Beehives

There's only about 2 million people living in Slovenia, and I can say that we are a bit special people. Despite living in our own independent country for only 20 years we managed to survive centuries speaking our own language (with many dialects), having our own alphabet with 25 letters and written books. We can be proud of many talented people, from sportsmen to scientists. Maybe this smallness makes us who we are. It seems as if we want to conquer the world. We are small, so we have to learn and share and show our knowledge, otherwise others will just step on us and we will be gone.It is also so with the beekeeping. More than 200 years ago lived a man, Anton Janša, who was supposedly a pioneer of a modern beekeeping. He was a good painter, so he painted pictures on the beehives. More than 2/3 of his knowledge is used in today's beekeeping in Slovenia. As people wanted to keep bees also through winter months and not destroy them (it was a common practice to destroy bees after "stealing" honey from them), beehives had to be changed. A man named Anton Žnideršič "invented" a beehive which is (still) used by about 90 % of Slovenian beekeepers (called AŽ beehive):Foreign people who come to our country admire those beehives (placed in bee houses), especially if they are painted like in the old times. Not many are, though. On a picture you can see how they look like placed in a bee house/apiary. This one is actually made to show to tourists, but in one of my posts you can see how a common one looks like.

I've been reading lots of books on beekeeping lately and it seems that modern beekeeping will force Slovenian beekeepers to start using Langstroth hives (in Slovenia called LR beehives) or similar ones. I thought of having those too, although my dad uses AŽ ones. But, as I wrote before, time will show if beekeeping is for me at all. My mom is allergic to bee stings (she can die of only one), hopefully I am more like my dad. :)

P.s.: On the first picture above are the hives for bumblebees. I liked those because Alpine flowers are painted on them.