Meet Maria Mouriki of Mouriki Greek Premium Honey

When we started working with Mouriki, we deeply appreciated the commitment and investment of the younger generation in the family business combined with a deep respect for the environment and the bee. Siblings Maria and Panagiotis Mouriki have spent their lives amongst the beehives and follow the nomadic beekeeping tradition, moving the beehives around Greece to find the best flowering areas.

Panagiotis credits his sister with taking the family apiary, founded in 1960, to a new level. She convinced him & his father to develop and promote their own brand,Mouriki Greek Premium Honey, and to invest in a striking pack design that would communicate the outstanding quality of their all-natural raw honey.

Read on to discover Maria's business path, how her life has always been intertwined with bees and her plans for the future. Don't miss her grandmother's recipe for a delicious, cheesy snack. 

Tell us a bit about yourself

Beekeeping has always been a part of my life since I come from a traditional beekeeping family. From my grandfather to my father and then to my younger brother Panagiotis, life with bees has been the dominant element in the daily life of the Mouriki family. However, I studied economics and accounting, worked for several years in the private sector, started my own family, took a few years off work to raise my daughters, and when in 2017 at the age of 37, I decided to return to work, I realized that I could no longer be confined within the four walls of an office. I felt a strong need to return to where I always belonged. To nature. "I think I couldn't mentally escape from the bees," it was my destiny. Beekeeping gives you a freedom and an emotional fulfillment that, while it ranks among the most difficult, it is also one of the most exciting professions.

Tell us more about Mouriki. What do you love the most about it?

The Mouriki family has been practicing nomadic beekeeping for six decades, traveling with the bees all over Greece from the northernmost to the southernmost part, from the most mountainous to the most flat and coastal areas, aiming to produce high-quality Greek honey. With countless memories from childhood within the beehives, from harvests, and travels, looking back to the past and coming to the present and future, I would say that what I love most about our family is the collaboration of all its members and the great, true love we all have for the bees and nature.

We don't live off the bees... we live with the bees, traveling 250 out of 365 days a year with them, and this entire journey of the Mouriki family is what excites me and gives me strength for the future.

Your brother, Panagiotis, credits you with taking Mouriki to the next level. What inspired you to do that?

When in 2017 I decided to become more actively involved in our family business, I wanted to bring a sense of renewal to our beekeeping identity. I considered and still consider beekeeping an art form, a way of expression and freedom, something that inspired me and I captured in the new packaging of Mouriki Greek Premium Honey in 2020. With the renewal of our packaging, something that constitutes a unique identity for Mouriki Greek Premium Honey, I gave the brand its own distinct personality. The colors in the packaging, the unique lines give the impression that our jars are small works of art.

Biggest challenges in the process?

In 2024, with all the rapid changes in climatic conditions, with the disappearance of the "clean" four seasons of the year, with water shortages and the extinction of Greece's forests, the biggest challenge for us, as strange and trite as it may sound, is maintaining and continuing our beekeeping population. It is a daily struggle that becomes more difficult day by day. The bees fight to survive, and we have a duty to contribute not only to their survival but also to the preservation of the Greek flora, something achieved through bee pollination. Without the bees, forests do not regenerate, there is no food on the Greek table. There are no plants and herbs.

What does a typical day in your life look like?

The daily life of a female beekeeper does not differ much from that of a male beekeeper. When I am not traveling with the bees and my family to some Greek destination, I will be back at our packaging facility, packing our honey, preparing our customers' orders. I have taken on the communication part for both Greece and abroad, in a relentless effort to get Mouriki honey on more shelves around the world. With a bag, I travel from island to island and from city to city, trying to communicate the philosophy of the Mouriki family, the value of our products, our passion, and love.

What’s next for Mouriki?

The big challenge for the Mouriki family and for me personally as a Greek producer and beekeeper is to manage to support Greek primary production with all our might and to continue producing good, Greek honey.

Against the challenges that demand cheap, dubious-quality honey on a global scale, we want to stay healthy and continue producing genuine Greek honey. Being in primary production, we cannot make grandiose dreams. We move step by step, slowly but steadily. The biggest dream is to see the Mouriki family honey in markets abroad every year. We want to spread authentic Greek products worldwide.

Favorite place in Greece

As a beekeeper, I have visited countless places in Greece where we keep our beehives. Each place, whether mainland or island, has unique characteristics that cannot help but charm the visitor. The mountains where we produce our forest honeys, such as the mountainous areas in Giona and Vardousia, or Halkidiki with the alternation of forest and sea, the famous pine forests of Thasos where we produce the renowned Thasos pine honey, the mountainous Evrytania with its picturesque villages, and the mountainous Peloponnese are enchanting.

However, personally, I have a great fondness for the Cyclades islands, which have always enchanted me. The white color combined with the color of the earth, the rare vegetation of wild thyme, lavenders, aromatic plants, and the sea breeze of the Aegean make me consider the Greek islands uniquely beautiful.

For this reason, we have created a small apiary on the island of Milos where we produce thyme honey with wild herbs like lavender, and soon we will move a population of bees to Folegandros. It was a lifelong dream to practice beekeeping while watching the Aegean sunsets, and we consider it a blessing that we have achieved it.

With love for the bee and respect for the consumer, Maria Mouriki - Greek Nomadic Beekeeper