As the season quickly shifts from spring to summer, we know you are yearning for our beloved Andros. So with this week’s newsletter we will bring you a truly local event, virtually.

Recently we had the pleasure of chatting with our dear friends, Katerina & Lefteris of @3melisses, passionate beekeepers, and producers of amazing organic Andros honey.

Beekeeping, also known as apiculture, focuses on the simple yet very complex act of little, miraculous bees. This handicraft is mostly traded from generation to generation, and Greece remains one of the essential producers on the European market, as they have for decades.

Our friend Katerina Tridima comes from a family that was one of the first professional beekeepers on the island. She has inherited an abundance of knowledge from the family business that her father has run for almost 40 years. Since joining the business, Katerina has reinvented it as a fully organic farm with a growing product range.

The golden liquid known as honey boasts outstanding properties on our health and body:

“Honey is one of the most valuable, nutritious and healthy foods. It gives energy to the muscles, clarity of the mind, disinfects and regulates the digestive system. Its regular use gives vigour to the organism and helps to the extension of life. Honey has been used for thousands of years as a pharmaceutical elixir because it is antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and is also as an excellent cleansing substance for wounds.
Furthermore, it is suitable for cooking; in sauces, salad dressings and naturally as a sweetener. Many ‘natural beauty recipes’ contain honey among their ingredients as it is rich in antioxidants and good for skin that suffers from acne. It also offers anti-ageing properties, opens the pores and softens the skin.”

Just like herbs, honey harvested from around the Greek islands has a significantly richer flavour due to the favourable climate and the extremely generous flora that bees and wildflowers thrive in:

“The ideal natural environment of the northernmost island of Cyclades, Andros, is by itself the main reason of the ‘magic’ found in locally produced honey and other apicultural products such as royal jelly, pollen or propolis.
This ‘magic’ of Cycladic honey occurs mainly due to the very special and rare micro-climate found on those windswept rocks of the Aegean Sea. The intensity found at the taste as well as the savour of certain varieties of honey comes as the result of this perfect microclimate that includes small heights of rain, lots of sunshine and ideal soil quality”!

Organic farming at 3melisses means additional care for bees and their produce:

“The beekeeper is obliged to treat his product with the highest respect by not interfering with the process and not ‘playing’ against the rules during the production, harvesting and packaging of natural honey.
Becoming fully organic meant significantly increased effort and costs for implementation and keeping with standards in the following years. Honey production requires a lot of time, effort, skills and hard work which makes this precious elixir extra valuable.”

If you’re wondering when is the honey harvest season in Greece, the answer is that there might be quite a few:

“We are moving our hives constantly around the year in order to exploit different honey plants thus we often have more than two apicultural seasons yearly. 3melisses are offering to its customers honey from wild thyme harvested during the summer, from savoury and from maple harvested during the end of spring, and from heather during the autumn.”

Speaking of high-quality honey Katerina adds: “It’s defined by both beekeeper’s work ethic as well as taste, savour, colour and density of the final product that greatly prove its quality.”.

Looking for the best honey is like searching for the perfect wine. There are dozens of floral varieties to choose from. The rule of thumb is to look for one where the only ingredient listed is 100% pure honey. To give you a little hint, choose darker coloured honey which offers more antioxidants and minerals such as potassium, chlorine, sulphur, iron, manganese and magnesium compared with lighter versions.

Bees are officially declared to be the most important living being on Earth; their pollination is responsible for 70% of the world’s agriculture. They have an immense impact on our ecosystem and plant reproduction, however, excessive use of pesticides and deforestation is leading to extinction.

We strongly encourage you to source honey from trusted producers whose ingredient list is nothing less than pure, unadulterated, honey - untainted by chemicals and pesticides, ideally from a location that you personally know.

We hope you have enjoyed reading about this sweet miracle; the world renowned thyme honey, produced in our area of Aegean Sea, and that you are eager enough to join us for a honey tasting this summer at Melisses.

If you would like to immerse your taste buds in our favourite organic honey from Andros before that, you can do so here.

For more inspiration visit @3melisses

Interview adapted by Allegra Pomilio and Veronika Krizova

Photos by Fiona Franziska

ANDROS' PUREST THYME HONEY