Below the tree line, the Anatolian summer arrives in May. Above it, snow lies in the north-facing folds until late June, and the meadows do not truly open until the first week of July. Then everything happens at once.
Wild thyme first, low and grey-green, then sainfoin in drifts of pink, then clover, astragalus, wild sage, yellow gentian, and a hundred smaller flowers that have no English name. For six weeks the slopes above 2,000 metres hum. By the middle of August the sainfoin has set seed, the thyme has gone to wood, and the colonies have turned from foraging to sealing what they have made.
What altitude does
Nectar gathered at altitude is thinner and more aromatic than valley nectar, and the bees have to work it harder. The honey that results is paler than cave honey, brighter, with an herbal lift that is unmistakably thyme, and it sets early into a fine cream because of the sugars those flowers carry.
It is also the honey we have least of. A crevice colony at 2,500 metres may give us two kilograms in a good year, and none in a bad one. When the High Meadow harvest is gone, it is gone.
Reading the season in the jar
Every High Meadow batch is pollen-tested. The report lists what the bees actually visited, in order of frequency, which is a fair record of what was flowering on that mountain that July. We keep the reports. Over the years they have become a diary of the high meadows that no one else is keeping.