Wadi Doan, Hadramout: where our Sidr and Sumra honey come from
Almost every jar we sell begins in one valley. Wadi Doan cuts deep into the Hadramout plateau in eastern Yemen, walled by cliffs, with mud-brick towns on the valley floor. It is the address on our certificates of origin, and the reason our Sidr honey is what it is.
Why the valley makes the honey
Wadi Doan is isolated, and isolation is the whole point. When the wild Sidr trees flower in autumn, little else in reach of the hives is flowering. The bees have nowhere else to go, so the honey is naturally monofloral: one tree, one nectar, one character. In Sidr regions where the trees grow beside farms and other crops, the result is usually a multifloral honey with some Sidr in it.
There are no farms within foraging range of our hives. No sugar feeding, no chemical treatments, no pesticide drift. The beekeeper reaches the sites on foot or by rough track. We call this organic practice rather than organic certification, because no certification scheme operates there.
The trees
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Sidr (Ziziphus spina-christi), the lote tree named in the Quran, gives our Premium and Royal Sidr honey. It is a hardy desert tree that survives on almost no rain and flowers in the autumn.
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Sumra (Acacia tortilis), the thorny acacia of the same valley, gives our Yemeni Sumra honey: dark, thick and roasted where the Sidr is golden and floral. Its harvest depends on the rain, so the quantity changes every year.
The season
The main Sidr flowering runs in October, and the autumn harvest spans about 40 days. Honey taken when the bees are feeding on Sidr alone is what we sell as Premium, and the peak of that window is what we select as Royal, which is why there is so little of it and why its total activity is higher. A season is decided by rainfall and flowering, not by us. Some years give plenty; some years give very little.
The bee
Yemen's native honeybee, Apis mellifera jemenitica, is smaller than European strains, tolerates heat, and resists Varroa mites through its own grooming behaviour, so no miticides are used. It has evolved alongside these trees. Prof. Muhammad Saeed Khanbash of Hadramout University has documented both the bee and the valley's Sidr density; his work sits on our research page.
The beekeeper
We buy from one beekeeper, and we have bought from him since 2011. He follows the nomadic practice that Yemen has used for centuries, moving hives to the flowering. There are no traders between him and us, which is unusual in this market and is the reason we can name the valley, the season and the batch instead of writing "product of Yemen" on a label.
From the hive to your jar
- Combs are pressed cold in a stainless steel press in Yemen. No heat at any stage, which is what keeps a raw honey raw.
- The honey is air-shipped to Australia under controlled conditions rather than sent by sea, so it arrives as it left.
- It is poured and weighed by hand into glass jars in Victoria, and each jar is checked by eye.
- Each batch carries a certificate of origin, and our Sidr honeys carry a laboratory certificate from ALS Food and Environmental in New Zealand.
The batch details sit on each product page: origin, harvest year, total activity, C4 sugar result, the laboratory and its reference number.
What comes from this valley
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