Meet the Beekeepers

Our beekeepers are the backbone of our shop, and we owe everything we do to their hard work (alongside their bees), creating the most natural, delicious raw honeys we can find.

Some, like Antonio have been with us since the beginning back in 2008, and after many visits to see them and their bees, we have formed long-lasting, trusting relationships. Others, like Thomas and his family, are more recent partners, and their honeys are fast becoming some of our most popular. We visit all our beekeepers regularly to see their processes, meet the bees, and hear about the current conditions.

All the beekeepers we work with keep their hives in quite remote areas, away from industrial farming, and use respectful beekeeping methods. They avoid the practices used by industrial beekeepers – like using antibiotics and synthetic treatments. Also importantly, they leave practices like taking all the honey and
replacing it with sugar.  When they harvest honey from the hives, they always leave enough for the bees to eat during the leaner months of the year. This means they produce far less than some of the big industrial producers. We believe this is essential to making the purest, best quality, and most delicious raw honey available while treating the bees and the environment with the utmost care and respect.

We work with beekeepers from a range of different countries, including Spain, Greece, Lithuania and Hungary. Of course, this list is always expanding as we continue to discover new, passionate beekeepers and their exciting varieties of raw honey. If you ever discover a particularly wonderful honey while on
holiday or travels abroad, please do let us know!

There are always new beekeepers coming on board to work with us in providing the best raw honeys to our customers, and it may take some time for us to add their profiles here. So, if you don't see a beekeeper on this page, don't worry - we're working on it!

 

The Raw Honey Shop team.

 

 

Antonio is a 4th generation beekeeper, continuing a long tradition of natural beekeeping.  He now works closely with his son and son-in-law to carry the business into the future. He is our first and longest-running beekeeper to produce certified organic raw honeys.  He produces a range of different raw honeys such as chestnut, oak, lavender, eucalyptus, and others.  His hives are located in and around the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains north of Madrid.

You can find his products here: Antonio's range.

 

 

Rossend is a very meticulous beekeeper, keeping a close eye on the quality and purity of his raw honey.  He has won many awards from the International Taste and Quality Institute over the years for the excellent flavours of his various products.  He produces many raw honeys such as apple blossom, arbutus, forest, lemon blossom, and others.  Rossend and his hives are located in the Pyrenees mountains and foothills of the Spanish region of Catalonia.

You can find his products here: Rossend's range.

 

 

 

From building the bee hives to caring for the bees, Thomas, his Dad Giorgios and sister Elena are all involved in the production of their beautiful, raw honey.  The family has been producing traditional honey for generations, and now Thomas is looking to carry the business forward into the future.  They create batches of traditional Greek varieties such as mountain oak, red fir, vanilla fir, wild thyme, pine and heather.  Thomas and family place their hives throughout the mountains of central Greece.

You can find his products here: Thomas's range.

 

 

Luisa, her daughter, Olaya and son Mario, head up their raw honey operation, taking care of the bees, harvesting the honey, and managing the business, which is located in the sparsely populated mountainous region of Asturias in northern Spain. Here her bees roam in the forests that carpet the mountain sides and on the mountain top moors, creating delicious dark organic honeys. They have been awarded a Denominación de Origen certificate by the EU, which means that their honey has qualities unique to the area it comes from.  Luisa’s is a complete family origin with Olaya and Mario doing beekeeping and Luisa and her sister Ines doing the packing.

You can find her products here: Luisa's range.

 

 

Asterios is our man on the ground in Greece. As well as producing honey himself from a very remote place in eastern Greece - surrounded by forest, wild scrubland, and mountains - he also has a network mostly organic artisan beekeepers. There is Kostas, who produces honeys like Bioactive Forest, Arbutus and Wild Oregano from the area of Mount Pelion. There is Dimitris who produces Mount Olympus Forest and Mount Olympus Mountain. Then there is another Dimitris, who produces the only organic Sidr we know of. And there are other beekeepers, like Triantafyllos and his dad Grigoris who specialise in Pine honeys.

You can find his products here: Asterios and his beekeeper's here.

 

 

Menelaos has his hives close to the Greek border with Turkey in a very wild & under populated area. Forest and scrubland stretch for miles, and this is an ideal place for Oak, Sidr, Acacia and wild herbs like Oregano and Camomile to grow. For these trees and plants wonderful honey with many ‘notes’ are created. It is also a place without contamination from pesticides or pollution from industry. Menelaos is a dedicated beekeeper who often sleeps in the forest close to his bees during the honey production season. He follows organic principles and is working to gain organic certification.

You can find his products here: Menelaos range.

 

 

Laimonas follows an ancient tradition of beekeeping handed down from his grandparents and his grandparents’ grandparents. This heritage gives him a deep knowledge of bees and honey which enables him to produce varieties of very high-quality honey.
His hives, in wild northern forests and wildflower meadows, are untouched by the industrial agriculture that blights much of Europe. His bees produce a range of honeys, from the nectar of berries and herbs along with honeydew from Oak and Pine.

View his range here: Laimonas range.

 

 

Antal is a Certified Organic Beekeeper who is dedicated to pure natural honey. His is the best Acacia honey we have come across.  Hungary has more acacia trees than the rest of Europe combined and Antal operates in two distinct zones: specifically, the Kiskunság National Park in the Great Plain of Hungary, and the northern Carpathian mountainous region of Nógrád.  The Acacia trees in Kiskunság bloom early, and just as their season ends, the bloom begins in Nógrád, amidst the breath-taking valleys and towering peaks of the western Carpathian Mountains.  He also produces other honeys, like Lime and Silkweed, which we hope to introduce you to.

View his range here: Antal's range.