Village Visit & Beekeeping

The smoker is already going before anything gets opened, and the smell — burnt wood, dry grass, wax — stays in your hair for the rest of the day. Smoke convinces the colony there is a fire; the bees fill themselves with honey and are busy with themselves for twenty minutes. Without it no lid comes off.

A village apiary in Tavush is fifteen to forty hives on a slope, usually with the entrances facing south-east so the morning sun gets the colonies moving early. The beekeeper walks the row and can tell from the traffic at each entrance which colony he is not opening today.

A drawn frame weighs more than you expect, and you hold it level and always over the hive. If it falls, it falls onto twenty thousand animals. On that frame you see in one image what a colony is doing: capped brood in the middle, a ring of pollen around it, honey at the outside and the top. Finding the queen takes a quarter of an hour the first time and feels like a small victory afterwards.

Extraction happens in the side room, because the centrifuge belongs where the bees are not. Uncapping, loading, cranking, and then honey runs from a tap too slowly to impress anybody. Thyme honey and mountain-meadow honey from the high pastures taste so different that a blind test is worth it; both are on the table here.

People do get stung. Not everyone, not always, but often enough that we talk about it beforehand. Veil and gloves are mandatory, dark clothing and perfume stay at home. If you are allergic to insect venom, tell us when you book — an auto-injector then belongs in your own pocket and has to be discussed in advance. At the apiary it is too late for that.

At the end you sit in the yard, eat honey with bread and butter, and go on smelling of smoke.