Antonio - Fourth Generation Organic Honey Producer

We've been getting a lot of requests recently for more information about the beekeepers we get our honey from.

This is Antonio, who is a fourth generation beekeeper. (You can buy his honey here.)

He is one of the founding members of the Committee of Ecological Agriculture in Spain. Antonio is one of the few organic beekeepers in Spain.

Here he's pictured with some brood hives.

Antonio really is devoted to his bees. He looks after them very well and always makes sure he leaves them enough honey - a lot of beekeepers here tend to feed their bees with a sugar solution.

When Antonio's bees are sick he treats them with herbal remedies. One of the remedies, which he uses against the varoa mite, is made from thyme. Thyme is actually a very powerful antiseptic, thymol a derivative of thyme is one of the main ingredients in listerine.

We have noticed that his harvest of honey is available later than other beekeepers and we discovered that Antonio lets his honey mature in the comb, for at least a month and sometimes for up to three months, before extracting it. Most beekeepers exact the honey immediately but his process seems to improve the flavour and possibly the health benefits.

Antonio doesn't pastuerise his honey and most of his hives are in mountain ranges.

An analysis of his honey showed it to be very pure and very high quality. This table shows the test for pesticides in the oak honey, there were none detectable.

In the detailed analysis document we received the scientist making the analysis commented on the high quality of the honey.

Antonio lives with his wife Gloria.

I'll add some more information about him tomorrow and also about Ramon, the other beekeeper who we get raw honey from.

You can buy Antonio's honeys here. Although as a high grade honey (like a fine olive oil or wine) the price is higher than normal we do offer discounts of up to 25% - with three jars being available at 15% off.