Honey - Terena Tour
We´re going to visit the Village, Castle ans Sanctuary of Terena, visit the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Boa Nova, and. at the end, we'll get the honey with beekeeper Luis.
The Lucefecit River, the Devil's River, a sacred River for millennia, flows through Terena. Along this River we have a lot´s of minerals, several sanctuaries and habitats from various chronological periods. Here we have references to the oldest Alentejo’s God, Endovélico.
We´ll star with a Tour in Terena, we’ll visit a typical Alentejo Village, authentic but unfortunately depopulated. We’ll visit the Medieval Castle at the top of the Village. We’ll also visit the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Boa Nova where medieval legends are mixed with ancient traditions. This Sanctuary is a Temple and also a Castle. It was the largest pilgrimage destination in the Alentejo during the Middle Ages.
We now meet beekeeper Luis, who will explain the entire honey production process to us. Properly equipped, we will visit the beehives near the village of Terena on the Lucefecit River Dam reservoir. Here we’ll participate in the honey extraction process, fully equipped. At the entrance of some beehives, we can find a small device that allows us to collect the Pollen that falls from the bees. Another interesting product is Propolis, which the bees use as a natural protector of the larvae. At the end of our work, we'll taste all of this with traditional Alentejo bread and, if we are lucky, a little “Hidromel”.
The honey we will taste is multifloral, from wildflowers, and has a light color. The flavour is characteristic of the region and results from the flora that serves as pasture for the bees. Thus, the predominance of rosemary, rockrose, strawberry tree, honeysuckle, thistle, heather, and all a flora coexisting with the cork oak and holm oak woodlands characteristic of the Mediterranean region. In the Middle Ages, we could pay taxes with honey, such was its importance in the region.
