meet the mouriki family

Meeting the Mouriki family introduced me to the fascinating world of nomadic beekeeping. I was amazed to discover that Panagiotis Mourikis spends nearly 250 days a year in his truck, moving the beehives around Greece to find the best flowering areas. Every spring, he loads the family's 2500+ bees onto their two trucks and takes them from their home base in Messinia, in the Peloponnese, up north to different regions - for some, they'll first stop by the flowering peach & apricot orchards of Veria before moving on to the pine forests on the island of Thasos; other beehives are taken to the foothills of Fokida, near ancient Delphi, for thyme honey, while the bees that produce oak honey summer in the forests of Evrytania, near the mountain town of Karpenissi. The honey is harvested several times during the season and by November it's time for the bees to come home again to Messinia.

Panagiotis likes to say he was born on the mountain, amidst the beehives, accompanying his father on his tour of Greece from a young age. This 34-year old is a true modern-day nomad, as he fiercely holds on to the traditional way of making honey. But he credits his sister Maria 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.