Boquete Bees + Butterflies - Boquete, Panama

by Rebecca Hollman
updated April 10, 2019

Miel Boqueteña y Mariposario - Boquete, Panama

Boquete is one of the most beautiful areas of Panama, known for its lush jungles, waterfalls, coffee farms and hiking trails. Boquete Bees, also sometimes called Boquete Butterflies or Miel Boqueteña, is a honey farm just outside the main area of Boquete. This farm raises bees and produces many different types of honey, that they have for sale in the gift shop. Besides just selling honey, they also have honey tasting tours and honey harvesting/processing tours. The farm also includes a butterfly house, full of different types of butterflies (mostly the blue morpho). Yoga classes are offered daily inside the butterfly house where butterflies fly around and land on you while you practice yoga.

Boquete Bees produces very unique honey. Their raw honey has over 40 different flavor profiles, without anything being added! This multitude of flavors is because of the vast biodiversity of the area, thanks to Volcán Barú. The more different types of species of plants in the area, the more different types of flavors the honey will be.

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Boquete Bees offers tours daily by appointment. A full tour, which includes a honey/bee tour, a honey tasting, and entrance into the butterfly house, is $35 per person and requires a minimum group of 2 people. It starts with a cup of coffee and an introduction to the bee business in Panama. Then you walk through the bee hive area and around the farm. Then you get to visit the butterfly house. And lastly, it ends with a honey tasting and a taste of honey wines and liquors.

Learn more about the tours and request an appointment on the Boquete Bees website.

History of Bees in Panama

“Modern” beekeeping came to Panama with Hermann Gnaegi - a Swiss man who moved to Panama to work for Nestle. He brought a hive of Italian bees with him to the small town of Nata in 1937. The locals often said “here we have a true crazy gringo who keeps flies locked up.” Gnaegi founded the Bee Association of Panama in 1966 and created the foundation of modern beekeeping in Panama. In the 1980s, Gnaegi made the first Panamanian export to Europe - distributing 200 tons of honey. At that time, a woman from Boquete, Maria Teresa Ruiz, was Panama’s largest honey producer with over 1000 colonies of bees. With the arrival of African bees in Colombia in the 1980s, beekeeping has changed in Panama. Almost 75% of domestic producers disappeared because they couldn’t keep up with this new aggressive strain. Only a very few skilled beekeepers still exist in Panama today.