2023
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:
2023 · July 17, 2023
Last Sunday, the garden beekeeper could harvest and extract 260kg of summer honey. The full honey buckets in the picture are the result of a long working day: At 6 o'clock the honey boxes at the external stand were cleared, afterwards the honey of the colonies in the garden. Equipment was set up in the kitchen. Thankfully, little daughter patiently and persistently turned the hand crank of the extractor. At midday, a colleague called and informed that all hell had broken loose at the outdoor...
2023 · July 09, 2023
The rapeseed fields have long since withered, and the forest has also stopped honeying for a week. Now the bees are living off the reserves they have collected, they are drying the abundantly collected nectar, and the honey is ripening in the combs. Next weekend the honey will be harvested. The bees are fed sugar syrup as a substitute.
2023 · July 04, 2023
Contemporary professional leadership increasingly relies on self-organized teams instead of top-down employee management. It is a demanding transformation process for managers to change their behavior from a traditional directive leadership style to a partnership-based approach with a high degree of team autonomy. A beekeeper leads bee colonies and is responsible for the boundary conditions under which they flourish: He takes care of their health, the location, adapted space in the hive,...
2023 · July 01, 2023
High outside temperatures do not bother the bees, because they regulate the temperature in their hive independently by heating in winter and cooling in summer. For cooling, they apply a film of water to the combs and use their wings to move the air. In this way, they keep the temperature in the brood chamber constant to a few tenths of a degree, regardless of whether it is -30°C or +40°C outside. This measurement shows how well the natural temperature regulation in the brood chamber works.
2023 · June 10, 2023
The hive scale shows that the bees achieve the highest nectar input in the lime trees early in the morning from 6 am to 8:30 am. The reason for the weight loss in the afternoon is the orientation flight of the young bees and the flying out of the drones in search of a princess :-) Live data from the hive scale
2023 · June 05, 2023
Heilbronner Gertenhonig is filled into jars in liquid form and crystallizes after a certain time. This is how it develops the authentic natural crunch. In this way, we follow our claim, which we have also formulated in our mission statement: Heilbronner Gartenhonig should remain as natural as possible, which is why we do not usually stir it. Rapeseed honey, on the other hand, crystallizes quickly and becomes very hard in the jar. Therefore, we make an exception with rapeseed honey and stir it,...