For the Love of Honey

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L’Atelier du Miel, located in Tabaris – Achrafieh, is solely dedicated to Lebanese honey and honey products. With their common passion for nature, craftsmanship and good taste, they produce pure honey with only natural methods. In its boutique, they share their passion for beekeeping by offering more than 30 different types of honey produced in Lebanon as well as a variety of honey-based products.

Their method is distinguished by a unique honey production method that relies on moving the beehives all year long to follow flower blossoming seasons, and by doing so allowing the bees to feed only on the nectar of flowers and honeydew of trees. In a yearly cycle, beehives pass by the Cedar trees in Barouk, Oak trees in Keserwan, Medlar trees in Saida, Orange trees in Tyre and Akkar, Cherry trees in Zahle, Peach and Apricot trees in Rechmaya, Hawthorn and Wildflowers in Kab Elias, and Thorns in Ain Dara.

The raw honey that is harvested at peak season and bottled without heat is liquid gold. Bursting with caramel or butterscotch; fragrant with citrus, minerals, or the intoxicating aromas of peonies and jasmine; berries and currants and dried fruit, that’s the kind of honey our bees produce. This kind of honey with acidity as well as sweetness brings extra depth. Good honey is just as layered and complex as wine, chocolate, and olive oil, and just as deserving of our appreciation.

You can’t separate the Bee from its surroundings just as you can’t separate the flora of a certain area from its land. Honey for me is the pure essence of a country’s botany that grows wild and free. That honey shop for me gathers all the flavors of our little land with all its diversity. It takes a certain passion to transport bees from one area to another in order to gather all the tastes of Lebanon in that little bottle. It’s a journey of love that bees and beekeepers make among the valleys and mountains in search of nectar. Honey can taste different from hives 3 kilometers apart.  Each area has its own unique style of honey, and these can change from year to year depending on the weather and flower blooms. This honey that they collect is our true identity, it speaks volumes about us, our nature, and how we safeguard it. Grasping the beauty of it, the best I had come to was that this honey was for joy, for celebrating nature, for taking care of one’s body, for love of one’s country and land, and a way of communicating with nature.

There is a reason why they say that a land is flowing with milk and honey. It is understood to be hyperbolically descriptive of the land’s richness, that’s how beautiful and amazing honey is and that’s how beautiful and amazing our land is.

Because nothing tastes as sweet as pure honey from ones flora I #livelovelebanon and I will #fighton

 

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