Tag: beekeeping

Deák Mihály – beekeeper

When we were approaching Mr. Deák’s farm, more and more trailers and other industrial hardware started appearing. Upon arrival, I thought we had come to the wrong place, but after a phone call, Mr. Deák invited us into his workshop.

There, he had set up a table with his honeys, some bread and some refreshments. Next, we got to taste all his honeys, each having a specific taste and consistency. He seemed to be hospitable, and the atmosphere was relaxed.

He started beekeeping as a hobby, he spent 5-6 years learning how to do beekeeping, 10-15 years to become professional, and he has about 170 beehives.

He is making gradual investments, and he gets some support from the EU. In addition, he has a loan from a bank.

His bees produce honey from:
⦁ forest fruits
⦁ acacia
⦁ linden
⦁ spring flowers
⦁ rapeseed

He has bought a machine for extracting honey and he’s able to extract honey for other beekeepers too.
In this area, there are herbs in the fields and farmers let out their cows which disperse seeds. In general, there are few flowers in this area.

Before rapeseed was only grown in southern Romania, but it has spread northwards due to global heating. Winters are getting milder and summers hotter. There was more rain in the past, which was bad for honey production.

There are acacia forests near the Danube delta, and he follows the flowering of the acacia trees from the Danube delta northwards in the spring, extending the season about 3 weeks.

He’s guessing where it’s flowering the most and he’s moving the honeybees at night because they must not be overheated. If they get nervous, they move more and produce more heat. In addition, honeybees travel only short distances to find flowers.

He’s only selling honey products to consumers, and he has returning customers.

He’s the President of the Covasna County Beekeepers’ Association.
Quote: “The aim of Nectaria is to subject commercial producers and supermarket honeys of natural origin to quality control and professional evaluation, to appoint the Excellent Szekler Honey of the Year after organoleptic judging and top jury, and to reward honey producers in Szeklerland with prizes, medals and diplomas,” the organizers announced last year. At the same time, they support honey producers and promote their products, introduce beekeeping traditions and draw attention to the unique flavors inherent in the honeys of Szeklerland.

Regarding what this year has been like for honey producers, Mihály Deák said that it is impossible to generalize, it matters a lot whether with a little luck the beekeeper manages to be in the right place at the right time. All that can be said is that the hopes attached to acacia blooms could not be materialized when they were rolled out, but on average this year was slightly better than last year. Unquote. Source.

His son is studying mechanical engineering, father and son have a workshop where they build what their customers want in metal. Small things are built inside, while big ones are built outside. He can make things like a fruit press, tanks for farmers, etc., and he designs the structures by hand on paper. He works part-time as an administrator at a driving school and his son assists him with beekeeping.

A new building for 5 beekeepers will be finished next year, and they will sell honey together.

There are lots of hobby beekeepers, but the number of beekeepers is decreasing.

The price of honey can’t follow inflation because people won’t buy it, and the EU imports honey of poor quality from some other countries.

07/10/2024
Gergely László – beekeeper

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Driving past the village of Zoltán and passing a muddy road, we arrived at the property of Gergely László and his wife. Inside a fence, they had beehives, an orchard, a pond, a chicken coop and a small house. The property was 3/2 hectares and 5-6 dogs were protecting it against bears.

Upon entering the property, we were met by all the dogs, next we were invited to join Mr Gergely to his 8-sided pavilion, which was located next to a pond being replenished by water falling down from a wooden chute. Herbs were hanging from the ceiling and they would be turned into herbal teas when time was due.

While my guide was speaking with Mr Gergely, I noticed a slingshot lying on the table. It was used for scaring away frogs and toads, which were eating fish in the pond.

The Gergely couple bought the land, which was a vegetable garden in communist times, 4 years ago and they had to pay for a survey of 20 hectares to get the property registered. In fact, they paid more for the survey than for the land. The water flowing into the pond came from two wells located 600 m from the pond. Both of them contain large pieces of concrete and they are camouflaged in order to avoid sabotage.

Many years ago, a friend tried to convince him to be a beekeeper, but he resisted for several years. Next, he got one beehive as a gift and found that he liked beekeeping. Then, his friend made him receive 27 more beehives. He collaborated with him and learnt from him and other beekeepers, but now his friend is ill.

The first 3 years were very difficult and he had to ask for help often, but he gradually learnt how to do it. After many years of beekeeping, 6 of them as a professional, he can easily survive 30-50 bee stings, but he has to protect his face.

The beekeeping is family-driven: husband, wife, and 2 daughters. He does most of the work, but everyone extracts honey.

Originally both husband and wife were forest engineers with their own timber business, but it didn’t pay off, being heavily influenced by the price of timber. Moreover, an Austrian timber company built a big sawmill nearby and out-competed small producers.

This is the first year they only sell honey, while before they were selling timber and honey.

After a while, Mr Gergely let us see him inspect his beehives. He only used a hood with netting to protect his face, while we had protection for our upper bodies. While he was showing his beehives, opening some of them, he went on talking about beekeeping.

Mr Gergely has 100 beehives here and 130 close to forests, 30-50 km from here and they would be brought home soon. The mobile bees are released near or on meadows from July to autumn and they can pollinate any type of flower. He needs one person to help him load and unload the beehives and he has to go twice to fetch the beehives because there is too little space in his car.

There were a lot of empty racks, but they would be filled with the mobile beehives.

The season starts in Feb-March, April when the bees start collecting pollen, mainly from flowers, depending on the vegetation in the area. This year, they had been collecting a lot of pollen from linden, but not so much from acacia and rapeseed.

2019 was a bad year for beekeepers in this area because of a cold, rainy spring, but the rest of the year had been good so far.

He sells minimum 2000 kg and maximum 7000 kg of honey a year. He always wants to ensure quality. His golden rule is to apply no additives and no sugar.

He says that beekeeping is not an exact science, you need experience and attention to detail and you have to accommodate all situations.

He has mounted a scale below some random beehives in order to measure how much honey the bees are producing, while all other weights are estimates. There may be more, the same or less than the ones which are weighed.

Experienced beekeepers have 200 beehives, 100 stationary and 100 mobile. After some time, they have to make the mobile bees stronger by means of the stationary ones.

Pesticides are a problem and the beekeepers want the government to enforce a ban on pesticides for rapeseed when the flowers are blooming, but they aren’t listened to.

He has a dilemma regarding the consistency of the honey: in about 1 of 40 jars, the honey crystallises , while the others stay liquid and he doesn’t know why. Those who want to know more about honey crystallisation can watch this video.

He feeds sugar and water to the bees in winter, but they are also eating honey in order to survive.

Varroa causes problems for the bees and he treats them with medicine. If it doesn’t work, they make herbal teas for the bees.

The bees are stealing from each other, strong bees from weak ones. He’s trying to minimise the problem by using a small opening in the weak beehives.

Honeydew is a valuable type of honey, but he hasn’t been able to make it.

1 kg jars of honey are very popular and they are selling all of them.

In case of a cold February and a mild March, the bees stay with their young rather than going to the outer frames with honey, keeping the young warm. That is, the grown-up bees prefer to starve to death in order to protect their young.

We also walked around the orchard and the kitchen garden. They were growing fruit trees like apple, plum, pear and quince together with raspberry, mulberry, tomatoes and others. Besides, they are growing rapeseed, acacia, lime and sunflower.

Mr Gergely’s wife fed the poultry and the rabbits during our visit.

He’s fed up with city life, he wants to be self-sufficient and live here and get water from a well. However, he has no mains electricity. The area, being surrounded by fields, is quiet and peaceful and there are no neighbours nearby.

They have a house in the village and they want to sell it. Regarding electricity, they can get get mains or use solar power with batteries, which must be changed every 6-7 years. Mains electricity is more convenient, but it has a high initial investment.

Their eldest daughter studies to be a vet. She gets offers to work abroad, but she wants to come home and help her father. The other daughter goes to high school.

Mr Gergely kindly gave me 1 kg jar of honey.

30/09/2019
Nutripolen beekeepers

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Nutripolen derives from the Spanish words nutritivo meaning nutritious and polen, which means pollen.

We paid a visit to Laura, Jose Manuel and Jose who willingly showed us their beehives and related activities. First, we were invited to see their pollen, which the honey bees bring back on their bodies to the beehive when they have been pollinating flowers. Looking at the pollen, we could see a collection of mostly yellow and orange grains. Afterwards, they showed us how they sieve the pollen in a machine before they deep-freeze it such that it will preserve its characteristics for a long time. Besides pollen, Nutripolen also sells honey from Robinia pseoudoacacia, Eucalyptus and Erica. Their products are marketed under the name Morga and they sell them directly from their house and in specialised shops.

Jose Manuel and his wife Laura have been beekeepers for about 30 years, while Laura’s mother started even earlier. Going outside, we were shown their beehives, all of which looked quite small compared to the beehives we were using at the introductory course for beekeepers in Norway. Looking inside the beehives, it seemed that they only consisted of a structure called honey super, that is 10 vertical boards where the worker bees store nectar in honeycombs. Obviously, there are many ways to construct a beehive.

All of the bees were of the race Apis mellifera iberiensis and they had been actively bred to be be peaceful, produce lots of honey, taking care of larvae and being healthy. In order to demonstrate their peacefulness, Jose put the palm of his hand on top of the bees and my guide did the same without being stung.

About 10 years ago, a man from Mexico held a course about breeding queen bees in this area, but now only Nutripolen is following what he taught. In addition to the «normal» beehives, they also had beehives where they were breeding queen bees. They were using a structure which resembled a Jenter kit. Here, the queen will lay eggs, but the beekeepers will feed the larvae with royal jelly such that the larvae will be turned into queens. They also told my guide that the larvae always have to face up such that they can breathe. In general, there is a shortage of queen bees, meaning that Nutripolen sells their queen bees to other beekeepers.

They also showed us tiny boxes having, say, a volume of 1 litre, inside of which they were also raising queen bees. However, they showed us a queen cup, which had certainly been made by the worker bees themselves.

Unfortunately, the Asian predatory wasp has entered Spain and it is a great threat to both honey bees because they kill them. In order to fight the wasps, Nutripolen uses a solution originating in Korea: catch some of them live, cut off the two rear legs, which the wasps only use for cleaning themselves, put some honey mixed with poison on their bodies and release them. The wasps will return to their nests, bringing the poison back as well.

The wasps build huge nests, but unfortunately they are located in trees covered by foliage and they also build new nests every year, making it difficult to find them.

Below the beehives, Nutripolen had planted a small vineyard for making txakoli. Some years from now, maybe they can serve their customers txakoli with honey and pollen.

30/05/2016
Beekeeping for beginners

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Having thought some time about learning about beekeeping, I joined a beginners’ course, run by the beekeepers’ association in Lier, Røyken and Hurum, about 15 minutes drive from where I live.

The course was mainly hands-on and having arrived at the top of an apple orchard, an old-timer who had been doing beekeeping for ages, wished me welcome. While I and the other “students” used at least some protective clothing, he did so only when the bees were really angry, which fortunately happened seldom.

The course took place at an apiary , which consisted of 5 beehives in a row. Inside the beehives, groups of honeybees were living, consisting of queen bees , worker bees and drones . While the worker bees, who are all female, really live up to their name, the drones are males and their only purpose is to mate with the queen bee. While our teacher could distinguish between drones and worker bees at once, I still need some practice before I can do the same. Mostly, we only checked the upper part of each beehive, each of which is called a Langstroth hive after the inventor. The upper part is called honey super and it consists of 10 vertical boards where the worker bees store nectar in honeycombs. Actually, the frames supported artificial honeycombs on which the honeybees would build cells consisting of beeswax. The colour of the honeycombs varied from light yellow to dark brown and our instructor could see just from the colour what the bees had been eating, e.g. pollen.

Below the honey super, a queen excluder , consisting of a metal grid, impeded the queen bee from entering because she’s larger than the other bees. Below, the brood box was located. There, the brood, consisting of eggs, larvae and pupae together with the queen who is the mother of all of them and some worker bees, live. Lifting up a frame in the brood, we could sometimes notice eggs inside the hexagonal cells and sometimes larvae. I guess the pupa stage occurs after the worker bees have sealed the cells shut. Then, after about three weeks, a new honey bee will be born. Besides, we could also see worker bees who had lowered most of their upper bodies into the cells, feeding the larvae.

At the base of the beehives, there was an opening through which the honey bees could enter and exit and our experienced instructor had also placed some kind of fine netting below the opening in order to let the honey bees avoid landing on the ground if they missed it. In nice weather they were very active, exiting the beehives in order to collect pollen and nectar amd we could sometimes see that they had two yellow balls of pollen, one on each side of their body, when they returned. An important subject among the more experienced beekeepers, who were also present at the course, was which type of plant the honey bees were visiting even though they couldn’t do anything about it because the beehives should stay in the same place.

Since the health of the bees in each beehive was quite variable, we were also shown how to mate strong honey bees with weak ones. If I don’t remember wrongly, the honey super of the weak honey bees was left exposed. Then, a sheet of thin paper was laid on top and perforated with a knife. Finally, the honey super of the strong bees was laid on top of the sheet of paper and various types of lids were laid on the top of the hive in order to protect the honey bees against cold and moisture. Leaving the beehive in peace, the honey bees would start eating the paper at the holes and when we returned one week later, the sheet of paper was in tatters.

We were also shown how to identify the queen bee by her bigger size, then grabbing her carefully by her wings and putting her into a plastic cylinder with a grid at one end. Then, inserting a piston carefully into the cylinder, the queen bee would be forced towards the grid through which the instructor used a a pen to mark the queen bee with a dot of a bright colour. Each year, the queen bees are marked with different colours such that the beekeepers can identify their age.

Sometimes, a queen bee was deemed to be unsuitable, she disappeared or she died. Anyway, she had to be replaced by another one. Then, a new queen bee together with a small group of worker bees were put in a small plastic cage with lots of holes and, if applicable, the old queen bee was caught and finished off. Finally, the plastic cage was suspended between two of the frames in the honey super and the beehive was closed. After 3-4 days, the instructor would return and release the new queen bee and the worker bees from the small cage. He told us that the worker bees needed to get to know the smell of the queen bee before they could accept her, else they could kill her.

In August, it was time to extract honey from the honey super. Then, one frame at a time was lifted out of the beehive and if it weighed, say, more than 2 kilogrammes, the bees were swept carefully away by means of a brush and the empty frame was inserted into an empty honey super. This procedure was repeated until all the frames with honey had been extracted from the beehive.

In fact, the bees eat honey and in order to let them survive winter, they were given a mixture of sugar and water. Besides, depending on the health of the bees, a number of frames were removed from the honey super and replaced with wooden boxes of the same size. A strong bee colony would be left with, say, 8 frames, while weak ones were left with 6 or 7.

The course started in April and the bees were left to hibernate in September. We had weekly meetings all the time and I really liked this course. I’ve still not started beekeeping due mainly to that I live in a block of flats in a town and I don’t know where to place the beehives. In addition, our instructor advised us to read about beekeeping and having a long, and maybe cold winter to look forward to, it should be plenty of time to read about those little guys and how to keep them as domestic animals.

18/10/2015
Szász Illyés and Melinda – beekeepers
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We met Melinda Szász at her family’s house from which she and her husband llyés are making a living from organic beekeeping only. We were invited into their living room where Mr. Szász had made an exquisite bookcase to exhibit their products, ranging from various types of honey where the beehives had been freighted near specific types of plants, creamed honey, honeycomb, propolis, pollen and beeswax figures .

We got a taste of the following honeys:
- Acacia or wattle honey from wattle trees near the Danube.
- Meadow honey from wildflower meadows near Corund .
- Forest honey from honeydew, the sweet secretions of aphids.
- Linden honey from linden or lime trees.
Each of them had their specific colours, tastes and consistencies and all of them were good.

Ms. Szász learnt about beekeeping from her mother, who was a zoo-technology engineer, she read about beekeeping and helped her father with beekeeping while she was young, but she didn’t see the beauty of it. Later, she studied at a university under distinguished professors from Cluj-Napoca and Budapest and she made a thesis on beekeeping when she finally saw the beauty of it. Her husband was already doing beekeeping when they met and the Szász family have been doing beekeeping for 20 years, while they have made a living from organic beekeeping for the last 4 years. Their company has 5 full-time employees and 2 part-time workers who work from May to August.

After having got an introduction to their company and tasted some of their products, we followed Ms. Szász into the garden where there were lots of beehives, 150 in all, some for producing honey and a long row of tiny ones for breeding, The tiny beehives looked like small boxes inside of which were 3-4 frames where one queen bee and a lot of worker bees were living. The queen bee would fly out of the beehive and mate 7-15 times with drones in the air, gather seed for 3 days, then she would re-enter the hive and stay there for the rest of her life. We were also shown a wax queen cup, in which a newly mated queen bee was staying. The beekeepers kept her there in order to estimate the quality and health of her eggs.

This company also tries to produce 100-150 queen bees per year and replace the whole population after 4-5 years. Of course, they have to take precautions to avoid in-breeding and breeding with drones from other beekeepers’ beehives. The last one is obtained by ascertaining that other drones are a minimum distance away from where the mating takes place.

In addition to these beehives, they have 3 more sets of beehives in other places in Romania and all of the bees are Carpathian honey bees, apis melifera carnica.

Beekeepers also have to protect their bees against a parasite called Varroa destructor and the only chemical they are allowed to use to fight it is oxalic acid in order to keep their certificate for doing organic beekeeping.

They are selling products derived from bees like:
- Acacia honey with juniper berries
- Raspberry honey
- Coriander honey
- Honey with propolis
- Honey with walnuts
- Creamed honey with blueberries
- Creamed honey with blackcurrant
- Creamed honey with sea buckthorn fruit
- Propolis tincture
In addition, they are also selling various tools for beekeeping like bee smokers to calm the bees, marker pens for marking queen bees, plastic cages for housing queen bees, protective clothing, beehives, which are made by Mr. Szász from Norway spruce in a workshop next to their house, frames, uncapping forks, extractors for extracting honey, etc. In short, they are selling everything, which beekeepers need.

It was a great pleasure visiting someone who obviously does so much for beekeeping as Ms. Szász.

For those who want to know more about bees and how to help them, please have a look at The Ultimate Guide to British Bees: How to Protect Their Declining Population and Protecting Britain’s bees – How to look after them and prevent their decline.
10/06/2015
Beekeeping at Erletxe country house

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During our stay in Laguardia, we stayed at Erletxe country house, and since the owner Maria Arrate, has had beekeeping as a hobby for more than 30 years, it was only natural to ask her if we could see her beehives. Luckily, her nephew Unai do regular visits to the beehives and he was willing to let us go with him.

Upon our arrival we put on protective clothing with hood and net, but the bees seemed very calm and it wasn’t strictly necessary. The beehives were placed on a hillside and just by standing near them, we could observe bees with two small yellow shapes on each side of their bodies enter the beehives. The yellow shapes were pollen, which the bees use to feed their larvae.

Like all the beehives I have seen so far, these beehives also had a lower and an upper part. The entrance of the beehive is in the lower part , while the upper part consists of wooden frames with honeycomb impressions where the bees build wax honeycombs. In fact, the honeycomb impressions work as foundations for the bees such that they build honeycombs with little effort. Pulling out the frames one by one, we could see healthy hives with lots of bees busily working on the honeycomb, some of them even feeding larvae. Actually, the queen lays fertilised eggs in empty cells, but it is the worker bees who feed them. Besides, there was also a lot of honey on the honeycomb, ready to be harvested.

We were also shown some beehives with poor health and Unai told us that they would probably let a new queen enter the beehive next spring. Then, the queens would fight and hopefully the new, healthy queen would survive.

Unai also told us that the beehives have to face south in order to receive as much sunlight and heat in winter. The bees also need to be fed in winter with sugar or corn syrup.

Last but not least, the bees have produced honey for serving the guests at the Erletxe country house for many years.

01/10/2014
Jan-Thore Riseng – beekeeper
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I went recently to the local farmers’ market in order to buy products directly from the producers where I met Jan-Thore Riseng, a beekeeper who lives a short distance from me. Having presented the purpose of slow pix, he willingly accepted to show me his bee hives and how he’s working with honey bees. Jan-Thore lives in the countryside in Sande south of Drammen, and having arrived at his place, we went to a set of bee hives close to his house. Wearing a jacket with an integrated hood and net to cover the face, he opened his bee hives and inspected them one by one. First, he took off the lid, then he applied a dash of smoke to the honey bees, which he called knocking on the door, but which is used to calm the bees. Using a tool, he gently lifted the vertical frames in the hive, most of them full of bees. Having a trained gaze, he could immediately recognise the health of the bees, their gender and so on, while I just saw lots of insects crowded together. In fact, beekeeping is a huge subject and all beekeepers need to cooperate with others, learn from experts, and so on. Jan-Thore started beekeeping in 2002 when he was taught by an elderly beekeeper how to do this interesting and useful activity.

Like all domestic animals, pedigree is extremely important in beekeeping and honey bees are bred in order to obtain the following characteristics:
- Gentleness
- Good brood pattern (the honey bees have to take good care of their young)
- Rapid spring build up (the honey bees should start producing honey when spring arrives)
- Resistance toward pests and disease
- Minimal swarming (the bees shall not escape from the hive in order to make a new colony)
- Good honey production
The honey bees in the hive are mostly females, who are workers, while the males have only one task: mate with the queen. Jan-Thore showed me some of his queens, being more than twice the size of the workers, and having a bright spot on their heads. The spots were colour-coded such that he could know how old they are at a glance. Since the queens only live 3-4 years, he’s breeding new ones and even has some for sale.

Looking at the frames, the were almost covered by bees, but the honeycomb base, a plate made of wax in order to give the bees a foundation on which they can build the honeycomb was easily visible. Parts of the honeycomb base were covered with honeycomb, a mass of hexagonal cells built by the honey bees. Some of the cells were covered completely, while other ones were open and it was possible to see tiny larvae inside. Some honey bees had moved head first into the cells, probably to feed the larvae. The colour of the honeycomb varied from yellow to brown and Jan-Thore said it was caused by different types of pollen collected by the honey bees. The pollen is used as food for the larvae, while the nectar is transformed to honey and used as food by the bees.

Jan-Thore keeps his honey bees near fields in the county of Vestfold where he lives, renting out his hives to local farmers. In autumn, he brings his hives to Nissedal in the county of Telemark in order to let the honey bees pollinate heather and create heather honey, a delicacy in Norway.

Only a few of us can be beekeepers, but there are many cooperatives who let everyone adopt a bee hive for a small charge. Here is one example where you pay 150 NOK a year. Other possibilities certainly exist.
27/05/2014
Ionu’ lui Gheorghe – beekeeper

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Ionu’ is an elderly man who lives in the village of Breb, one of the most picturesque villages in all of Maramures. The village lies at the foothills of the Gutai mountains, and it is quite an isolated village with a population in excess of 2000 inhabitants. The name of the village comes from the beavers which used to live in the lakes and rivers in this area in the past, but now they are extinct. Breb is also known for sulphurous water, and until 1918 you could still see the old baths where it is said that even Emperor Iosif II used to come. It is said that the water is good for stomach diseases.

Ionu’ has 50 beehives, which he only keeps in his own garden and orchard. He inherited his first beehives from his father-in-law and then he gradually started to learn more about how to keep bees. Ion told my guide that up to 1950 on the Day of the Cross (Ziua Crucii, an Orthodox celebration on 14 September) the people in the village who had beehives would kill the bees in order to take the honey. They didn’t know what to do with the bees in winter. Then, an Orthodox priest called Mircea Antal came to the village and taught them how to take care of the bees and how to make beehives. From this time onwards, Ionu’ learned how to keep bees properly.

He is very proud of his honey, and he told my guide that his honey is natural because he doesn’t use any pesticides nor do the other villagers. He sells his honey in the village of Breb and in neighbouring villages.

Entering his garden, we could see some of his beehives, hay ready to be dried, lots of fruit trees and a big, cylinder-shaped structure of firewood. He willingly opened some of his beehives without using any kind of protection. In order to make the bees more quiet, he blew smoke on them, but this seems to be common among many, if not all, beekeepers.

At the end of the visit Ion said that he comes from a very old family of nobles, called ‘nemesi’, and he has an old diploma to prove it. He said that he didn’t want to give it to a museum, he just wants to keep it in the family. He was also very proud of his nephews, both of them officers in the Romanian Army. They use to come quite often to help him doing the haymaking for the animals.

17/06/2013
The Kepes family – beekeepers

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Beekeeping was started by the late Laszlo Kepes. Now, the Kepes family, Irina Kepes and her husband, her son and daughter-in-law have more than 200 beehives. They are kept in the villages of Valeni and Stejeris about 15 km from Turda from late autumn to May. Then, they are brought by car to the Oltenia region in the south of Romania because of the acacia forests. Thereafter they go to Resita for the lime trees and northwards to the Ariesului vally for the wildflower meadows and fruit trees.

The Kepes family has a small shop at the local market, called the Piata Agroalimentara in the town of Turda. Their shop has a wide selection of honey products like acacia honey, honey produced from many different types of flowers, lime tree honey, fir tree honey, besides honey from rapeseed and sunflower. They also sell propolis, vinegar made of apples and honey, box-thorn juice and blackcurrant juice with honey.

14/06/2013
Wilhelm Tartler – beekeeper
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Wilhelm Tartler is a young Saxon, who after a stay in Germany, has decided to stay in Romania. We met him, his German wife and their young daughter on the outskirts of the village of Hambra next to the Saxon church from which they rent a house. In fact, the house is surrounded by a big garden with some rundown sheds, lots of beehives, Transylvanian chickens, a vegetable garden, and some sheep.

Wilhelm got acquainted with bees for the first time when he took swarming bees from a tree in 1996, and started producing honey in 1999. He and his wife are producing organic honey with the help of volunteers. During our visit, 3 volunteers were busy working, two of which were making honeycombs by melting and moulding old beeswax, forming a diaphragm which is called a honeycomb. Later, they would be placed in the beehives where the bees would use the honeycombs as a base on which they construct their hexagonal cells. The third one was making a solar oven for melting beeswax.

This farm accepts volunteers all year as described here.

Wilhelm willingly showed us his beehives, holding his one-year old daughter in one arm, he deftly opened a beehive. A bit surprising given that bees could have seriously hurt his daughter, but obviously his bees are so peaceful that it’s safe. After having been shown around their property, we were offered a wide selection of their tasty honey products, which they sell in select shops all across Romania, but also to Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Their products include
- honey from diverse forest flowers
- acacia honey
- acacia honey with vanilla
- acacia honey with walnuts
- rapeseed honey
- sunflower honey
- limetree honey
- pollen
- propolis – a reddish resinous cement collected by bees from the buds of trees
In order produce all these types of bee products, they have a stationary set of beehives in a nearby forest, while the other ones are moved around Romania by a trailer in summer. Sometimes they go to the Danube delta overnight, other times they move the bees tens of kilometers in order to take advantage of the local vegetation.

Being a passionate beekeeper, he also told us that he selects 2-5 larvae from a good hive with good honey and healthy bees, feed them royal jelly (a honey bee secretion) together with poly-flora honey. This will give 4-5 queen bees, which can be used in other hives.

In winter, the bees stay in peace, in a bad year they must be fed.

Wilhelm is also a passionate fruit grower and he has about 60 varieties of apple trees in addition to cherry trees, plum trees, and pear trees. He’s arranging grafting courses in spring where he teaches how to graft young apple tress to old ones and spreading the new ones if they are good. He’s also growing raspberries, blackberries and blackcurrants.

We also visited their chicken coop where tiny Transylvanian chickens were moving freely around as they pleased.
12/06/2013
Isca `e` Muras, beekeepers

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Going from Oristano and passing through Campidano and Marmilla, we arrived at Barumini in front of the shop Isca ‘e’ Muras where we met the married couple who are working with apiculture. After having followed them a short distance, we arrived at the place of their beehives where the bees are producing various types of honey at this time of year: white clover and a flower called millefiori meaning a thousand flowers.

Before we could approach the beehives, we had to put on protective clothing including a white jumpsuit, a hood with netting and gloves. Marinella Concu and her husband Marco kindly helped us put on the clothing and closing any openings with tape. After also having explained to us how to behave in order to avoid annoying the bees, we approached the beehives slowly.

Having arrived at the beehives, Marco prepared a device to apply smoke to the bees in order to calm them. Then, while Marinella explained to us some of the routines regarding beekeeping, her husband began to open the beehives. Controlling the beehives started with taking off the lid covering the beehive, making it possible to see if the bees were in good health or not. Below the lid, there was a horizontal plate with a hole in its centre. Just before putting the lid back on, the beekeeper makes a hole in a plastic bag containing nutrients intended to supplement the diet of the bees. Then, he positions the hole of the plastic bag straight above the hole in the plate such that the bees can eat whenever they want. When the lid is opened some time later, if the bag is more or less empty, it’s a sign that the bees are healthy. After having removed the plate with the hole, we could have a look at the “Sardinian” bees. Internally, the beehive consists of a number of parallel, vertical frames, while the frames are supporting beeswax sheets on which the bees live and where they build their famous hexagonal cells. The frames were lifted up and inspected, looking for parasites, presence of drones, the health of the queen and the mood of the bees. Being new to beekeeping, the bees seemed friendly and quiet, apart from some assaults against the camera, which the beekeepers explained was caused by its black colour.

Having finished the inspection of the beehives, we went to another set of beehives where the vegetation was very different from the first one. The first set of beehives was located in an open place, near a citrus grove and a field of white clover where scarcity of nectar and presence of wind made the bees aggressive. The other beehives were placed in a more shielded area leading to less wind, near a river on whose banks eucalyptus trees were growing. These characteristics made the bees more tranquil.

Having finished the control of the second set of beehives, we followed husband and wife back to their shop where there was an ample variety of honey and other products extracted from the tireless work of the bees and the beekeepers: sweets, pollen, propolis and other delicacies. They also offered shampoos, creams and other beauty products derived from honey.

All in all, our impression was very positive, we were full of respect after having seen their care of the bees, their competence and above all their passion for their work.

01/10/2012
Saxon cakes and Austria pro Romania

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Photo gallery of Saxon cakes

Photo gallery of the visit in Stejarisu

We visited a Romanian family in a town called Agnita in order to have a look at the cakes they were making. We were met by Viorel whose mother and wife are making cakes using recipes which have been used by the Saxons in Romania for centuries. Unfortunately, no baking was taking place during our visit, but we were shown three of their cakes, all of which tasted delicious.

Although Viorel’s parents are Romanian, Viorel convinced his mother to start baking Saxon cakes since he had always been interested in healthy food. During our visit, we were offered three types of Saxon cakes. When I started photographing the cakes, Viorel brought a doll showing a woman dressed in a typical Saxon dress. The dress was a copy of a dress Saxon women used during processions when the Saxons were in the majority in Agnita.

While his mother and wife make the cakes, Viorel brings the cakes to various outdoor markets organized by Slow Food, always trying to make the Saxon cakes known in Romania. He also wanted to buy a house in a village called Stejarisu and he joined us for a car ride there in order to show us a very enterprising small-scale food producer.

Having arrived in Stejarisu, another Saxon village, he led us to a large building where we would be served lunch. The building housed a company called Probstdorfer Naturprodukte, founded by an Austrian woman, Mrs Schöfnagel, selling honey, several types of jam, liquor and herbs, serving meals for visitors and providing accommodation. The locals were working in the kitchen, the garden, the workshop, etc. In fact, Mrs Schöfnagel has been tirelessly helping the Romanians since the 1970s.

Having assisted in two reconstruction projects in 2005 and 2006 after major floods, she was one of the founders of a foundation called Au-Ro or Austria pro Romania in 2007. It seems like Au-Ro has been replaced by the Augustinian Humanitarian Foundation.

Stejarisu has about 800 inhabitants and when she first started helping them, the buildings were run-down and most of the locals were unemployed living on social assistance. Now, the village has a kindergarten, a school, three small shops, a milk collection centre, a post office and a village inn.

The organization aims to provide education and vocational training in addition to offering work for everyone. In this way, the persons managing Au-Ro think that the locals are able to solve their own social problems and getting out of poverty.

After having eaten a delicious lunch, we were free to walk around on their property where lots of herbs were being cultivated, chickens were walking around freely, some local women were tending the garden, while the local men were doing some kind of practical work.

Last but not least, the foundation accepts volunteers who want to work in Romania.

26/06/2012
Teofil and Emil Pandrea, beekeepers

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Photo gallery

On our last day in Crit we walked to the beekeeper in the morning, arriving at another cobbled courtyard. After both of us had got dressed in protective clothing from head to toe, we entered the garden of the Pandrea family. There, we first saw a big coach whose wall facing us was covered with colourful squares. Approaching further, we could see that there was a small, rectangular opening at the base of each square where bees where entering and exiting as they wished.

The coach, being wide as a car and with wheels, was similar to other coaches we had seen on our trips in Transylvania, being freighted by car wherever the owner wished. On the contrary, this coach seemed like it was meant to stay in its place forever. We were offered to enter, and inside, there was another series of squares with texts written on them by chalk. We were told that they were for indicating when the beehive had been inspected and the quality of the honey. Bees which didn’t produce honey were transferred to other beehives where they were fed something nutritious.

Since the beekeeper was rather old and frail being more than 80, he’s letting his son Emil be in charge of the beekeeping. Both of them willingly told us about what they were doing. While we wore protective clothing, they were only wearing a hood with netting to protect their faces. They opened several of their beehives, lifted up wooden frames with a plate consisting of hexagonal holes called a honeycomb. Sometimes the whole plate was full of bees and quite often Emil showed us how to identify the queen. He even put his fingers into the mass of bees in order to pick one of them out for us to have a look. Of course, the bees got very angry and they were flying around me, trying to pass the protective netting around my face. Luckily, they didn’t succeed. In any case, Emil brought a small container from which smoke was exiting continuously. A light “shower” of smoke before entering the beehive was their standard procedure although I have no idea how effective it was.

Teofil showed us a tiny metal box whose walls were covered with netting. They used it for transferring queen bees to beehives without a queen. First, they put the queen bee inside the box, then they close the box by means of beeswax and put it inside a beehive. If the bees like the smell of the new queen bee, they will eat the beeswax and let the queen bee out. If not, they have to insert another queen bee into the beehive.

In addition to their more or less standard beehives, Teofil showed us a beehive from the middle ages which he had mounted near to their house. It looked like a basket formed like a wide cone with the opening facing downwards, and it was full of bees as can be seen from one of the photos. Searching for the history of beekeeping, I found out that beehives until about 1850 were shelters only and that was what that “basket” looked like.

21/06/2012