NEWSLETTER #34 (English) from Urs & Izzy: 2025 Summer (Forest) Honey!
- Izzy the busy bee....
- Aug 2
- 5 min read
August 2025 (Issue #34)
Dear honey lovers, Yes!!! finally! the second (and last) honey harvest of the year is here! This year's harvest was better than last year (remember that last year nature 'gifted' us with cement honey - so our bees (and we) worked a lot...for nothing)- During the last two months, our bees, have made a forest honey really deep and complex in taste...and in colour! It is sooooo good, that we cannot stop eating it ourselves! Read on, to know more about this season's honeydew!
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News from the Beehives
We harvested the forest honey from our bees on the 25th and 26th of July -- a little bit later than usual, due to the long-lasting very wet weather conditions. Some of our customers have asked us if they can visit us during the harvesting. Well, we think (and say), that the harvesting day (and a couple of days after) it might not be the best day to visit an apiary - here is why.
The harvest day is neither a romantic nor a bucolic experience! Starts at 5 a.m, when Izzy goes down to the basement, cleans it thoroughly, and sets up and re-cleans all of the equipment, all made of steinless-steel; metal structures, trays and tools for hand-uncapping the honey frames, a centrifuge to spin the honey out of the frames, all of the coarse filters and buckets, and a large container to 'rest' the honey, before it gets to the honey glasses. Meanwhile, also at 5 a.m. Urs goes to the hives, to prepare the hive for the logistics process. By 6 a.m. both Urs & Izzy are already, slowly but steadily, removing the frames, brushing away the (less than) stoic bees, and carrying the heavy boxes of frames (the one on the photo weights about 20 kilos) across the forest, to where the mobility car is, so they can be brought to the spinner. Why slowly? Because obviously the bees realize at some point that their honey is being stolen, and they start acting desperately...so it is better to be calm and very zen! The whole process takes about two days, moving around about 400 kilos of material (mainly wood, as all of the frames and boxes are made of sturdy natural, untreated wood) ...after which we have also half a day of cleaning again all of the material, which will be conveniently stored until next season! They are long and heavy days, after which we can notice our arms, our backs....and also the stings! Only 5 stings for Izzy this harvest...and about 12 for Urs. We'll posts photos on the stings soon.. but that's another story!
Where is my Honey...?
Your honey is ....ready!! As you read this, Izzy has finished filling the honeypots with the dark and runny forest honey....and Urs is now sticking the labels. Ah! we have a small surprise for our comb-honey lovers... we have some for you!!! Remember, forest honey will keep liquid for very long -more than 18 months, whereas spring honey usually crystalizes in about 6 - 8 months. Our spring honey from 2025 has already started to thicken considerably....
Why the forest honey crystallizes slower? Because it has a lower glucose content, and more complex sugars (oligosaccharides), due to the extra enzymatic actions of the animals with a strange Greek names (see below). Remember, summer honey, due to the contents of the oligosaccharides, is classed as 'prebiotic', promoting beneficial bacteria in your gut!!
That was a lot of chemistry ... but, if you want to remember how good the forest honey is, when wasps find it fermented forest honey (due to the action of the rain) they will get so drunk, they can hardly walk - let alone, fly!... Yes, it was not humans who invented mead!
Facts & Figures
Which type of trees (and honey) our bees visit during summer, to render the tasteful forest honey?
Well, two types in general, because of the closeness, and one anecdotic type, because they love it so much! The trees that they visit are pines and firs from the forest where the hives are located, so they get the honeydew from a northern european cousin of the Marchalina hellenica and from Physokermes hemicryphus. Two names too difficult to be remembered! Yet, what we will not forget is the taste -- strong, resinous in flavor, dark amber to reddish-brown, and a little bit astringent.
The anecdotic type is chestnut trees -- we have discovered that there are about ten of fourteen of those trees in an urban setting about a kilometer from the hives, and our bees like them so much, that you can hear them buzzing from meters away, it is like if they throw parties there!...Our honey does not have the strong taste of the Ticino chestnut monovarietal honeys, because of the low number of chestnut trees that they visit compared to pines and firs, but it gives the honey a twang!
Did you know that...?
....Honey was a regular staple of the ancient Roman diet. Keeping bees was a respected art and apiaries were elaborate and large in many places. The photo on the right was sent by one of our honey-lovers (thanks, Paul!), who visited it a couple of months ago, and shows an apiary that is still viewable in Malta. The apiary was huge (it would have accommodated over 100 hives in its time) and, like in a Swiss bee-house, it enabled the beekeeper to go behind the hives and easily remove the honeycomb from slats in the wall.
We know a lot about the usage of Honey in Rome, through poets, philosophers, writers and doctors of those ancient times. Honey was used as a medicine, as a daily cooking ingredient, and as a summer drink. Mead (fermented honey) was not known in ancient Rome, until they began conquering lands to the North, but still, they did drink a lot of honey. Honey water was a common drink meant to feel refreshing, and was a recommended 'travelers' drink' ('Conditum Melizonium Viatorium'); it contained just honey, water, and pepper. Interesting! Would you give it a try? Let us know! And, if you feel more adventurous, they had a 'Conditum Paradoxum', which was the original version of our 'summer wine' (tinto de verano) -and actually a better one! You can read the full recipe here -- honey, wine, pepper, laurel, saffron, date stones and mastic resin.... invigorating!
Swiss Bees
The expert bee-research group at ETH has recently (2024) updated the 1994 Red List of the bees of Switzerland. Of the Swiss 615 bee-species assessed, 279 (45,4 %) are considered as threatened or extinct, with a particularly high proportion of threatened species among flower specialists, ground nesting, summer-flying and lowland species. A further 58 species (9,4 %) are categorised as near threatened. Compared to other groups of organisms evaluated, the proportion of extinct bees - in the last 30 years-- is very high with 59 species (9,6 %). Not good news for the Swiss flora and fauna ....You can read more about it (in German) in the publication here. There is a specific part (page 10) dedicated to the different honey bee species (Apis Mellifera), detailing what is happening with the local species (Apis Mellifera Mellifera and Apis Mellifera Ligustica), and the ones that have been arriving during the last 100 years from abroad
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