Bee Farm

We went to a bee farm last weekend. The Ilog Maria Honey Bee Farm is located in Cavite. Here's some brief information about Cavite: Cavite is a province in the Philippines located on the southern shores of Manila Bay in the Calabarzon region in Luzon, just 30 kilometers south of Manila. Its capital is the city of Trece Martires. Cavite is surrounded by the provinces of Laguna to the east and Batangas to the south. To the west lies the South China Sea.

Got that? Okay good, moving on.

It was about a three hour drive to the bee farm.

Once you park your car you walk down this path leading to the house. The path is lined on both sides by bee hives. From a distance this house looks almost abandoned so needless to say my first impression wasn't a good one.

I walked up close to one of the bee hives and took this photo. I think the bees were rather annoyed I was interrupting their honey making chores. Several of them started buzzing around my head. One even flew up and head butted me. I took the hint and moved on.

Once you finish your walk down the path you reach the house. The house is actually broken up into a store, a factory, offices, and various social areas. It's actually quite busy with staff and customers moving around. My first impression about the house being abandoned was incorrect. This place is popular! Here's me standing in front of an enclosed bee hive. Obviously since these bees were behind glass I didn't have to worry about an angry mob of evil bees attacking me.

Without the glass I highly doubt I would have been able to get this close to the bee here. He looks innocent enough but I can see it in his eyes, he's evil, and he wants blood.

The path leading up to the house isn't the only place that has bee hives. They're located all over the property. This photo was taken in behind the house.

And this photo was taken along the front. The path in the far distance is the one we walked down to get to the house.

Let's go into the store.

They make a wide variety of products from the honey and the bees wax.

Among these products are a wide selection of cosmetics like the soaps shown in the photo.

They also sell a huge variety of bees wax candles. Besides the standard everyday candles they also sell religious shaped ones. Look, you can make your very own nativity scene out of bees wax candles!

As I walked around the store and picked up various things to buy I noticed one very important component to a bee farm was missing: honey. There was no honey in the store. How can a bee farm not have any honey? It defines logic. I discovered later that all the edible honey products were kept behind the counter. I suppose that makes some sense. In the bee farm world honey is your gold bullion. Honey is liquid gold! And gold needs to be locked up!

Beside the store is where the magic happenes. It's here in the factory that they make all the bee related products. These girls are cutting and packaging soap.

Besides bee products the Ilog Maria Honey Bee Farm also grows it's own coffee. They grow it, dry it, charcoal roast it, and sell it in their store. This photo shows the coffee beans, still in their skins, drying in the sun.

Remember my post about cocks? Remember I said cocks are everywhere here in the Philippines? Well, to prove it to you, look, cocks hanging out with the bees. See cocks are everywhere!

Hey, what's this giant bee hive? Let's go inside and find out.

Now I know I posted a blog before about toilets so I don't want you to think I have some wierd toilet fetish but I do think this is pretty cool. A toilet in a bee hive, how original! It's like having modern comfort and the natural outdoors all in one!

When we left the bee farm and started our drive back to the Metro Manila area I saw fields upon fields of pineapple crop plantations. Along the roadside of these plantations were small stores selling the pineapples and other fruits. This photo shows a few pineapples in the foreground and the pineapple plantations in the background.

So many pineapples to choose from. We chose the best four pineapples we could find and continued our long trek back to Manila! A great day with the bees!