Gorgeous Beehives Flip Apiaries Into Artwork
Courting again to the 18th century, AŽ hive panels depict tales of marriage, damnation, and day-to-day existence.
Slovenia’s Gorgeous Beehives Flip Apiaries Into Artwork
“SLOVENIA HAS A STRONG reference to beekeeping,” says Peter Kozmus, one of the most nation’s—and the arena’s—main professionals on bees. “Traditionally, each village had no less than one beekeeper who produced honey for himself, his family members, and neighbors.” This practice continues these days, with roughly one in each 200 Slovenians conserving and tending to bee colonies.
Kozmus has been a beekeeper since he was once 14 years outdated. Nowadays, he runs a honey farm in Pilštanj in jap Slovenia, the place he has a tendency to greater than 100 bee colonies. He additionally heads the breeding program for the 8,000-member Slovenian Beekeepers’ Affiliation, a just about 150-year-old schooling, analysis, and coaching group.
Force throughout the verdant nation-state, and also you’ll realize hobbit-sized huts, an identical in look to lawn outbuildings or she-sheds. However those small buildings aren’t full of landscaping gear or craft provides. As an alternative, they’re apiaries that space distinctive hives, referred to as Alberti-Žnideršič (or AŽ) hives. Invented on the flip of the twentieth century through beekeeper Anton Žnideršič, the hives—kranjichi in Slovenian—take their identify from their inventor whose design was once impressed through a leaf hive machine through German instructor and beekeeper Adolf Alberti.
Kozmus in entrance of considered one of his beehouses. COURTESY PETER KOZMUS
In contrast to their American counterpart, the Langstroth hive, with its vertical field form and placing honeycomb frames, AŽ beehives are smaller and open from the again as an alternative of the highest. In addition they will also be stacked in combination. Their structural design and small dimension let them be integrated into the partitions of the apiaries, offering coverage from the weather and making it more uncomplicated for beekeepers to check up on and set up their colonies. Greater than 90 p.c of beekeepers in Slovenia use AŽ hives.
Like everybody else in Slovenia, Kozmus oversees colonies of local Carniolan honey bees, the one species the rustic permits beekeepers to generally tend. Kozmus’s bees are divided between 4 apiaries geared up with AŽ hives. A big one close to his space serves as the principle supply of honey manufacturing and is used for tourism functions. Two cellular apiaries will also be moved across the assets “to search out higher pastures,” Kozmus explains. And a small home is reserved for nucleus colonies—growing colonies with breeding queens. However there’s no usual design for an AŽ hive space. It may be as small or as massive because the beekeeper wants and will hang dozens of hives, stacked two or 3 prime.
In most cases, the hives are constructed into the south aspect of a bee space to seize the solar, whilst the other wall blocks the chilly north winds. The eaves will have to lengthen about 3 ft to offer protection to from rain and snow, whilst all the space will have to be raised about 4 ft off the bottom so as to stay the hives dry. Many bee homes are constructed on wheels, letting them be moved across the assets because the seasons trade.
Within, the apiaries are a mixture of workspace and lounge. Relying on their location, they may be able to come with warmth or air-con. Some are sufficiently big to carry the extractor and different equipment had to procedure the honey, in addition to area for the beekeeper to hang around. “You’ll see numerous bee homes that experience beds or a desk and chairs in them,” says Suzanne Brouillette, the landlord of Slovenian Beekeeping. Brouillette, a New Hampshire resident, organizes beekeeping-themed journeys to Slovenia and is among the few suppliers of AŽ hives in the USA. “You’ll cross out and maintain the bees, have some bread and wine and cheese, and take a sleep,” she says.
A small hollow or slit at the entrance of the hive permits the bees to go into and go out, whilst the beekeeper accesses the combs from the rear of the hive, which is situated within the apiary. The hives themselves are divided into two chambers. “They’re mainly two-story bee flats,” says Wesley Brittenham, director of horticulture for Los Poblanos, a historical inn and lavender farm in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The valuables lately constructed a Slovenian apiary as a part of its beekeeping program. “The queen does all of the brood rearing and egg laying within the downstairs portion, whilst upstairs, all of the bees can construct natural, blank honeycomb,” he explains.
Every weighing about 8 kilos, AŽ bee space frames are simple to take away, merely sliding out separately like books off a bookshelf. Langstroth hive frames can weigh up to 40 to 90 kilos and will have to be lifted up out of the hive. “There are such a lot of advantages to this taste of beekeeping,” Brouillette says. “Primary, somebody can do it—youngsters, the aged, should you’re in a wheelchair. It actually opens up beekeeping to everybody.”
However probably the most memorable facet of Slovenian bee homes is their colourful look. The hives ceaselessly are painted in daring number one hues and embellished with inventive panels, referred to as panjske končnice.
Brouillette says there are 600 recognized panel motifs from the 1800s, starting from the non secular to the political to the quotidian. “It was once some way of being somewhat bit extra prestigious than your neighbor should you had them,” she says.
About part of the motifs inform tales from the Bible. “The panels have been like frescoes in a church,” Brouillette provides. The oldest-known bee panel is from 1758 and depicts the Madonna and Kid. There’s Adam and Eve within the Lawn of Eden, pictures of patron saints, and scenes of sinners in Hell.
Secular material comprises animals and searching scenes, caricatures of necessary figures, and social observation. There are issues of marriage and funerals, ethical stories of ingesting and infidelity, necessary occasions from historical past, and a laugh seems at day-to-day existence.
Whilst the artwork of hand-painting bee panels light away after International Struggle I, many beekeepers nonetheless use replica panels or ones with their very own designs. “Beekeepers nonetheless paint the fronts in their hives as it’s our custom and since we need to have stunning hives,” Kozmus says. “Some apiaries nonetheless have such fantastically painted beehive headboards that guests can watch them like they’re staring at TV, as a result of each and every headboard tells a tale.”
In relation to the tale of beekeeping, the longer term seems unsure. The possibility of an international with out bees is darkish: The Beekeepers’ Affiliation warns that “With out bees, there’s no existence, no range, and nearly one-third much less meals manufacturing. Because of this no long term.” However there may be hope, as extra Slovenian beekeepers proceed the historical custom. Due to the gang’s instructional efforts, the typical beekeeper age has reduced from 65 to 59 over the last 15 years in Slovenia.
“In our nation, we now have most commonly small interest beekeepers for whom beekeeping is a lifestyle,” Kozmus explains. For Slovenians, he says, tending bees isn’t considered as paintings, however one thing “that makes their lives higher.”
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