We don’t just grow grapes on our estate, we also look after the environment. Bees are very important for pollination but they are starting to disappear due to pesticides. Here at BMA we are committed to nature, repopulating our estate with several bee colonies. This year we are again keeping the honey in order to make the hives bigger and stronger and increase the number of our bees.
Pollination of flowers is vital for our food and for biodiversity. Bees, one of nature’s most trusted pollinators, are disappearing, killed by industrial agriculture and the use of toxic pesticides. Their continued existence depends on us changing from industrial to organic agriculture.
One of the fundamental tasks for Bosque de Matasnos is to return to the biodiversity that this place had previously, when bees pollinated a wide variety of plants, which benefited the flowers, just as birds of prey controlled insects and rodents, and sheep helped keep the Forest clean.
Today we are beekeepers keen to get back the lost colonies of bees to reverse the erosion of floral diversity that has occurred without them. In a few years, our Forest will be very different.
According to the Greenpeace report, ‘Food under Threat’, it has been calculated that the economic value of pollination by bees could be around 265,000 million euros per year worldwide; 22,000 million for Europe and more than 2,400 million euros for Spain. So, even from a purely economic point of view, bees are worth protecting.
It is an exquisite honey, very soft, with notes of rosemary – curiously a flower not widespread in this Forest but that bees know how to find – which is what gives extra character to this delicious honey.
So, we allow nature to continue her work and we help prevent the extinction of bees, ensuring their continued existence and restoring the life cycle balance to arrive at a 100% sustainable vineyard. A vineyard that will give us the best of the fruits that will be selected bunch by bunch to achieve a wine that leaves an impression on the nose and mouth, a wine that is sincere and committed to its environment.
Bosque de Matasnos 100% free of pesticides and herbicides
Recently a sample of honey taken from honeycombs here in the Bosque de Matasnos vineyards was tested in the laboratory at the CSIC La Grajera (Spanish National Research Council and La Rioja University) against 172 samples of different pesticides and herbicides (all they have) and our honey is 100% free from pesticides and herbicides, no trace.
Our 500,000 bees that are foraging the millions of flowers in Bosque de Matasnos have not encountered even an insignificant trace of pesticide or herbicide. We are proud to have created a fully sustainable microenvironment, respectful of nature and human food; the result of all these years of hard work to give back to nature what is hers.
