Text: Marián Swierczek
My hobby, which I sort of fell into by accident, is beekeeping. Nobody in my family was very interested in bees, except my father-in-law. And when he suddenly ended up in the hospital for an extended period of time, I had no choice but to go take a closer look at his hives.
So after watching a few instructional videos on YouTube, I went to the hive and opened the lid. No mask or gloves, wearing short sleeves like he always did. The first
five stings before I could even put the lid down. I knew it wasn’t going to work. The second time, already properly equipped with all the protective gear available, I finally looked inside and removed the frames.
I watched as all the bees moved around the frame for some purpose. The smell of honey and wax was immediately enchanting. Eventually I got my own hives and started beekeeping.
In the spring I added frames and attachments. In the summer, I removed them and extracted the honey. Then in late summer I fed the bees with a sugar solution and melted wax in the winter. One winter, another winter, and so on. It’s a wonderful hobby that clears one’s head.
But last winter took everything away from me. Varroasis, bee plague, fetal rot – these are the most common diseases of bees. And it was the bee plague that affected my colonies. The verdict of the veterinary administration was clear – burn everything under the supervision of the fire brigade. The work that had filled me for several years was in vain. In the EU it is not allowed (and probably rightly so) to treat bees with antibiotics, so there is no guaranteed cure. Now I have to wait 2-3 years before I am allowed to practice this hobby again. And I can’t wait.
For the record
- Bees fly at an average speed of 21-24 km/h, flapping their wings at a rate of 180 flapping movements per second.
- In the summer months, there are up to 60,000 bees in a hive, and they live for 5-6 weeks.
- They fly up to 5 km for food and collect about half a teaspoon of honey in their lifetime.
- To produce 1 kg of honey, bees must visit around 4 million flowers, travelling an average of 280,000 kilometres.
- The hive is home to one queen, several hundred drones and thousands of workers, which are divided into cleaners, foragers, nursemaids, builders, guardians and flyers according to their age.
- The queen bee leaves the hive only once, during the so-called nuptial flight, when she mates with 6-10 drones in turn, and spends the rest of her life (5-6 years) in the hive, where she lays about 200,000 eggs per year.
