We’ve been learning a lot about bees throughout this trip. Greece is famous for their honey here and it certainly lives up to the hype. Tasting the honey here was a huge highlight of this entire trip, so you know it was good. We visited two different honey farms while we’ve been here, the first was on Crete and we got to see the process that they use to make the honey as well as test all the other items that they use beeswax and other substances the bees make for. During this visit, we got the opportunity to put on those big bee suits and go over to the bee hives and taste the jelly straight from the hive; it was like an out of body experience.

Besides making honey, the farm also made honey raki as well as healing cream. The raki was insane, normally raki tastes a bit like rubbing alcohol but the honey raki was one of the sweetest and most delicious things I’d ever tasted. The healing cream that they make is called an “Ancient Healing Cream for Face and Body.” It’s used for itching, dry skin, burns, etc. If you burn yourself and immediately put this balm on, the burn won’t even appear. They make it with natural beeswax, royal jelly, extra virgin olive oil, thyme honey, and propolis, so almost everything in it comes directly from the bees! I actually ended up buying some of this because it worked so well that I couldn’t not.

The people who ran this honey farm were amazing; they welcomed us into their home, showed us around, and fed us. We got to take a tour of their farm which not just bees, but cows, horses, ducks, goats, and sheep. The cows they have are some of the only cows on in Greece. I grew up on a farm so getting to see this place was really sentimental to me and made me miss my hometown in Pennsylvania quite a lot, which is something I don’t feel that often. The village here was so small that they didn’t even have a school; the children would take an hour long bus ride to the nearest town every morning to have school there instead. Everyone in this town seemed to always be coming together, they all helped with the animals, with the honey, and with the restaurants. It reminded me of th

e Amish community back where I grew up. Back home, the Amish always come together whenever another family needs their help. They help with building, selling food, and school, it’s a very wholesome community.

A few days after Crete, we took a trip to Ancient Olympia and got to visit Clio’s Honey farm. Clio and her family were very welcoming and made us a home cooked meal with an extremely tasty honey dessert. After we ate, Clio taught us all about her farm; from how it operates, the history behind it. The

history of her farm was actually really cool. Her grandfather was the first person to harvest chicken eggs in Peloponnese and the house that she uses for her honey process now, used t

o house 5000 chickens that her grandfather would use to sell eggs to Athens.

We got to learn a lot more about what the hives make at Clio’s farm than we did at the oneon Crete. One of the many things the bees make is called Propolis. It looks kind of like a resin and it helps to keep the hive healthy because it’s a natural antiseptic.  It can be used to keep out intruders and repair the hives. If an intruder gets in that is too big for the bees to get rid of, they will cover the body in propolis in a sort of mummification. Since it’s such a strong antiseptic, the body doesn’t give the bees any kind of diseases while it’s t

here. Royal Jelly is another product that the bees make; it’s used to fee the Queen Bee, which she is also created from. The jelly literally creates a stronger, better bee and she is the only one who can give birth. Before the new queen is ready, the old queen will leave with about half the hive to find a new hive to

start their new life. A queen will only fly twice in her life. The first is when she is born; she will fly very fast and all the drone bees will follow her and only the strongest will catch her and mate. The second time is when she leaves to start a new hive once a new queen is born. The queen can only stay a queen while she has sperm in her belly. Without the sperm, she is useless and the hive will not survive because there are no more females being born. The drone bees, which are males. are pretty much useless. One on in a hundred actually serves a purpose, which is to fertilize the queen that first time she flies. The rest just make noise and do nothing.