Organic beekeeping on the mountaintops of the Peloponnese

With their compass, the correct practices of mountain nomadic beekeeping, the values ​​of slow living, and the dedication to what nature has taught them so wisely and unpretentiously, the Pishina brothers plough the mountains Corinthia with their 160 bees to collect pure, organic forest honey.

The name “Mavrio Oros” (Black Mountain) that adorns the glass jars with the thick, amber treasures may give rise to dystopian images in the mind – at least on first reading – but the tender story behind it is a sequence of childhood memories (you can’t just call it dark and ominous!).

These memories are of nomadic honeycombs and beehives against the background of the mountainous mass of Mavrio Oros, on the northwestern side of the prefecture of Corinthia, also known since ancient times as Chelydorea.

“I remember our grandfather telling us stories about the mountain and us as children, admiring its iconic appearance from afar, creating mythical, almost eerie images in our minds,” recalled Angelos.

“However, as we were growing up,” adds Kostis, “and observing our grandfather systematically dealing with the land, with his animals, with the bees and the prefectures, we began to accompany him on his walks in Mavrio Oros and to collect with him tea, oregano, herbs and various aromatics for grandma’s kitchen. Those years made us love more than anything else our contact with the virgin forests and the mountainous ecosystems of the Peloponnese,” he added.

As the years passed, and the brothers followed different studies and careers in Greece and abroad, far from the primary sector, the memory of the mountain never stopped buzzing inside them as a call.

As children, they felt joy when Grandfather Kostas and Uncle Stathis gave them a taste of the honeycomb in every beekeeping harvest.

These experiences, combined with the global lockdown brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, were the starting point for a new beginning in their lives that brought them to face Mavrio Oros again.

This time, however, conducting their own beekeeping in the pine and fir forests of Corinth.

The journey of the bee from the sea to the mountain

“Nomadic beekeeping teaches us the value of patience and persistence,” observed Kostis. “Like a perpetual cycle that opens and closes only at nature’s command. You have to work intensively in the productive months and then wait 365 days until you go back up to the mountain to see if the fir is ready to give honey again.”

“This year, for example, we expected to get honey from an oak, but it didn’t give us honey, so we didn’t get any. We will try again next year. Nothing is completely predictable, and this is the most charming part of beekeeping,” he emphasised.

In winter, the two brothers move their beehives to lands near the sea, and then, as the months pass and the weather begins to warm, they gradually move them up into the hills.

First, they are at an altitude of 300-350 metres, then around the middle of May, they climb to 1400 metres—that’s it—while from mid-summer onwards, they start their descent to the plains again.

“The weather and the season always guide us,” added Angelos, and despite all this, there is a big “but”: “But, the more pressing climate change is, the more imperative will be our ascent to even higher altitudes.”

The challenges of forest beekeeping

And somewhere there, the conversation turns to the difficulties and challenges of forest beekeeping.

“Warm winters, scanty rainfall, prolonged heatwaves and fires that systematically reduce bee habitats more and more every year and shrink nature are the most threatening enemies of forest beekeeping,” he said worriedly.

But even the most ominous conditions, works of the weather and man, have not been enough to make these two brothers abandon their mountain bees.

“We have love and devotion to the honey that the forest gives us because they allow us to work away from monocultures, they are very tasty, they bring – from year to year and from place to place – oxymoronic changes in their taste imprint, they masterfully express the biodiversity of the area and never cease to pleasantly surprise you by mixing in perfect harmony the mountain herbs with the wildflowers of the forest,” explained Kostis.