Honey - The Slavic Countries

All Slavic races were partial to honey production. They used honey freely on their bread, mixed it with curds and butter, employed it in baking and in the preparation of alcoholic drinks. The Russians and Poles were experts in making hot honey drinks, and there are many popular winter beverages on the European continent which originated in Russia. The Poles were reputed to be the brewers of finest mead.

The Slays were widely disseminated over Eastern, Southeastern and Central Europe and Asia. The Russians, Poles, Ruthenians, Serbs, Croatians, Lithuanians, Czechs, Moravians, Slovaks, Wends, Bosnians, Montenegrins and Slovens were all ardent bee-lovers. The old Prussians and Silesians belonged originally to Slavic races but were later absorbed by the ancient Teutons who inherited the Slavic fondness for honey. The Slavic interbreeding with the Hungarians, the Bulgarians, the Northern Finnish and Tartar races spread this lickerish tendency among the respective lands.

Poland was especially rich in honey. Gallus, who explored Poland in the eleventh century, remarked pane et carne et melle satis est copiosa (there is plenty of bread, meat and honey) and stated further ubi aer salubris, ager fertilis, Silva melliflua (where the air is salubrious, the fields are fertile and the forests flow with honey). One of their beekeepers, Piast, who treated the royal electors with mead which never diminished, was elected king and his descendants ruled over Poland for several centuries. In the fourteenth century, Poland sold honey in foreign markets which yielded millions of florins in export duties to the royal treasury.