Bee season over the ginseng blossoms

In April, the ginseng region comes into bloom. For a few short weeks, the slopes of Ba Vì are covered in tiny blossoms — a source of honey that no one had ever tapped before.

Thổ Sâm Việt Nam works with local beekeeping households to bring colonies up to the growing area right at flowering season. The honey they produce carries a spectrum all its own: deeply sweet, with a very distinctive faint bitter finish.

Each batch of honey is identified by its bloom region and harvest season. The revenue is shared directly with the beekeeping households and the ginseng-garden owners — a new income stream born from the ecosystem that was already there.

The bees, meanwhile, do nature’s work: pollinating the ginseng region and raising the seed-set rate for the next year’s seed crop. A closed loop in the truest sense.