From flower to jar.

When I open a jar of honey now, I never look at it the same way. I know there are hundreds of tiny journeys inside: one bee, one flower, one drop, then another bee, another flower, another drop. It is like a story with very many characters — and every spoonful holds a small piece of summer.

Here is that journey, in five steps, with drawings. Each step is done by many bees together, all working with so much energy and care.

Nectar is very watery

When a bee gathers nectar from a flower, she is not gathering honey yet. Nectar is very watery — full of water. To turn it into honey, almost all of that water has to leave.

And here something beautiful happens. The bees line up inside the hive and beat their wings, all together, for days. They move so much air that the water slowly evaporates. It is a fan made of a thousand bees.

Honey is never made by one bee alone.
It is made by many, mouth to mouth,
until it is finally ready.

When it is ready, they seal it

When the nectar has lost most of its water and has become honey, the bees seal the cell with a thin lid of pale wax. The honey is kept safe, and it will not spoil. A sealed comb, held to the light, looks like a row of tiny golden windows.

The five steps of the journey

1. The bees gather nectar — they fly from flower to flower, and store it in a special pouch inside their body.
2. They carry it back to the hive — and they bring pollen too, stuck to their tiny legs.
3. They pass it from one to another — mouth to mouth, each bee adds a little something.
4. They beat their wings — moving the air so the water in the nectar slowly evaporates and turns into honey.
5. They store the honey and seal it — with a thin lid of wax, ready for winter, or for us.

We only take what they can spare

This matters most to me: we never take all of the honey. The bees need a great deal of it to live through the winter. We only take what they have made on top — what is left over after we have thought of them first.

So in dry years, or in years when the wildflowers are few, we take almost nothing. In good years, a little more. But the bees always eat before we do. That is the rule.

Each honey tastes of a place

If you taste honey slowly, you can tell where it is from. Our rosemary honey — the one from La Canalosa — is pale and gentle. Orange-blossom honey, from the citrus trees, is floral and almost perfumed. Mountain honey, from the wild thyme and herbs, is darker and stronger.

Each jar keeps the taste of a place, a spring, a wind. So a jar of honey is like a postcard from the countryside: a small piece of May, kept safely until December.