Madeira

[Cazza]

I'm off to Madeira next week.
Apart from drinking Poncha (has honey in it), anything to bee done there?
I've visited before and saw loads of honeybees in the hotel grounds but never seen any hives.
Cazza

 

[For want of a better word]

Seems Madeira has its own endemic variety of Apis mellifera mellifera possibly worthy of conservation and protection against introgression as with the Colonsay bees?

Think Ruttner wrote a paper on the bees on Madeira.... would give you something interesting to read on your holiday... or should I say vacation!

ENJOY

 

[REDWOOD]

I was there about 10 years ago and got to say it was one of my favorite holidays

 

[itma]

I'm off to Madeira next week.
Apart from drinking Poncha (has honey in it), anything to bee done there?
...

"Have some Madeira, my dear!" - Flanders & Swann

ADDED - [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW_zi8n4HDQ"]Flanders & Swann - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Finman]

.
I was on Madeira 10 years ago. It was beginning of May. I saw some beehives on clifs.

I wonder if those heather bushes give honey. The norther part of isle was covered with bushes.

Madeira is said island of flowers. in previous year I visited on Langawi of Malaysia. Very different places these two. Langawi had no nursed bees.

Giant heathers on Madeira

Erica arborea
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Erica_arborea,_Boomhei_,_Madeira_(eiland)_Madeira_.jpg

 

[Queens59]

I'm pretty sure that walking is quite big there - a friend walked...irrigation channels in the hills? They wind through the hills and have a smooth (small) edge to them which you can follow for miles - and not get lost. The only problem was when she met someone coming the other way and almost ended up IN the irrigation ditches...

 

[TBRNoTB]

Cable car to Monte then catch a sledge back down again, can be hair raising! Madeira tasting sessions in Funchal, yum. Village in the north of the island that has lava tubes you can walk through, facinating.
Stand on top of the highest sea cliffs in the world, there is aglass floor so you can look down to the beach, gulp!

 

[Erichalfbee]

I'm pretty sure that walking is quite big there - a friend walked...irrigation channels in the hills?

Levadas.
I met my husband on a Levada walking holiday

 

[susbees]

Langawi had no nursed bees.

But plenty sanitised golf courses and dead Komodo dragons as roadkill