A Chat with Steven from Kitako Lake Honey

These days, the honey business takes up lots of time. Unlike most people, I'm looking forward to winter and the spare time it offers me to do some of the things I like! I'm looking forward to reading novels in bed, cross country skiing, playing music with friends, cooking food ( it's finally time for me to learn to make pasta from scratch), playing squash ( the ball sport, not the vegetable), and engaging in the creative aspects of my business.

How did Kitako Lake come to be? What was the journey to get here? 

I grew up beekeeping with my dad. As soon as I graduated high school, I told myself that I would never have anything to do with beekeeping again!

However, after a few years of traveling, living in other locations, and working various weird jobs, I realized how much I loved the place where I grew up and the independence that beekeeping would allow me. I bought my dad's beekeeping operation and switched the focus to producing and selling honey for the retail market. Over the past decade, there have been many ups and downs in the business, which is pretty typical in an agricultural profession. As our company has grown and diversified over the past years, we've been able to mitigate some of those highs and lows and build a many faceted operation that is proving to be successful and (hopefully) can be sustained over many years.

Tell us about Kitako Lake as a company.

When I first started out, I couldn't find a local honey company that was doing anything unique. Almost all the honey available in retail locations was the same creamed honey that is available throughout the world. My first products were honeys that were totally unique to the province: florally specific varieties that looked, smelled, and tasted amazing. Over the years, we've gotten better at producing and distributing really consistent, unique, high quality honey products that we stand behind unequivocally. 

As far as my beekeeping practice goes, I've always strived to utilize holistic methods to ensure the health of our bees. It's not easy to keep bees healthy these days, and many beekeepers (myself included) have struggled with heavy loss of bee population over the past years. We've specifically sought out methods of disease control that involve organics, experimentation, and an awareness of the beehive as an organism. Our top priority is the health of our bees, and our success in the retail space wouldn't be possible without it.

What’s the buzz on the products you offer? 

These days, we have 5 consistent honey varieties: an unpasteurized creamed honey, an unprocessed raw honey, our Saskatoon berry infused honey ( a real fan fave), our certified Organic wildflower honey, and a new unpasteurized , squeezable liquid honey ! I think that there is something for everyone in that lineup!

This summer, we launched our line of honey mustards. They come in 3 varieties and are made with our honey and prairie grown mustard! Unlike most honey mustard, there is no added sugar in these. We're a little biased, but we freakin love them. 

What’s in store and upcoming for your business?

We're legitimately excited about our new product launching in November. I can't spoil the surprise entirely, but think of Nutella if it weren't terrible for your health and full of added sugar! Ok, I suppose that's a pretty easy guess, but I think people are gonna love it! Other than that, we're going to keep promoting our mustard, sketch out new products to launch in spring 2025, and get to as many fall and holiday markets as we can! 

Is there anything else you’d like to share that might bee interesting? 

It's often hard to find employees in agriculture. Over the years, however, I've had the privilege of almost all my employees being my friends before we started working together! That has made being on the farm (which is 2.5 hours north east of Saskatoon) feel full of life, community, and fun. Almost every year, we have an end of year party on the farm which has included live music, weird beekeeping related games, and all night fireside jams. 

One more humble brag to close things off: we've the best selling local honey in Saskatchewan. It's a modest accomplishment, but it's really cool to know how many people try our honey, then come back for more!