by Louisa O'Brien for Inside & Out - Aegina

“… and in Aegina you can find the rare thyme honey produced by Antonios Tzitzis – who is one of the few visionary beekeepers of our times…” thus writes the journal Deltion Gastronomon of the American School of Agriculture in Thessaloniki.

Visionary Antonis Tzitzis and his wife Konstandina have been producing Aegina’s famous I Panayiotara thyme honey (named after his father and his son’s godfather) for half a century. I Panayiotara is just the thing for the herbal tisanes you will be making during the winter months – delightful too on yoghurt and desserts. Kyria Konstandina – says she can’t drink her coffee with sugar, it has to be honey. But, they caution, honey should not be put into very hot water as it loses some of its therapeutic qualities that way.

Antonis’ future as a bee-keeper was decided very early on; when, as a child he saw a swarm of bees in a tree and managed to get them down and into a box. A family friend told him that is how beehives are started, so he bought a beehive from Athens, and the rest is history.

After he left the army, in the 1950s, he planned to go to America, as so many compatriots were doing in the lean post-war years. Unwilling to emigrate as an unskilled worker, he took himself off to the state agricultural school in Kifissia from where he graduated in 1959 as a qualified beekeeper. However, America turned out not to be the answer for Antonis and his young wife and two children so they stayed in Aegina to become ‘nomadic beekeepers.’

Nomadic beekeepers? A quick search on the internet reveals that the first form of beekeeping, on a nomadic basis, was developed in Pharaonic Egypt, around 3000BC. The hives were arranged on barges which sailed down the Nile and were then anchored near to grassy banks or woodland so they could follow the seasonal flowering processes. Antonis’ version of the Pharaonic barge was to load the lorry up with as many hives as it would take and set off in search of the blossoms. They, and other nomadic beekeepers like them, followed the blossom to Palia Epidavros’ orange trees in the spring, traveling to the Argolid, Copaida (Boetia), Thebes, Tripolis, Evia – wherever the flowers and trees were blooming, and returning to winter in Aigina.
Naturally this got in the way of the farmers who couldn’t graze their flocks where the beehives were installed. The beekeepers were regularly chased up hill and down dale by irate shepherds. Once the beehive was in place, however, there was nothing the locals could do – as Antonis points out: ‘the law was on our side.’
Antonis recalls that every year in Aegina after the last thyme blossom was brought back to the hives by the bees – in midsummer - they would hold a ‘Trigos’ festival in their yard, serving freshly made loukoumades dripping with the pure golden stuff, to a large gathering of family and friends.

After 55 years of beekeeping, and in his heyday working 230 hives along with his wife, Antonis now stays in Aigina. He still produces his very high quality honey with help from his son who graduated from the American School of Agriculture in Thessaloniki. I Panayiotara contains no chemicals and no additives. It costs 18 euros a kilo, and you can buy it exclusively at Kritikos, or from the producer at 28, Kapodistrias, Aegina, tel. 22970 24739.

For more information please contact::

Honey producer shop:	28, Kapodistrias Telefone: (+30) 22970 24739.