2025 · January 06, 2025
Alongside honey, wax is a precious product of honey bees. Wax from untreated, young honeycombs has a golden-yellow color and smells of pollen and nectar. Following their natural building instinct, bees produce wax during the season, which they “sweat” out of their wax glands in small transparent plates to build honeycombs. Over the course of the year, honeycombs accumulate that the bees no longer need. We carefully remove them from our bee colonies, melt them down with solar energy, clarify...
2024 · December 19, 2024
The sun's rays, scents and colors of summer are preserved in honey and may sweeten many a cold winter evening :-) We currently offer Heilbronner Gartenhonig in 3 “varieties”: Crystallized naturally with the unique natural crunch - our classic. Liquid: Crystallized summer honey has been gently heated to 39 °C in a heating cabinet and thus liquefied again. The honey is also exposed to this temperature in the beehive and the valuable ingredients are retained. Creamy/fine-stiff: A “special...
2024 · August 13, 2024
Two surplus queen cells were placed in mating boxes in which they could hatch. A week after hatching, the queens are mated and laying eggs. Two reserve queens are ready to replace any winter losses. The mated colonies were transferred to a 2-unit hive box today, where they will be able to develop into two overwintering units over the next few weeks.
2024 · July 28, 2024
This year's honey was extracted on July 13th and is now being successively filled into jars. Due to the rainy weather, there was only one harvest this year: the annual honey contains mainly early honey and lime blossom, as well as everything that blooms in the city. It is quite dark, very aromatic and has a slight hint of mint. It bears the label “summer blossom”. The garden beekeeper wonders whether this fine taste comes from the lime trees or actually from the mint that blooms in his own...
2024 · April 13, 2024
Says the hive scale in the garden. And today the first new queen was welcomed and marked with a green dot. Very pleasing.
2024 · March 14, 2024
The hive scales reveal that the first significant nectar has arrived today. All the colonies are healthy and strong, they are well prepared for the start of spring!
2023 · August 13, 2023
Relarving means the transfer of youngest worker bee larvae into artificial queen cups and is an established technique to obtain new queen bees. However, it involves some uncertainties, especially for the doddering casual beekeeper with deteriorating visual acuity: Do I have the right tool? Will I pick up larvae at the right age? Do I have such good eyes or/and a suitable magnifying glass to see the tiny larvae? Are my hands steady enough so that I can work with the delicate relarving tool...
2023 · August 11, 2023
There are numerous methods for the beekeeper to get new queens. One of them is currently underway, strictly according to the manual.
2023 · August 06, 2023
After the honey harvest, the focus of the garden beekeeper is on feeding the bee colonies for the winter and on controlling the varroa mite. The standard procedure for varroa mite control is to evaporate formic acid in the colony over an extended period of time. Formic acid also penetrates the capped brood cells, where the majority of the mites reside. However, it is highly aggressive: during its application, most of the brood is destroyed, many bees and sometimes even the queen are burned and...
2023 · August 02, 2023
It is done: The honey of the year 2023 is filled into jars. All four varieties of honey shine with their fine, very individual taste: