TERRA MELLIS Association was founded in 2020 by a group of Romanian honey enthusiasts: Ligia Soare, Dorina Oarga, Laurențiu Brătan.
Over the years, we attended various events dedicated to honey (especially beekeeping fairs) in Romania. Also, on numerous trips, we have discovered many different types of honey, from extremely diverse geo-climatic zones: from Indochina to the Caribbean, from South America to Central Asia, and from the Horn of Africa to Europe.
Lost in this fascinating universe, we have tried to find information on the honey types we discovered and their characteristics, but in most cases, we noticed that the information we found were either very sketchy or completely lacking. On the other hand, they are often contradictory.
And things are no better at honey markets. When you buy a certain type of honey from a producer, you expect the information provided to be of a certain professional standard. However, experience has proved us the opposite: most producers only know the types of honey they produce, and only to a limited extent; and even less about other geographic areas, other countries… let alone other continents.
Therefore, our first project arose out of a need: to find credible, substantiated and professional information about as many types of honey as possible. This is how the idea of setting up this online honey encyclopaedia was born: identify, inventory, document and classify the types of honey which exist. Firstly, in Romania, then in Europe, and finally worldwide.
Such encyclopaedias / databases exist (in print or online) for other commodities: cheese, coffee, spices, wine or whisky. So why not for honey?