Saturday 5 November 2016

Red fruits lemonade with honey

   Recently my wife surprised me with another excelent application for honey: a delicious red fruits lemonade. It´s very easy to do, cheap, healthy and an excelent way to avoid refrigerants.
Here it is the recipy and the way to do it.


 Ingridients (for ~1.5 liters of lemonade):

-> 1 big lemon;
-> 125 g frozen red fruits;
->  Portuguese honey (as much as you want);
-> Water (1.5 liters);
-> 1 leaf of mint.








Start by placing the lemon juice inside the pitcher. Remove the seeds that may had fall into the pitcher,



After that, add the red fruits to the lemon juice.


Smash the red fruits grossly.


Add the best honey of the world ... the one produced by my bees.


At last decorate with the mint.


That´s it. Now it's only drink.

In the summer you may add some ice.

In my house it makes part of many meals.

This message was made by my entire family. I hope you try and like it. 
If you don't like, you know reason... you're using the wrong honey.

And that´s all for today.

Friday 10 June 2016

My bees produce the best honey in the world.

    Hi everybody.

My name´s Joaquim Santos and I live in Setúbal - Portugal. 
Setúbal is Portugal 4th biggest city and is located 40 Km south of Lisbon.
This region is very well known for its gastronomic wonders. Sea food here is king and grill sardines are the top. Wines here are excellent. The most famous is Moscatel, a sweet wine with nearly 20% alcohol that we take after the meal.

Today I'm starting this blog to tell the world about my beekeeping hobby, my beekeeping procedures and to inform everybody that my bees produce the best honey in the world.

I started this hobby 30 years ago when I was 17. Everything started when a cousin of mine gave me 3 hives made out of cork. With those hives I caught a swarm and since than I didn't stop any more. I've been learning about bees behaviours, producing queens and swarms, helping them to face diseases, saving swarms without queen and producing honey.

Nowadays I have arround 60 hives. My main apiary is located ~30Km south of Setúbal, in a region known as Vendas Novas.
Here some pictures of the apiary as it is now in spring.

Partial view of Vendas Novas apiary

Partial view of Vendas Novas apiary (another)
Partial view of Vendas Novas apiary (another)

This part of the country still free of pollution and the vegetation that grows in the fields arround is wild. Main plants to supply nectar and polen to bees now in spring, are the following:

Rock-rose (source of polen)

Rosemary (souce on nectar)

Blueweed (source of nectar)

Thistle (source of nectar)

Honey bee collecting nectar on a thistle flower
It's in this vegetation that my bees collect the nectar to make the finest and most delicate sweet honey. 2016 spring has been very wet. During April and May the rain was frequent. The result was, fields full of flowers and hives supers full of honey. See the pictures.

Comb frame full of matur honey

Comb frame full of matur honey (another)

Comb frame full of honey still in the hive ready to be harvest

Comb frame full of honeystill in the hive ready to be harvest
And this is why I say my bees make the best honey in the world. A natural sweet very good for people health.

After spining the combs on the extractor, the honey will get like this.

Flask of pure honey 
In portuguese the word "Mel" means honey.

And that's all for today. I hoppe you enjoy and come back, you're welcome.
Please let your comments, doubts, suggestions, ... related with beekeeping. I will reply.
Thanks.