The Honey Culture at Hadramout, Yemen

The Sidr Tree & The Honey Bee Culture
The Sidr honey of this tree is the most expensive honey in the world. Renowned for its unique buttery flavour, rich aroma and high viscosity. The Sidr tree and the minerals of the soil of Wadi Hadramout seems to give the honey its medicinal qualities.

The variety of bees found in Yemen, is the small dark bee which thrive in hot weather. The bee Keepers bring the bees themselves from nature. They go out and capture wild swarms in the mountains and the rest they buy from each other. or at the March or pre spring open market. What is most interesting that the Bee Keepers continue to call the Female Bees Queen as "AB" meaning Father.

In this valley they simply let the bees draw their own comb without even giving them foundation.....small cell bee Technique

After extracting the Sidr Honey in the winter, they move camp by truck to a different location with no Sidr Trees, for the Bees have to rest and be nourished as they move to the Samar Acacia Trees.

Bees get exhausted from the Sidr tree potency of the nectar. Typically a bee makes 37000 trips to make half a kilo of honey, but the Bees working on the Sidr tree makes much much less trips as they become exhausted from few trip only.

The honey that comes out of their trip to visit various flowers and plants other than "Sidr", is called Marai "meaning graze land". Towards June they go back to the Sidr trees with its modest blossoming flowers they make honey called "Asal Bayni" meaning "that the honey is between Sidr and flowers. and when they take the bees later to the Samar Acacia trees they call the Honey "Samar".

The Ziziphus spina tree of South Arabia. Fruit and leaves from the tree have been used in Ancient Egyptian food and medicine. Modern research has shown that compounds extracted from the tree’s leaves could be used to decrease severe inflammation.

Music: Ajeet Kaur - Kiss the Earth (La Luna)