ABOUT THE BEES
One of the first things we did when we arrived on Monte Preti was to get three bee families. They have since grown to 9 families - but the number of families fluctuates slightly each year. We like to think of them as our extended family, and we look after them in the same way that they look after us through pollinating. In many ways, it is a two-way communication, because the bees have made us plant fruit trees and flowers intended for them, and we can enjoy their gifts in the form of delicious honey. The bees are exposed to many challenges in recent years, climatic change, diseases and human practices make it a hard life to be a bee. And lately the arrival of the invasive Asian hornet, Vespa Velutina, has put them to the test further. But we are amazed by their ability to adapt and withstand. The bee is in many ways the perfect creature, social and altruistic, never selfish and destructive and we see them as small flying role models.
We go down to the bees
They work with wax and pollen;
they melt the flowers into honey.
But when we stand here, it is
like standing
on the front line of a war,
looking and listening into the future.
Nothing moves.
It is an invisible and silent enemy
we are fighting against, as insect
after insect crashes to the ground,
struck by something we don’t know what is
or can see.
The only thing we know
is
that it gets quieter and quieter
with each passing spring.
by Morten Søndergaard
ABOUT THE HONEY
The word “honey” comes from the Old Norse word hunang, or in Old English huneg, meaning ‘golden’. Honey exists in a spectrum of colours, from near transparent and watery to white, from yellow to gold, from red to chestnut, green or black. These reflect the flowers from which the nectar is taken, thus mirroring the seasons. In Spring, the honey is light — that’s acacia; by late summer it is deep brown — that’s chestnut. Sometimes bees collect aphid secretions, called honeydew, making a rare honey with medicinal properties. Honey does not exist on its own — bees must produce it, just as cows don’t make cheese and squirrels don’t save Nutella for the winter. And bees don’t make honey alone. It takes twelve bees to make one teaspoon. It takes the whole hive days, to turn nectar into honey, passing it from bee proboscis to proboscis, mixing it with enzymes from their stomachs and sealing it with wax. Edible honey has been found in the Great Pyramid of Giza.