Hello everyone!
I have decided to provide for you, our customers, an overview of the entire beekeeping season 2020. I will briefly outline the harvest we have had.
The start of the season was very promising. Many sunny days had encouraged the bees to brisk spring development until the spring drought completely dried the soil. Thus, the first flower pasture was being tested - whether nature will offer bees some nectar in addition to an abundance of pollen or not. In the second half of April, the temperatures dropped below zero several times, which greatly affected our main acacia pasture in Kozjansko National Park and most of the trees froze. Fortunately, some acacias along the tops of the hills remained less affected so we had our first modest pouring of flower and acacia honey together in May. Both pastures were affected by the weather, so this year's floral honey was mixed with acacia honey - in percentage terms, 80% is floral and 20% acacia, which gives it an even fuller taste.
In the second half of May there was a particularly good forecast for maple and silver fir pasture, so we took all the bees to the untouched forests: Kočevje old-growth forest, Logatec plateau, Javorniki, Pokojišče near Borovnice. We were hardly waiting for the rain, as the drought persisted. But when it finally started to rain, there was too much of it, and by the second half of June, when the linden and chestnut trees began to bloom, it was raining almost every other day. Consequently, the atmosphere cooled and a particularly good chance for remarkable forest honey was lost.
The bright light started to shine with linden and chestnut honey. Our bees gathered linden honey in the intact Kočevski Rog and it is excellent, very aromatic and bright. Chestnut honey, which is my favourite, was collected by bees in chestnut stands, which spread over almost the entire Gorjanci. For lovers of strong taste, this honey is the right choice.
After that we returned the bees to the forests (Kočevje old-growth forest, Logatec plateau, Javorniki), where silver fir predominates, hoping to get some excellent silver fir or forest honey. Unfortunately, it was the end of the season, so we started preparing the bees for winter in early August.
To sum up, this year we offer many honey products and three excellent varieties of honey that nature has offered us, namely:
floral,
linden,
and chestnut honey.
We were also working hard for the other three types of honey, which are usually found on our shelves (acacia, forest, silver fir), but nature simply did not want to share them with us this year. We can only hope that next year will be different. However, we accept with gratitude what we have received from nature which is ever so mysterious and endless.
On behalf of our beekeeping (Čebelarstvo Ferenčak),
Rok Ferenčak
