It's not just tea - A Bee Farm

The Cameron Highlands are famous for their tea, but they are also a large farming community. After our first tea plantation, we stopped by a bee farm.

The bee farm was a nice little break, but nothing spectacular. I imagine this would be a different experience for someone who has never seen bee hives before.

We know people in Canada who are bee keepers, so seeing the bee farm was nothing too exciting. It was neat to see the different types of bees, but not spectacular. MsC says, it's important to remember the rule is "Don't dance on the bee hives". We didn't do any dancing, but we did get very close to the hives spread out through the garden and also got up close to the different types of bees. The flowers were very different than the types I'm used to seeing planted in North America for bees.

There are huge black-purple carpenter bees in Malaysia and Singapore, and we saw them here. They were hanging out here in the very same purple trumpet-like flowers that I see them on in Singapore. We also saw the tiniest breed of bees here I've ever seen - about the size of a pinky fingernail.

There were lots of birds and butterflies to be seen. Scattered throughout the garden were large comical statues of bees also. I took a picture with the Queen Bee.

I took a peek in their garden shed. The wood cubes on the left will be used as bee hives. The stack of squares on the right had wire mesh in them and each will be inserted in the hives and be where the bees actually make the honey combs. The plastic yellow suits and long red gloves keep the bee keepers safe from stings as they gather the honeycombs, and the large hats are probably draped with netting also.

We followed the scent of incense and found a little alter tucked away at the back of the garden. Most businesses have an alter of some sort.

It was interesting sampling the different types of honey. They were different than any honey I had tasted in North America. One of the types of honey was almost spicy. The flavor just comes from particular flowers that the bees favour. I also liked this little wander through the garden. We were probably here at the Bee Farm about 30 minutes, and it was located right at the road we were driving down.