Stuck On Honey

When I was a kid, my parents found a swarm of bees in our courtyard. These worker bees seemed to have followed their Queen bee, which for some reason preferred to come to our place. So, we decide to give her free service, and have been able to keep and semi-domesticate all her fellow insects, and harvest excess honey for a couple of years, up until some mysterious circumstances caused the death of the colonies.

As an individual who is stuck on honey much, our “home-produced” honey remained my favorite one for a long time, until I tested the most amazing honey last week at my friends’ house. My friends just got back from Ethiopia, and brought raw, thyme/eucalyptus honey with them. Honestly speaking, I have tested hundreds of different honey brands and qualities from all continents, but this one from the Ethiopian region of Gojjam, is exquisite. The color, the clarity, the aroma, specially the flavor is unparalleled, one can feel something special on the mucous membrane of the throat when you slide a piece of pancake, filled with this sort of honey. Simply great!

So, I was given some spoons of this unique honey to take it home. Yesterday, when I got home, my flat was literally occupied by another swarm of bees. I had left the jar opened, so the honey was an attractor for them, and they got in to take what belongs to them. But this time, I couldn’t keep them all with me, because I was unable to identify the Queen bee…then I thought, these days, organic honey is quite scarce to find, both for the insects and humans.

Rank	Country 2005	Thousand metric tonnes	Global honey production in %
1.	China	298	21.5
2.	Turkey	82.3	5.9
3.	Argentina	80	5.8
4.	United States	79.2	5.7
5.	Ukraine	71.5	5.1
6.	Russia	52.1	3.8
7.	India	52	3.7
8.	Mexico	50.6	3.6
9.	Ethiopia	39	2.8
10.	Spain	37	2.7

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