the difference).
The Golden Plate program runs throughout the whole year, with two rounds of secret judging ongoing until September, a Masterchef-style cook off between the highest rated chefs in October (with our very own ‘foodie’ Lindsay serving as judge!) and it all culminates in an awards gala in November.
Stay tuned for news on the nominees and winners (and pictures of Lindsay tasting food amongst actual food critics) as we help celebrate an industry that very much deserves some love.