Jäger family apiary
Grisons mountain honey.
Living forest in a jar.
From a forest edge 918 metres above the Misox valley – no road, no arable land within flight range. A few hundred jars a year, no more.
250 g jar · · limited quantity
Monte di Vif · Roveredo GR · 918 m
Origin
One place, one name, one family – three answers to the question of what is in the jar.
The apiary at the forest edge
01
The place
At 918 metres above the Misox valley lies Monte di Vif – an old monti level of meadows, hedges and broadleaf woodland. Within our bees’ flight range there is no arable farming, no through road, no village in sight. The meadows flower as they once flowered everywhere.
In winter the apiary can only be reached on foot. The bees overwinter where they forage in summer.
More about the Misox
02
The name
In the southern valleys the tended chestnut grove is called a «selva» – the word travelled into German as «Selve». For centuries this forest was not wilderness but a larder: the sweet chestnut was the valley’s bread tree.
SelvaVif is the forest that is still alive. And the village below also takes its name from trees: Roveredo comes from roveredo, the oak wood.
What lives on the slope
03
Us
We do not live off the honey, and that is exactly the point: we have no quantity to reach. Few colonies, one harvest a year, a few hundred jars – extracted by hand, jarred by hand, every label stuck on one at a time.
What is sold out stays sold out – until the next harvest. Anyone who wishes can join the list.
The bee year at the apiary
Why we do this
Anyone standing at Monte di Vif in June who keeps still for a moment hears the whole slope humming. Not single bees – a ground note lying over the entire meadow.
That sound cannot be put in a jar. But it can be looked after, so that it is still there in fifty years.
A jar of summer from Monte di Vif: meadow flowers, forest edge, chestnut and hazel – a little different each year, because we even out nothing.
Dark amber, lighter or almost brown depending on the year. Warm and woody on the nose, not floral. Full on the palate, with a slightly bitter note in the finish – the way forest and chestnut bring it. Not a honey that is merely sweet.
With strong alpine cheese and with goat’s cheese. On buttered bread in the morning, in yoghurt, over fried figs. Not in boiling tea: above 40 degrees it loses exactly what you buy it for.
Not a fault, but the sign that it is untreated. In a water bath at no more than 40 °C it turns liquid again.
Cool, dark, dry. It then keeps well beyond the best-before date.
Like any honey, not suitable for children under 12 months.
Bee sponsorship
Follow one of our colonies for a year – with news from the apiary and honey from this very slope. Bronze, Silver or Gold, from a year.
Find out more
Why there are meadows at 900 metres at all, what grows and lives here – and how a bee year runs in the mountains.
Order
No shop system, no customer account, no advance payment. You pay only once your honey is reserved.
You send us the order by email. It is not binding until we confirm it.
We confirm within 1–2 days and send you the TWINT details.
Once payment arrives the parcel goes to the post office – or we arrange collection.
Follow a colony at Monte di Vif for a year, with photo reports and honey from this slope. From just a year.
See the sponsorshipA few hundred jars go quickly. Add your name and we will let you know as soon as the next harvest is in the jar. No obligation, no newsletter.
A single email a year – when the honey is extracted, jarred and labelled. No newsletter, no advertising, cancelled again at any time with one word.
SelvaVif · Find out more
Our vision
A slope that still hums in fifty years. That is the whole vision – and it is more demanding than it sounds.
The honey is not the purpose but the result. What we really tend is a slope.
Because one does not work without the other. What we tend is the slope: meadow, forest edge, hedge, old wood. If that lives, the honey comes by itself – from a tidied-up slope even the best beekeeper gets nothing.
A mountain meadow scrubs over within a few years if nobody mows – first bracken and broom, then forest. We mow once and late, so that the flowers can seed. Why that is generations of handwork
No fertiliser, no sprays, no clearing out. Deadwood stays where it falls, the hedges may spread. It costs hay and tidiness, and it brings species. What lives on the slope
Not out of modesty, but because more colonies on the same slope harm nature there instead of helping it. Why, is just below.
A honeybee colony forages on millions of flowers in a season, mostly within a kilometre. If too many colonies stand within that radius, they compete with wild bees, bumblebees and hoverflies for the same flowers – and studies show that the number of species and the offspring of wild bees decline as a result. The honeybee is a farm animal that we put there. The wild bees were there first.
A look at density helps to put this in context – one hexagon stands for one colony per square kilometre:
The denser the colonies stand, the more they share the same flowers – with the wild bees that live there anyway.
The number of our colonies depends on what the slope carries – not on what we could sell. That SelvaVif is sometimes sold out is not a marketing trick but the upper limit.
You get little, irregularly and never exactly the same. In return you know from which slope, from which year and from whose hands. We think that is a fair trade.
SelvaVif · Find out more
Good to know
Everything we otherwise get asked by email – from ordering to set honey.
Through the form on the home page. You choose the number of jars, enter your details, and one click opens your email program with the finished order. We confirm within one to two days.
If no email program opens: the button next to it copies the same text, which you can then send by hand.
By TWINT, after we have confirmed your order. Nothing is charged before that – you pay only once your honey is reserved.
Shipping within Switzerland costs . Once payment arrives the parcel goes to the post office within a few days. We do not ship abroad.
Yes, and yes. Every unprocessed honey crystallises over time; that is not a fault but the sign that it has not been treated. In a water bath at no more than 40 degrees it turns liquid again.
How fast that happens is decided by the flowers: it depends on the ratio of fructose to glucose, and that is different every year.
Cool, dark and dry, with the jar tightly closed. Honey then keeps well beyond the best-before date. Not in the fridge – it crystallises faster there.
No – at least not in the legal sense. In Switzerland only a certified producer may say «organic», and we are not: for a few hundred jars certification is not worth it.
What we can say instead: the slope is neither fertilised nor sprayed, there is no arable farming within flight range, and the honey is not heated, not filtered and not blended. Why we keep it this way
Because we keep only as many colonies as the slope carries. More colonies in the same place take the forage away from the wild bees. That is the upper limit, not a marketing trick. The full reasoning
Like any honey, not for children under twelve months.
At Monte di Vif (918 m above sea level), above Roveredo in the Misox valley (Grisons). More about the valley
Yes. We buy nothing in and blend nothing. There is one harvest a year, and what we jar the bees gathered on this slope. How a bee year runs up there
In summer and by arrangement, gladly – just ask. In winter the track is not driveable; then it is on foot only.
Evening light above the Misox valley
SelvaVif · Find out more
The valley
A valley that faces south, speaks Italian and for centuries exported the best it had: people.
Anyone coming from the north drives through the San Bernardino tunnel and is suddenly somewhere else. The Moesa does not flow to the Rhine but to the Ticino and on into the Po. The villages are called Soazza, Lostallo, Grono, Roveredo. People greet you in Italian.
The Misox – in Italian Val Mesolcina – is the southernmost valley of the Grisons, 374 square kilometres between the Pizzo Tambò at 3,279 metres and the plain of San Vittore at 260 metres. It belongs to the Grisons but lies beyond the main Alpine ridge, and you notice that in the weather: in Grono, on 11 August 2003, 41.5 °C was recorded, the highest temperature ever officially measured in Switzerland.
This warmth shifts the whole vegetation. Figs and vines grow on the valley floor, sweet chestnuts on the slopes – species that north of the Alps thrive only in favoured spots. Our apiary lies at 918 metres above this climate: warm enough for a long flowering season, high enough for mountain meadows.
From the 12th century the von Sax family – in Italian de Sacco – ruled the valley from Mesocco castle. In 1480 Johann Peter von Sax sold his rights to the Milanese commander Gian Giacomo Trivulzio. In Roveredo he had the Palazzo Trivulzio renovated and a mint set up.
The valley people did not want that for good. Mesocco and Soazza joined the Grey League in 1480, the remaining communes on 4 August 1496. In 1549 the valley bought itself free for good: 24,500 gold ducats for the last seigneurial rights.
A strong wave of emigration began as early as the late 15th century. Between 1500 and well into the 18th century, chimney sweeps, master builders, architects, stuccoists and painters left the Misox – above all for Austria and the German states. They came back in winter or sent money. Those who stayed lived off livestock, forest, meadow and chestnuts.
Roveredo itself is first documented in 1219, as de Regoredo. The name comes from the oak wood, and the communal coat of arms still shows a golden oak with roots, leaves and fruit. A village that names itself after its trees.
From 1818 to 1822 the engineer Giulio Pocobelli built the pass road over the San Bernardino. From 1907 to 1972 an electric narrow-gauge railway ran up to Mesocco. In 1967 came the 6.6-kilometre road tunnel, in 1973 the A13 from Bellinzona to Chur – and with it the transit traffic straight through Roveredo.
Only in 2016 was the village bypassed: 5.6 kilometres of new route with a 2.3-kilometre tunnel. Since then it has been quiet again in the village centre. Up at Monte di Vif it always had been anyway.
The mown meadow at Monte di Vif
SelvaVif · Find out more
The altitude level
That there are open meadows at 900 metres is no accident of nature. It is the work of generations who moved house three times a year.
A mountain farm in the south was never one place but three. In winter you lived down in the village, in spring and autumn halfway up – the monti –, and in high summer right up on the alp. The family followed the grass.
In the German-speaking Grisons it is called Maiensäss, in the Valais Voralp, in the Misox and Ticino monti or monte. It always means the same thing: the middle level, the staging post between village and alp. Monte di Vif is exactly that – the name says so itself.
The work was divided. The men moved on with the livestock to the alpine pastures, the women stayed with the gardens and the haymaking on the middle levels. At the end of the season it went back down stage by stage, until the family was back in the village at the start of winter.
People built with what was there: stone. The rustici of the monti are narrow, thick-walled and roofed with stone slabs – the byre below, the hay and a chamber above. The meadows in front of them are not natural clearings but areas cleared by hand, often terraced, mown for centuries and held by dry-stone walls.
The federal government divides farmland into the valley zone, the hill zone, mountain zones I to IV and the summer pasture region. The summer pasture region in the legal sense is the alpine level right at the top – the pastures grazed only in high summer. The monti at 900 metres lie below that, in the mountain zone: the level reached first in spring and left last in autumn.
With the emigration, later with industry and the road, the three-level system fell away. Anyone working in the valley or in town no longer had time for three moves a year. The monti fell out of use: byres decayed, meadows scrubbed over, bracken and broom moved in, then the forest.
The same story befell the chestnut groves. In Ticino their area shrank between 1800 and 2000 from 8,800 to 2,000 hectares. In the Moesano, whatever can be recovered has been recovered for some years now: around 60 hectares of selva have been cleared again, since 2013 there has been an organised harvest, and in 2016 the drying house «Grà di Dro Alt» was brought back into operation after fifty years standing still.
It is exactly this half-open, half-wooded structure that pollinators live on: meadow beside forest edge, hedge beside clearing, flowering shrubs along the margins. An intensively used valley meadow has three grasses; a late-mown mountain meadow has dozens of flowering plants, staggered across the summer.
That is why, when we mow at Monte di Vif, we mow once and late. The rest stays as it is.
The meadow above the apiary
SelvaVif · Find out more
Biodiversity
The southern side of the Alps is among the warmest regions of Switzerland. What is missing north of the Alps occurs here – on a slope that simply was never intensified.
Monte di Vif is not a nature reserve. It is an ordinary south-facing slope on which nothing was ever fertilised, sprayed or afforested – and that is enough.
Around the meadow stand above all sweet chestnuts and hazels. The two have different amounts to do with our honey, and both say something about this place.
The sweet chestnut was the bread tree of the southern Alpine side for centuries. Chestnuts were dried, milled, made into bread and porridge; a grove – the selva – was as valuable as a field. Only the potato, maize and industrialisation made it dispensable, then came chestnut blight. When the chestnut flowers at the end of June it is one of the strongest nectar flows there is for bees – which is why it is also on our label.
The hazel plays an entirely different role. It is wind-pollinated and does not need the bees – but the bees need it. Its catkins open in February or March, when nothing else is in flower, and deliver the first pollen of the year. Without that supply of protein the brood does not get going in spring.
Barely a quarter has remained. In the neighbouring Moesano around 60 hectares of selva have meanwhile been cleared again – trees relieved, undergrowth mown, the drying house fired up once more.
Old chestnuts are rarely dense and healthy; they go hollow, lose branches, rot from within. For the forester that is a problem, for the stag beetle it is the nursery.
Europe's largest beetle grows up to eight centimetres including its antlers, the females three to four. Its larva lives five to seven years in fungus-decayed wood before the beetle emerges – and then flies at dusk from early June to mid-August. In Switzerland it occurs only in the warmest regions: Ticino, the southern valleys of the Grisons, the Valais, the Lake Geneva area. It is considered highly endangered and is protected across Europe.
None of this is a scientific survey – it is what you come across while working. And almost always the place gives away what you have in front of you: the slope has three storeys.
The slope is not fertilised, not sprayed and mown once, late. Deadwood stays where it falls. The hedges at the edge are not cut back merely because they spread. For a production holding that would be wrong – for an apiary with a few colonies it is exactly right.
What ends up in the jar grew for a whole year on this slope. There is no more recipe than that.
On the way to the apiary
SelvaVif · Find out more
The year
From the first hazel pollen in February to the winter cluster in December: a colony goes by the slope, not by the calendar – and we go by the colony.
In winter a bee colony is not a sleeping animal but a heating organism. It overwinters at Monte di Vif where it also forages – and we walk up when we want to look.
Guide values for our apiary at 918 metres in the Misox valley. A cold spring, a dry summer or a late thunderstorm shift everything by weeks.
February · Early spring
February – March
In February or March the hazel catkins open. The hazel does not need the bees – it lets the wind do the work –, but on a mild morning the bees hang in it anyway and carry home yellow pollen loads. That is the starting signal: only once pollen arrives does the queen really begin to lay.
April – May
Goat willow, dandelion, fruit and maple blossom. The colony triples within weeks. Now it is decided whether it will be strong enough in June to build up stores – and whether it will get the urge to swarm. We check regularly, give space and catch what cannot be solved otherwise.
June – July
The mountain meadow flowers in stages – clover, sage, knapweed, and bramble and raspberry at the forest edge. At the end of June the sweet chestnut joins in, unmistakable in its scent. In warm, thundery summers the forest gives honeydew as well.
What comes of it is different every year. We blend nothing, so you taste it.
July – August
We harvest once, not three times. Extraction is by hand, jarring without filtering, without warming. After that the rest of the year belongs to the bees: they are given feed for the winter, and we treat against the varroa mite – without that no colony survives in Central Europe today.
October – February
In October the colony draws together. From November it forms the winter cluster, a dense ball around the queen that keeps itself warm by shivering its muscles and moves slowly through the stores. Not hibernation, but running on low.
When there is snow the track to the apiary is no longer driveable. Then it comes down to the occasional walk up, an ear against the hive, clearing snow from the entrance. Nothing more is needed.
A honey from a single, late-harvested forage is never twice the same. Colour, aroma and the speed at which it crystallises depend on the ratio of fructose to glucose – and that is decided by the flowers, not by the beekeeper.
SelvaVif · Find out more
Bee sponsorship
You follow one of our colonies through a year – from the first flight in spring to the winter cluster. With it comes honey from this very slope, for you or for whoever you give the sponsorship to.
For Christmas
What do you give someone who already has everything? Something that doesn't go on a shelf: a year of news from the mountain, a colony whose year you follow, and honey from a slope you know.
Orders placed by arrive before Christmas.
Order as a giftThree sponsorships
All three run for one year and end on their own. They differ in how much of the bee year you get to see – and how much honey comes your way.
Bronze
per year
For anyone who wants to take part with a simple sponsorship.
Silver
per year
For anyone who wants to follow the whole bee year and get to know the apiary.
Gold
per year
For anyone looking for an unusual gift – or who would like to look inside a hive themselves.
Included in all three: sponsorship of one colony at Monte di Vif and delivery within Switzerland. The photo reports come at the spring check, in swarming season, after the harvest and when the colonies go into winter – with Bronze, the ones from the spring check and after the harvest.
A sponsorship brings you close to a place and a colony. It is not a rescue mission – we would rather say so straight away.
A colony usually has several sponsors. With the certificate you learn which colony you are following – and how it fares through the year. Why we stay small
At Monte di Vif above Roveredo, at 918 metres, on a forest edge with sweet chestnuts and hazels – no road, no arable land nearby. Just a few colonies, one harvest a year.
Instead of pens and calendars: a gift from a small business, with a sender and an origin. For customers, staff, business partners or a company anniversary.
Order a sponsorship
Just like the honey: no shop, no customer account, no advance payment.
You choose the sponsorship and send us the order by email. It only becomes binding once we confirm it.
We confirm within 1–2 days and send you the TWINT details – companies receive an invoice.
Once payment arrives the certificate goes out and the honey goes in the post – to you or straight to the recipient.
One year from our confirmation. It ends on its own – no subscription, nothing to cancel. If you want to continue, simply order again.
Together with the certificate, from the current harvest. If that is sold out, the honey follows after the next harvest in late summer – we tell you when we confirm.
It happens, even with good care. You then carry on with another colony at the same apiary, and we tell you what happened. It makes no difference to the honey.
No. You are buying honey and a year of news from the apiary from a small beekeeping business. So it cannot be deducted as a donation.
In summer we invite you to the sponsors' day at the apiary; we announce the date in spring. With Silver you get to know the apiary and the slope; with Gold you look inside an open hive with us, wearing our protective gear – in each case for up to two people. Whether we open a hive depends on the weather. If the date does not suit you with Gold, we find another day when we are at the apiary anyway.
If you are allergic to bee stings, please check with your doctor beforehand. Sturdy shoes are needed; we will describe the way to you.
