The same acacia, taken twice.

If the hives stayed in one place there would be ten days of acacia a year. That is how long the bloom lasts. After that, at that altitude, there is nothing left to take.

Three stops in one season

Over a season our hives move three times, each time higher, and all three stops lie along the Vlasina, one above the other.

Stop	Altitude	When	What is taken
Vlasotince	about 270 m	late April	The first acacia
Svođe	about 500 m	mid May	The same acacia, again
Slopes of Čemernik	about 1,200 m	June to August	Vlasina and forest

The altitudes are rounded. Exact heights were never measured, and false precision is no better than a wrong figure, so we do not write them to the metre.

The fortnight that moving buys

This is the whole idea. The same blossom runs late at higher altitude. Acacia at Vlasotince, around two hundred and seventy metres, flowers first. Two hundred and thirty metres higher, at Svođe, the same acacia starts roughly a fortnight later.

A hive moves thirty kilometres and gets a second spring.

For the bees it is simply the same flow continuing. For us it is the difference between ten days of acacia and nearly three weeks. Both end up in the same variety, because both are acacia honey, taken at two stops.

What the move itself looks like

It is done at night. That is not habit but necessity: hives move only once every bee is inside.

Loading can take up to three hours. The entrances are closed only after the last bee is back, because one left behind does not know where its hive has gone and is lost. So nothing is hurried and nothing moves before dark.

In the morning the colony wakes in a place it does not know, flies out and orients itself again. That costs the bees a few days of strength, which is why the hives are not moved more often than makes sense.

What the third stop gives

On the slopes of Čemernik, at around 1,200 metres, the same hive yields noticeably fewer kilograms than down below. The weather is colder, the season shorter, and the work around it is the heaviest.

But two varieties come from there that cannot be had any lower. Meadow and forest stand side by side, so the bees work blossom and honeydew in the same day. That is how Vlasina honey comes about inside the hive. And once the flowers are gone and only beech and fir honeydew is left, the result is forest honey.

Three extractions, not one

Because the honey is gathered in three places and three periods, the extraction is separate too. No jar holds two flows.

That is why our varieties differ enough to be told apart by colour, and why nothing is blended after extraction. If it all ran into the same tank you would get one average honey, and the story about three stops would mean nothing.