Mallorca Gardening: Building Honey

Buzzing About Honey

Arriving at Mel Vici in Alaro just lately, I was greeted by the most wonderful scent of newly harvested honey.

Commenced by childhood friends Biel Coll and Pau Queralt this is a business enterprise that arrived about mainly because the mates wished to perform exterior and failed to see themselves as cheesemakers! Loving the countryside and seeking the inhabitants of bees to grow, it seemed an clear alternative to enter the world of beekeeping and earning honey.

This artisan business was built from the ground up with no practical experience and quite number of other beekeepers on the island to understand from. Nonetheless with their dedication and motivation to make the finest honey Mel Vici has become an at any time expanding enterprise.

Mel Vici don’t only produce natural and organic Majorcan honey, they also make new pollen. I experienced no thought that this was collected immediately from the bees right after their foraging journeys and was fascinated to understand how very simple it is to collect.

The bee when she is flying from flower to flower and fortunately covering herself in pollen will then force it down her entire body gathering it into tiny balls on her legs. Seemingly, and only when the bees have a lot of food to eat, they are inspired to fly as a result of a accumulating box, which has a great grid in it, that knocks the pollen balls from their legs as they return to their hives.

These are then gathered in a tray beneath. Mel Vici offer this as a fresh item but you will typically see it as a dried solution in jars. I’m explained to that bee pollen has all the essential amino acids that our bodies have to have for ideal health. A further product which is built is propolis. This is a material which bees actually use as a defence to block holes, like a glue. We use it as it is valuable for its antiseptic and antibacterial homes and often applied for sore throat treatments amongst other items.

The wax from the hives is utilised for points like home furnishings polish and experience lotions, so it looks very little is squandered from a hive.

Mel Vici arrived to fruition about 6 several years back and whereas in the beginning they would accumulate rogue colonies gathered in peoples gardens and other undesirable locations they are now breeding their very own queens and colonies and also offer their bees to some others on the island and also Minorca. In breeding their possess queens they are in a position to make certain a healthy and effective colony of bees which create the ideal top quality honey.
The scent of the honey as we arrived had deep caramel aromas and this is because of to the Autumn harvest staying from bees amassing from the Carob trees.

There are two honey harvests in the calendar year and I am explained to that the spring harvest has a lighter color and smell from the spring bouquets. Mel Vici are really keen that honey labelled Majorcan honey is just that, and they tell me that when the honey from their harvests are bought, there is no far more developed until the future harvest. Luckily for us for we people, Mel Vici keep on to expand their hives and now have close to 600 hives with around 60,000 bees in every single.

Just about every hive retains a queen bee, feminine worker bees and, when there is an abundance of food stuff in spring, some males. At this time in mother nature bees will decide they have to have to have more worker bees so that they can accumulate extra pollen. The queen is the only a single who decides no matter whether a bee will be male or woman. When the hive is about comprehensive with new bees the queen will leave and half of the hive will observe her, she finds a new hive and would make new employee bees. The remaining fifty percent will create a new queen and in winter season when there is not as substantially food items about they will eliminate off the males as their only task is to fertilise the queens eggs and consume! In this way colonies are ready to reproduce and mature inside and this is what Biel and Pau are recreating to maintain their colonies expanding and Majorcan bees in best health.

Their 600 hives make all around a person and a half tonnes of honey at each individual harvest. This seems to be an terrible ton but Biel details out that it is no wherever in the vicinity of more than enough to feed the entire island. There is significantly honey that is imported to the island from somewhere else but this is not a little something that Biel or Pau wish to check out and so Mel Vici honey is very exceptional.
We were being blessed ample on our pay a visit to to sample some of the honey we noticed being harvested.

The perform is approximately all performed by hand but they had been pretty proud to display me their new electrical centrifugal device (see movie) in which they can stack 4 occasions as a lot of trays of honeycomb than the hand version which they even now use for smaller sized client harvests.
On the facet of just about every of their jars it tells you that it takes 1,152 bees that have travelled 180,246 kilometres and visited 4.5 million flowers to make a single 450g jar of honey. There is no marvel they are called worker bees!
Mel Vici have now designed a organization plan enabling clients to have their personal honey with bees sourced from them. For a monthly charge they will then retain the hives and harvest and jar the honey, all of which is returned to you. Some of this honey was being gathered at the time of our stop by and is however pretty a great deal completed by hand and entirely pure. A fantastic way to have your have gorgeous honey.

As a gardener I was intrigued to know if my initiatives to motivate bees into the back garden are valuable and was delighted to know that my leaving brassicas like broccoli to flower is practical. The bees also definitely really like bouquets this kind of as rosemary, lavender, cucumber, melon and courgette. So I hope all gardeners sign up for me in continuing to plant a wide variety of items to persuade the bees. We will need them! Thank you Biel and Pau! If you would like to obtain out far more or see who stocks the honey Biel and Pau can be reached by way of their Facebook webpage Mel Vici d’Alaró