Bee Keeping In Slovenia; A way of Life, Blog 43, nguptatravelscrapbook.blogspot.com

​Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

To keep bees means to live with bees, to adapt to the laws of their lives and turn this skill of coexistence to one's advantage (Esenko, 2018)

Slovenia is a small Balkan country bursting with history and its culture. It is often called the crossroads of the Balkans, as it straddles across central Europe and the Eastern Alps. Lapped by the Adriatic Sea along its 46km coastline, Slovenia shares borders with Austria, Italy, Hungary, and Croatia but usually gets overlooked by most travellers spanning this region. Being in the continental area, it has an alpine climate with icy winters and warmer summers.

In our bee-farm, get up.

Slovenia's capital city, Ljubljana( pronounced as Lubiyana), is one of the smallest capital cities you'll find in Europe. Still, what it lacks in size, it makes up for in charm and beauty, as we found during our current trip to Slovenia. In recent years, we have travelled to many other Balkan countries, namely Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. But lately, travel brochures started showcasing some of Slovenia's most beautiful pictures, including the region of Lake Bled. We decided to take a week-long trip to Slovenia with a direct flight to Ljubljana from Gatwick, UK, and stay in the Lake Bled region, surrounded by the Julian Alps, with Lake Bled the most scenic of all. I have included a few of my photos taken during this trip to this region towards the end of this blog. 

Daniella, our teacher at the yard

Before our trip, as I gathered travel information on Slovenia, I was amazed to learn that Slovenia is a world trade centre in beekeeping and honey production. 

This newly earned information was all the more incredible, knowing that amongst the Slovenian population of just over two million, there are approximately 200,000 families who are immersed in the beekeeping trade. There are virtually five beekeepers per every 1000 inhabitants, with Slovenia ranking at the top of the EU states. These beekeepers include amateurs as well. 

On the whole, at a world stage, beekeeping activity is a robust and whole-fledged agricultural movement. But in Slovenia, awareness of the honeybees and ensuring their well-being is generally of very high standards. In Slovenia, Beekeeping and its associated trades have become a way of life for many local families and communities with the progression of livelihood among generations. 

What is the set-up of beekeeping in Slovenia?

To understand the set-up of a beekeeping farm, we undertook a nearly two-hour workshop during our stay here in Bled, Slovenia.

Today, Slovenian beekeepers are renowned worldwide as foremost experts in their field who are well-organized and keep bees in a bee-friendly and sustainable way. Their knowledge and skills are highly valued and set an example for beekeepers in other countries.

Vinod to learn how to check a bee- hive.

Slovenia is the home of the Carniola honey bee, known for its calmness, hard work, excellent orientation and resistance to weather and diseases. Here, we were shown wooden apiaries where bees are kept in the yards. An apiary is a wooden yard where bee hives come in various sizes but are mostly rectangular. This is where the beekeepers work, check the bees, label them with blue ink and obtain honey as the final production. Apiaries are usually set on high grounds with easy access for bees. They are close to orchards, farms, and gardens, requiring frequent pollination and developing a well-marked loop between the bees and their food sources. Hence, bees get their nectar from the plant sources quickly. Beekeepers raise and care for honeybees for agricultural and commercial purposes such as cross-pollination and production. They showed us how bees produced the natural hives of honeycomb wax, how to collect bee swarms and transfer them to other beekeepers, how to split bee colonies, collect honey and maintain the overall health of the hives, including the bees. 

We were donned with their white jackets and head and face hats. Looked pretty cool! We were allowed to touch the beehives covered in glass surfaces, and we were allowed to listen to their humming noises, which sounded like drones collectively. Incredible experience indeed, though we were excruciatingly aware of any possible bee sting. The beekeeper was least worried about the bee sting, even when bees moved and drifted around her. 

The beekeeper explained the functionality of various bees, including the queen bee, which lays eggs in the hive. Queen bees die every three to five years and are replaced in each hive, either spontaneously or via a swarming process. In the Swarming process, the bees make another new colony to increase the number of bees in the apiaries. 

Honey Collection.

Food products produced at the bee farm 

Most honey collection is done during harvesting when beekeepers must wear light-coloured clothing and use a smoke source to keep bees relatively undisturbed. 

Beekeepers express a loving and compliant attitude toward bees, helping the bees to remain calm on the whole. 

Beekeepers remove the frames from each hive and use a smoky blower to get the bees off the hive and the honey. The honey collected is sometimes aged, processed and finally bottled for transportation and marketing purposes. 

Getting stung by a honey bee

We discussed this scenario and how to deal with a bee sting. Every beekeeper is stung at least twice a year and takes it as a positive phenomenon, developing resistance to bee stings! But they explained that the beekeeping job is rarely dangerous, as they usually wear white clothes and a covering hat, especially during bee swarming and emptying of hives of honey.

What is new in beekeeping 

Beekeepers, who assess bees as their teachers and friends, share through local and international associations. There was a French beekeeper group while we were in the apiaries who had come to learn the trade further from their Slovenia experts. The industry keeps updated continuously through well-funded research.

There was a lot of information about the bee colonies, their communal behaviour and a fantastic camaraderie, which was very apparent while watching a beehive closely on the site.

Slovenians are proud of their beekeeping heritage, especially its specialities, such as the Carniolan honey bee, traditional beehives, beehive panels, apiaries and the transport of bees to honeybee forage. The extensive and diverse tangible and intangible heritage of beekeeping and the use of bee products on Slovenian soil is a testament to their long tradition and the incorporation of this rich heritage into the everyday life of individuals, families, and social and professional groups. Beekeeping teaches a person responsibility, perseverance, modesty, hard work, and love of nature.

The hut where beehives are kept.

Today, beekeeping in Slovenia is an important agricultural industry because of bee products and because bees are crucial as pollinators of cultivated plants, especially fruit trees and various crops for human and animal sustenance. In recent decades, bees have been confronted with new factors that adversely affect them. Consequently, this demands more care for their existence, as harmful factors reduce bees' resistance, making them more susceptible to diseases, pests and the like. A good beekeeper must know the development, needs and directions of development of bee colonies. They must not destroy their order of life but facilitate their development in the direction they want with each task.

Mrs Nirmal Gupta