Jonas Oberndorfer and Astrid Steininger have already assembled the first show hive in the spacious garden of the beekeeping center. Bees are not yet on the move at these temperatures, but their new homes are already ready. Upper Austria’s municipalities ordered more than 90 of these hives from the “Let’s save the bees” campaign organized by the beekeeping center and OÖNachrichten. They will be set up in the coming months, and soon the hives will finally come to life.
“People can take a look inside a beehive and experience up close what these miraculous creatures do all day long,” says Upper Austria’s beekeeping president Johann Gaisberger. “That’s worlds better than any billboard.” The communities can pick up the show hives at the beekeeping center in Urfahr. They are almost a meter high and offer space for 5000 to 7000 bees. Behind the thick, insulated wooden covers, between two Plexiglas panes, only a small people live, but a fully functional one. “A normal colony holds 60,000 bees in summer. But the processes are the same. The bees collect pollen, produce honey, and the queen lays eggs,” says Jonas Oberndorfer.
“But the little people find it more difficult to keep the temperature in the hive constant, so you have to close the doors again after watching.”
natives and newcomers
Oberndorfer owns a display hive, “ideal for being curious” for the customers who buy honey from him. At 23, he is one of the youngest beekeepers in the country. At the age of 14 he was already looking after his first colony, it was a friend’s grandfather who brought him to beekeeping. Two combs are embedded in the hive: a brood comb and a feeding comb. In the brood comb, the freshly capped brood and, with a bit of luck, the hatching of bees can be observed. The insects store nectar and pollen in the food comb.
“The bee year ends in August, it’s short but intense,” says Astrid Steininger. But autumn does not mean the end for the bees in the showcase. As soon as it gets cooler, they can move to another bee colony in the hive. “But it’s important to separate the honeycombs from each other with newspaper,” says Steininger. The bees have to eat their way through the paper to get to their new roommates. This is how long the newcomers have time to absorb the beehive’s very own smell. “And then the bees can no longer distinguish between ‘natives’ and newcomers anyway,” says Steininger. (mis)
Source: Nachrichten
