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Tag: propolis

  • Apilife

    apilife_w500

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    We went to Cornelia Dostetan’s house on the outskirts of the village of Saliste. There, she has her own laboratory to which she brings honey from her beehives. In fact, she’s a well-educated woman, having taken a Master’s degree in food safety and a PhD in collecting venom from bees.  Just before our arrival, she had helped organise a seminar on apitheraphy, that is how to derive medicines from bees.

    She has about 20 beehives in the vicinity of where she lives, and to which we went after having learnt about her varied activities regarding bees. She only used a hat with a net around her face to protect herself when she opened the beehives, having been stung in her face before. Anyway, that small collection of beehives was just for demonstrating how she collects honey, propolis, etc. Actually, she has about 300 beehives in the south of Romania, and they are moved around in order to bring the bees close to plants which are flowering at different times of the year.

    Since she’s making medicines for people, she has to to follow very strict requirements to hygiene. The ingredients she is using include:

    • honey
    • pollen
    • bee bread (the pollen from the field bees are taken by the house bees, mixing bee saliva, the plant pollen, and nectar. They also secrete enzymes into the pollen, creating bee bread)
    • propolis (a resin-like material from the buds of poplar and cone-bearing trees, being collected by bees)
    • royal jelly (a secretion from honey bees used to feed larvae and queens)
    • drone larvae

    From these ingredients she makes a mixture for apitherapy – preferably a certain cocktail for each patient. She also makes generic cocktails for women only and men only. However, her main income is face creams derived from honey products.

    Her main interest is to collect venom from bees from which she makes medicines against rheumatic pains. She also plans to use air from inside beehives to treat people with asthma.

    Her products are for sale at pharmacies in Sibiu, but she’s also exporting to France and Germany upon request.

    Being a generous person, Cornelia kindly gave us each a selection of her products.

  • 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.