HIS PASSION FOR THE BEEKEEPING RESULTED IN THE BRAND "MEL DA ILHA DE SÃO MIGUEL"

After several years dedicated to the production of honey in his free time, more precisely in September 2018, Adelino Santos joined the label Marca Açores and placed on the market "Mel da Ilha São Miguel”, as his products are known, namely the already typical incense honey and multiflora honey.

According to the producer, who currently has about 60 hives scattered throughout several places of the largest island of the Azores, such as Furnas, Maia and Vila Franca do Campo, the certification of his products took place in a natural way taking into consideration the quantity of product that he could accumulate and that can now vary between 10 and 15 kilos for each of the hives.

However, says Adelino Santos, only recently he began to look at beekeeping as a business opportunity, since by 2018 this activity was seen as "a way of life" and a way of occupying his free time with an activity that he liked to do.

In addition to the certification of the Marca Açores, the honey producer, from Santa Maria da Feira, was also able to certify its products with Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), a seal recognized throughout Europe and that certifies the origin of a certain product, underlining that, however, it is the seal Marca Açores that, for the moment, displays in his honey jars.

In relation to these certifications, Adelino Santos points out that they are "very important because of the tourism we have today, since tourists give great importance to the seals that work as a guarantee of a product", since although the producers recognize the quality of what the seals produce, the seals are what actually transmits that guarantee to the people who recognize them.

Currently, he says, "Mel da Ilha de São Miguel" is only sold in the stores Casa Cheia de Ponta Delgada, Furnas, Capelas and Ribeira Grande and also at the Gorreana Tea factory, noting that this distribution is, for the moment, limited due to the experimental period in which it is and because it is more important "to guarantee the replacement of honey in these commercial establishments".

In what concerns the rhythm of sales, Adelino Santos says that it has normally happened, considering that both the Tea Gorreana factory and the stores Casa Cheia, the products have been a success "even though the brand is not very well known yet."

As for the product that is more easily sold, the producer, who arrived in the Azores in 2004, points out that it is, undoubtedly, the multiflora honey. This choice is due, in the first place, "to the price and then because it is the best-known type of honey in the world, while incense honey is a special type from the Azores and is not found in many other places" being also more expensive for the consumer.

According to Adelino Santos, who when arrived in the Azores decided to buy only two swarms of honeybees and start a small honey production, the climate in the archipelago is excellent for the production of honey since "there is a lot of flowering that is prolonged", allowing to accumulate large quantities of multiflora honey, since there is not too much dry weather, as happened last year.

"The climate here is great for me. There is a lot of flowering that is prolonged and, for example, in Santa Maria da Feira there is a lot of eucalyptus that has a time when it is predominant but after that the vegetation begins to grow scarce. Here our more prolonged season begins around February with the incense and goes until September or October and we have multiflora honey”, he explains.

If last year the difficulty was to harvest a large amount of multiflora honey, this year, he says, the difficulty was in the collection of honey of incense, taking into consideration that "the months of February and March were rainy and with some wind, therefore the honey of incense had a smaller quantity".

However, the prediction is that "this year the weather will be reasonably good" to allow the production of honey from the various flowers that beautify the fields a bit all over the island.

Apart from being a 100% Azorean and biological - since no herbicides are used in the areas surrounding the beehives -, Adelino Santos underlines that another important factor in the quality of the honey that he produces and which is classified as a brand Azores product, is the type of hive that he uses.

"Another important factor in the quality of my honey is that I uses a type of beehive called practice or industrial bee where, because of its large size, the mother bee (queen) has no need to climb into the honeycomb to make its posture in the period prior to the maximum flowering (the time of the manufacture of honey). Therefore, my honey, "Mel da Ilha de São Miguel", is taken only from new waxes that were only used for that purpose.

A taste that emerged when he was a child

Despite considering that beekeeping has passed through several modernizations in the last decades, his taste for beekeeping began when Adelino Santos was still a child, around the age of 10, when he accompanied his father in activities that involved his production of honey at that time, still in Santa Maria da Feira.

"My father always did beekeeping and since I was born I remember having bees at home .... Since I was very young, around the age of 10, I accompanied my father and already liked not only the handling of beekeeping - which has to do with all the works that are involved - as well as everything inherent to it, such as wax treatment and the preparation of materials”, he says.

From that time, where he learned practically everything he knows with his father, now 93 years old, he also recalls the trips to beekeeping materials’ factories in Rio Mau, near Entre Rios, recalling "the smell of new waxes emanating from those old facilities", a passion that has awakened again after he started to live in the Azores.

"I missed this occupation that gave me much pleasure, but in the meantime I've been doing a lot of various things and the weather has not always allowed me to be as involved in beekeeping as I am now," concludes Adelino Santos.