Mint honey in the rocky highlands has a sweet, cool, and characteristic aroma.

Every year from September to December, along Highway 4C to the districts on Ha Giang Stone Plateau, visitors can easily meet beekeeping shacks. Beekeepers here are nomadic. They often take the boxes of bees to the place where the flowers are located to extract honey. Hundreds of crates of bees spread throughout the rocky valley.

This time is in the mint flower season, the flowers are purple-pink. Dong Van district has the largest area of ​​mint flowers with 1,124 hectares, the whole district has 600 beekeeping organizations and individuals, with 13,500 nests. Honey production in 2021 will be about 87 thousand liters.

And Mi Dinh (Sa Phin commune, Dong Van district) moved the boxes of bees to the location with many flowers. “Usually, the hive will be placed in the morning, the bees in the hive are nurtured for many months of the year to wait for the flowers to bloom before being released into the wild for the bees to find honey on their own,” he said.

Each rectangular honeycomb has 4-5 wax frames.

Bees are raised but take nectar from natural flowers, each nest is placed at least 2 m apart, the aisles of the nests are not placed opposite each other. Mr. Stick carefully shields each nest to prevent it from being knocked over by the wind.

Farmers use incense to separate each hive when the bees show signs of fighting. “Beekeeping is quite hard, it’s sunny and rainy, so you have to keep a close eye on each hive because if a hive has the phenomenon of bees biting each other, the number of troops will be reduced, sometimes the whole nest will die.”

Mr. Phu (left) has been mining for many years. The beehives of his group are located next to Hanh Phuc street halfway up Ma Pi Leng mountain.

Meo Vac district currently has nearly 2,000 bee colonies, concentrated mainly in the communes of Xin Cai, Thuong Phung, Lung Pu, Lung Chinh, Sung Mang, Giang Chu Phin, Pa Vi, Sung Tra, and Ta Lung. The total area of ​​mint has been planned in 13/18 communes and towns of Meo Vac district with an area of ​​​​about 3,000 hectares.

Normally, each queen bee lives 6-8 months, worker bees live 45 days. The beehives are moved seasonally, in the year the bee colonies move to Hung Yen, Bac Giang to collect honey from lychee flowers and longan, at the end of the year move to Ha Giang to exploit mint honey.

Bees go to find honey depending on the weather 10-12 days to harvest. The area to bring the secret to the farmers will cut off the top of the honey well and put it into the rotating cage.

Pham Ngoc Doanh (right) in Pa Lung commune, Meo Vac district said: “This year, the family deployed 300 boxes, in the hamlets of Thao Lung, Pai Lung, and Sa Lung. each liter of honey from 500 thousand VND.

Mint honey is lemon yellow, fragrant, sweet and cool, is considered a medicine with special medicinal properties such as health promotion, is used to treat diseases of the respiratory and digestive tract,.

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