Hard work and innovation by Chris and Christy Hiemstra have built Clovermead Bees and Honey Farm into both a tourist attraction and a mainstay of agricultural producers who depend on Clovermead’s 24 million bees to pollinate their crops.

The Hiemstras recently won an Ontario business award for their outstanding success. They are joining with other businesses to make Elgin County a centre for the burgeoning agri-tourism industry, offering the kind of attractions you can’t find in the city.

Looking for an interesting way to spend a few hours, or even a weekend, with the family for fun and education? Consider what you could experience by visiting Clovermead Bees and Honey Farm just north of the Town of Aylmer:

• See how honey is made and visit the largest glass display hive in Ontario;
• Visit Little Aylmer, a streetscape with an old Ontario theme, complete with heritage buildings and an old train station converted to the Bee Discovery Station;
• Take part in special events such as the Bee Beard Festival in July and the Honey Harvest Festival on Saturdays in September;
• Take bus and school tours, go for wagon rides and bee-barrel train rides and see honey-extracting demonstrations.

These and other attractions brought more than 20,000 people to the 11-acre Clovermead farm last year.

“2008 was our tipping point,” Chris Hiemstra says, describing the farm’s evolution into an agri-tourism centre. “We were swamped.”

Partly for their success in adding value to bees and honey, Chris and Christy Hiemstra were recognized as Ontario’s Outstanding Young Farmers for 2008. They were nominated by the Ontario Farm Fresh Marketing Association as part of a national competition sponsored in part by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and received their award at a ceremony in Guelph last spring.

The Hiemstras’ sudden success came after many years of work by the family and their seven part-time employees. Clovermead is in its second generation as a family-run business. Chris and Christy purchased it in 2000 from Chris’s father, who founded it in 1975. While Chris concentrated on raising honey bees, renting them to farmers for crop pollination – as far away as New Brunswick – and producing bee pollen, Christy led the expansion of the family’s retail and tourism operations.

Today their Honey Gift Shop, in a log cabin, is a landmark of the Town of Aylmer. So is the family’s Scottish Highland cow, Bonnie, whose distinctive furry features can be seen on the front cover of the Elgin County phone book.

Sharing their success, the Hiemstras are part of a group of specialty farms and wineries that have joined with numerous shops, inns, art galleries, tea rooms, gardens and conservation areas to promote Elgin County as a place for interesting tours and extended visits.

They call themselves “Back-Roading Elgin” and have developed a map to show tourists a host of locations that are off the beaten track of Elgin County.

“If you have people working together, you can encourage visitors to go from one interesting business to the next and the next,” says Chris Hiemstra. “And as momentum builds for agri-tourism, I think you will see more supporting businesses pop up.”

The Back-Roading Elgin map can be found at www.clovermead.com, along with more information about why Clovermead Bees and Honey Farm is “buzzing with excitement!”