Kornati sage honey manufacture.

The association’s registered office is:

Kornatska 14, Murter,

contact: Ana Šikić,

mobile phone: +385 99 518 6712

About bee-keeping in Kornati:

The rocky pastures of Kornati are one of the Kornati national park’s phenomena and living proof of the millennial human coexistence with nature. The landscape is ideal to provide Kornati bees with honey-bearing, medicinal sage, which allows them to make honey of the highest quality.

The first written record on bee-keeping in Murter dates back to 1824. The “Kurnatar”, owners of the Kornati estate, started with bee-keeping after the World War I, some time before 1930.

There are seven active bee-keepers in Murter today. All of them have always moved their bees from Murter to Kornati (and they still do) to provide them with pastures of medicinal sage (salvia officinalis), which the locals simply call “slavuja”.

Bee-keeping has always been an ancillary activity for the locals from Murter and Kornati. They have engaged in it to supplement their family budgets, but never neglected nor could afford to neglect other activities, like livestock breeding, viticulture and olive growing on account of bee-keeping. None of the Kornati bee-keepers have, therefore, ever had more than 30 apiaries. Additionally, the modest number of apiaries stems from the geomorphology of the Kornati archipelago, especially its largest island – Kornat – which measures only 2 kilometres in its widest portion. Since the bees fly in a 3.5-kilometre radius, that amounts to only 35% of land in the widest portion, while the rest is sea. In other locations, it can be less – only 15% of land, and there are parts where there is even less land in that ratio.

 

Honey from Kornati is mostly made of sage, and contains a higher proportion of sage than any other honey. Very often, that proportion is 100%, and sage is claimed to be one of the most beneficial medicinal plants in the world. Its Latin name, salvia, comes from the Latin word “salvus”, which means saved, healthy*).

Maybe the best way to describe Kornati honey is to say that the locals have been using it exclusively as a remedy for respiratory illnesses, like sniffles, cough, laryngitis, bronchitis, colds with dry cough, etc.

Beside medicinal properties that this honey gets from the plant of its origin - sage - honey has recently became popular as a healthy food in and of itself. That has been specifically supported by newer research that points to its antibacterial and bacteriostatic properties, as well as its richness in antioxidants. Flavonoids, ascorbic acid, phenolic acids and carotenoids are just some of the antioxidants present in this honey.