No Maltese Cats or Falcons, but Lots and Lots of Bees

Ignore the plot, if you can find it. This one’s about the Isle of Malta and Andrew Walker’s new Glasses, Beard, and Biceps. Yes, it’s one of the Destination Hallmarks where the setting takes center stage. And this one has an extra bonus of also being about Bees and Honey which I find fascinating. So between doing a pretty deep dive into beautiful and history-rich Malta, apiaries, and the honey that Malta has been famous for since ancient times, I was sufficiently entertained and educated. I never knew that Malta was famous for it’s honey before watching this movie…So there you are!

Andrew plays an Archeologist and Professor who is in Malta teaching and in hot pursuit of a project that will get him funding and tenure from a university somewhere in Michigan (my old stomping grounds). He meets Eva who has inherited her mother’s apiary which has been in her family for generations. They are thrown together when Eva is trying to save a wild bee hive which has attached itself to the side of a building where bee and honey-averse Andrew has been researching an old diary of a Jesuit Priest. The priest, who came to Michigan in the 1600s, wrote of “The Golden Road” and the diary has a picture of a box in it which seems important. While taking the hive down, they unwittingly reveal an ancient fresco right there in the middle of town. It takes them about a minute to chip off all the ancient paint and plaster. The fresco is in 3 parts. It features a tower, another couple of buildings, and a field or a map. So the apiculturist and the archeologist take to the road sleuthing out it’s meaning.  And thus it is that we are treated to the grand tour of gorgeous Malta and the romance part.

When Andrew comes down to the deadline for submitting his proposal, Eva meets her beloved old Uncle(?) Grandfather(?) sitting in the sun who casually starts talking about the honey road or golden road that is famous in Maltese history. It seems the ancient Maltese would carry honey from the apiary to the storage buildings, stopping at a farm field to bless the harvest, and then ship the honey out across Europe. Sounds like that fresco. ”How did I not know this!”, Eva cries. Now that is a mystery indeed, Eva, great lifelong beekeeper and honey expert that you are. I guess you must have been sticking your fingers in her ears and chanting  LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA whenever the subject came up in school or when sitting at your mother’s knee. She takes Andrew to the field depicted in the fresco (which her mother used to take her to all the time since she was a child) and there is a pile of rocks in the middle of the ruin with bees going in and out. There is something under the rocks! Andrew, revealing some truly impressive biceps for an otherwise medium-sized guy, moves the rocks which have remain untouched for centuries, and there is an ancient storehouse with honey still in the crocks! And also other ancient stuff and the real-life box from the diary! Well dang! Anyway it all ties in to the Jesuit Priest who, it turns out, took the Maltese bees to Michigan in that box. And Eva knew what that box was all the time! It’s a bee box, used for transporting bees! Wonder why she didn’t say something earlier. And thanks to the bees from Malta, Michigan flourished.

Thank goodness we don’t watch Hallmark for an accurate depiction of how Archeology works. I’m done being driven crazy by all the wild leaps from reality Hallmark takes when portraying such things.  So the “golden road” was not about pirate treasure but liquid gold: Honey. I knew that from the very beginning, and I bet you did too.