Sustainable Beekeeping

In collaboration with experienced beekeepers, we develop bee-friendly techniques to combat bee-related diseases, produce honey and other bee products, and develop genetic material production techniques.

Bees

The majority of our bees belong to the Macedonian breed (Apis mellifera macedonica), a very special breed that is found even in Russia and more so in the Balkans: Greece, Romania, Skopje, etc. In our country we find it mainly in Northern Greece. It has a dark coloring and a relatively large proboscis. It maintains large populations even in the winter period while it develops late in the spring. It is a very calm bee, an important element for the new beekeeper without a strong tendency to swarm. It is considered the calmest bee. It is a bee that, if found in the right place, will give us very good productions and will correct many mistakes of the inexperienced beekeeper by itself. In addition to the Macedonian breed, we are setting a number of hives belong to the Buckfast breed. Its creator is a German monk and its monastery of origin (Buckfast Abbey) is English. It is a breed that has come from the crossbreeding of other breeds and years of genetic improvement by the monk Adam. Very productive little bee, too calm one would say, desirable for the new beekeeper and does not swarm easily, also important for the new beekeeper because inexperience easily leads to loss of colonies. The beehives are the home of the bee, or rather its artificial home since it does not live in beehives in nature. Our own hives, some of them are made entirely of wood, while the majority of them now consist of a plastic base, a wooden floor (hive walls) and a wooden lid with internal insulation. The plastic base is made of food grade plastic and has a shelf life of ten years. We believe that this combination is the best possible, because the wooden base is quickly damaged by moisture, rots and becomes a hotbed of various organisms, while its maintenance often requires chemicals that are harmful to bees, and can create a problem for the honey but also in the candle with their presence.

Adoption of a beehive

Before referring to the process we should say that the bee is not a “machine” that produces honey and other products. It is a living creature, that the more one knows it the more one loves it and that the relationship with the beekeeper is two-way, not in the sense that I give you food you give me or I steal your own food to win. It is a relationship of love and respect. We do not consider beekeeping to be a profession but a way of life and it is no coincidence that in developed countries and in America and Europe beekeeping is used to create bonds between corporate executives, with beehives on top of buildings or to reduce stress. The bee recognizes the beekeeper, it has a memory, it recognizes faces, it completely understands our psychological state and behaves accordingly, therefore the relationship that the beekeeper develops with this particular insect is not a simple relationship like a sponge that bothers us. I mention the hornet because in Greece bees are all hornets in the opinion of many and they are annoying. It is an insect that works absolutely mathematically approaching perfection in the way it builds its hive, the way it grows and reproduces, the way it produces its food and does not deviate from it in the slightest. We do not push our bees to their limits in terms of honey production, always leaving them more quantities than they need, preferring to have less production and provide them with better living conditions. We move them to areas of Evia that are rich in food to minimize the need for processed food. For further information please check the link. The benefit is multiple for the environment we live in, all of us now knowing that the elimination of the bee population will also bring about our own end. Every year the number of bees worldwide is decreasing, in Greece the number of bees and beekeepers is also decreasing, because the cost of production is now high, so the number of people leaving the profession is correspondingly high.