Beekeeping lesson with Roussos

Beekeeping lesson with Roussos with the Samaria Experience Roussos enjoyed having a beekeeping lesson in June with Kristin K Pedersen. It is a nice experience to share knowledge and love for the bees! Thank you so much for the nice fotos!

The bee colony from above. The location of the beehive is in the old village of Agia Roumeli, calmly situated between the mountains.

The bee colony

Roussos uses the smoker to calm the bees down. The smoke does not work as a sedative. Instead it signals to the bees that thereis fire somewhere so they are preoccupied with finding it instead of attacking.

Roussos can usually tell just from opening the beehive how the bees are doing. If they are healthy, active, how they are performing and if they need support.

Roussos is checking out the first honeycomb.

Bees buisily working along.

The queen bee. You can spot her from the colour on her back but a trained eye can find her from her bigger size and slightly different shape.

Roussos is checking out a new honeycomb.

The bees have started to build their wax hexagons on the new honeycomb.

The calm surrounding of Agia Roumeli.

And ofcourse…goats.

Recycling the beeswax 2015

Recycling the beeswax 2015 Stavros and Giannis are here seperating the old blackened and ofcourse empty honeycombs from their wooden panels and preparing them to be recycled. The honeycombs will be melted in a steampress and then collected. Roussos will go through this procedure two times in order for the wax to be filtered correctly. This way we will receive clear beeswax. We will then mold the beeswax into fresh wax sheets that will be inserted into the new pannels and serve as teh base or the new honeycombs. In sprin the bees will start building their new cells on top of these wax sheets and then later on fill them with honey.

Recycling the beeswax 2015

Recycling the beeswax 2015
Stavros and Giannis are here seperating the old blackened and ofcourse empty honeycombs from their wooden panels and preparing them to be recycled. The honeycombs will be melted in a steampress and then collected. Roussos will go through this procedure two times in order for the wax to be filtered correctly. This way we will receive clear beeswax. We will then mold the beeswax into fresh wax sheets that will be inserted into the new pannels and serve as the base or the new honeycombs. In sprin the bees will start building their new cells on top of these wax sheets and then later on fill them with honey.

Grandfather’s window.

Formations in the rock.

 

Deep in the valley

Havesting the thyme honey 2014

More pictures here.

The first step in the process is to choose which honeycombs are at the right state and remove them from the apiary. We then use an electrical knife on the top of the honeycombs to melt away the protective wax layer and expose the honey. As the honey has been exposed, the honey can drip out of the combs if placed in the right angle. This however would be a very slow process , so instead the honey is extracted by centrifugal force and collected at the bottom of the machine.

Our walk in the gorge with Julianne and Dena.

 Roussos Viglis was the guide, as always ready to answer any questions and prepared with many stories. When we reached Samaria village we had a pick nick with tomatoes, olives, graviera cheese, sea salt and rusk. The houses in the village look very old and abandoned but in fact they were inhabited untill 1962, when the national Park was created and all the locals had to leave the area. The renovated house that you see, is the Viglis family house and the sign on it explains a bit of its history. Here is a rough translation:

“This was Theodoros Viglis house and after his death (killed January 1897 in the batlle against the Tourkish occupation at Xilokamaria Nerokourou) it was passed along to his first cousin Roussos Viglis (our Roussos grandfather) that died in 1941.

In may 1941 the government of Greece along with the prime minister Emmanouel Tsouderos and the king George the second with his escorts were fleeing to Kairo through the gorge and stayed in this house. Fom here they composed their last message to the greek people urging them to continue the fight against the German occupation.”
Roussos explained that his father, Stavros Viglis didn’t like having the king in their house and was held back by his brothers as to not create a fight.

For more pictures here.

 

Cooking lesson with Dena and Julianne.

Fruit gathering from the garden and cooking lesson with Julianne and Dena.

We started early in the morning and went to grandfather’s house to collect figs and peaches. We also made a short inspection of the garden and the rest of the trees.The mango tree was doing well. Back in the kitchen we seared pork chops and let them cook  in claypots with honey, wine and tomato sause as well as the fresh fruit we had gathered. As you can see in the pictures, the katsouna (traditional cretan walking stick) is a multitasker.

 

Light contrast in the gorge.