The Ginger Factory & The Big Pineapple
Yandina & Woombye, Queensland, Australia
November 24, 2023
Maybe you can catch the Gingerbread Man!
We took a side trip out to Yandina to visit the iconic Buderim Ginger Factory, the worlds largest factory. We learned how the ginger is grown, harvested and turned into delicious products. We concluded our factory tour in The Ginger Tasting Room where we sampled various ginger delights.
FUN FACTS:
· There are over 100 varieties of ginger but only 4 are edible. They include: ginger (sweet but spicy), turmeric (peppery, musky), cardamon (sweet, peppery, pungent with hints of floral) and galangal (peppery like mustard). The other gingers are often referred to as ornamental and used in landscape due to their beautiful flowers and scents.
· Ginger root is called a rhizome and it is the “seed” used for future crops. A small golf ball piece planted in the soil, growing like a potato, is the next gens crop.
· Every part of the ginger root is used in some sort of product at the factory, nothing is wasted.
Ginger tasting included:
Pineapple & Ginger Cordial Zinger Drink, Sweet Ginger BBQ Meatball, Ginger Marmalade Onion Jam on a Rice Cracker, Gingernut Biscuit with Cream Cheese/Ginger & Lime Marmalade. Candied Ginger Pineapple Chunk and a Naked Ginger Nugget. It was ALL yummy!
Sugarbag Bee…What’s All The Buzz About?
We also got a special bee tour at the factory. Obviously, bees are the lifelines to many crops. Australia is home to over 2000 species of bees, some of them are stingless like the Sugarbag Bees. These guys are SO tiny they are often mistaken for small flies or mosquitos (and accidentally killed as a nuisance). Lets talk honey with these guys…the queen lays 300 eggs a day with the average worker bee making about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime (which is admittedly short at 21 days). It takes 1100 bees to make 1kg of this golden honey. These busy bees need to visit 4 million flowers to accomplish this goal! Think about that…….maybe that’s why it is THE most expensive honey around, clocking in at $250-300 per kg! It has been found to hold super high levels of antimicrobial properties putting its competitor, Manuka Honey, to shame with its worthiness. You are definitely not stirring this honey in your morning tea or spreading it on toast to snack! Good news….you can easily start a colony by purchasing a queen for $30 and having her shipped to you overnight!
The European Honeybee is really the SuperBee!
We got a behind the scenes tour of the bees that call the Ginger Factory home. From our beekeeper we learned about the hive hierarchy, how honey is made, how the hive thrives and finished off our tour with a honey tasting.
Fun facts:
· Drones (male) don’t do anything but try to mate with a Virgin Queen. If they fail to do so, the worker bees (female) will literally pull the drone wings off and kick them out of the nest! The drones are lazy, rely on the workers to bring them food and don’t help with hive cleaning. Sound like any men in your life?
· Bees have 5 eyes
· Worker bees carry the pollen they’ve collected in a “bag or basket” located behind their hind legs
· They produce about 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of honey in their lifetime. They need to visit over 2 million flowers in their lifetime to achieve this goal. Think about that!
· Queens can live up to 5 years (average is 2), workers live for 6 weeks and thankfully the drone dies after mating or has his wings pinched off sooner.
· Bees sleep 5-8 hours a day
· If a queen dies unexpectedly, the worker bees identify a larva and begin to condition it to become the Queen, otherwise the hive would die.
· The queen stores up to 6 million sperm after her “bee flight mating dance” and selectively decides gender as she lays up to 2000 eggs a day
The most exciting part of our tour was getting to see inside a hive! The staff at the Ginger Factory have built hives in the walls separated by a glass window pane and roll top garage door. If you search long and hard, you may be lucky to spot a Queen….we did! It’s also neat that you can put your hand on different places within the hive and feel the warmth generated by the bees flapping their wings, seeing baby bees emerge and watching the hive work as a collective whole. Now I understand the phrase “Busy as a Bee!”
The honey tasting was delicious….we tried the following varieties, all from the surrounding flower/tree populations in Australia: Floral Blend, Tasmanian Leatherwood, Rainforest, Yellowbox, Iron Bark and Eucalyptus. Our least favorite was: Tasmanian Leatherwood (spicy, musky, earthy). Our favorite hands down was: Eucalyptus, with upwards of 900 “gum tree” types here in Australia, it’s no wonder it tastes the best, a smooth, butterscotch flavor! A close second for me was a tie between the Floral Blend, it depends on the seasonal flowers as to the actual taste and the Yellow Box which is a light amber, fresh & fruity flavor.
Found our new place to stay....Air Bee & Bee!
The Rainbrella Project....so colorful!
SpongeBob doesn’t live under the sea…he lives in Oz!
The gigantic, 52 ft tall, fiberglass pineapple was erected in 1971 and is set atop a 400 acre old pineapple plantation, once called The Sunshine Planation in Woombye, Queensland. What started out in the early 1800’s over time has faded to nothing. Once a vibrant tourist attraction with a nutmobile, train, shops and planation tour showcasing the pineapples, avocados, macademia nuts, ginger, sugar cane, bananas and passionfruit they once grew, it is currently used only as a special events location for music festivals. It really is a shame as it is a Queensland icon/Heritage listed attraction…even Princess Diana and Prince Charles had visited the planation in 1983. It has so much potential, I hope it gets revived.
