Germany Archives - The Apiarist

In the first instalment I posted a series of pictures (kindly provided by Calum) of bee houses near Lindau in Bavaria, Germany. The images showed ‘properties’ towards the budget end of the market, offering the bare minimum – a roof overhead and sometimes little more. However, with a bit more time, ingenuity, money and a willingness to ruthlessly exploit the planning laws all sorts of things are possible …

Functional minimalism

Here are a couple of bee houses built to a similar design. A solid-looking shed with a good high ceiling (the pent roof design must offer good headroom over the hives, with ample space for the stacked supers or tall beekeepers) and reasonable levels of lighting by replacing the front wall with translucent corrugated plastic. Calum assures me that there is usually enough light in these bee houses for a proper frame inspection i.e. to see if there are eggs present.

Small corrugated bee house

It’s clear how the bees access the hives which – as last week – simply abut the front wall of the bee house. Since there are no opening windows as such I presume there’s a gap under the eaves through which the bees can escape during inspections.

Large corrugated bee house

Moving up in the world

The bee houses above are a pretty good size, both in terms of the number of hives they can accommodate and the space to work them and for storage. However, with lots of hives inevitably the space becomes more crowded. The following photograph is of the inside of a 30-hive bee house. The majority of the hives are of a design known as a Zander hive, with a few other Deutsch Normal (which, as Calum says, “is funny as there is no standard in Germany”).

Crowded house

The roof lights provide pretty good illumination (they would be a welcome addition to my own bee shed) which makes it much easier to see the huge amount of additional ‘essentials’ that beekeepers accumulate.

Bee house and bench seat

And before we move on to the Rolls-Royce^† of bee houses here’s another one (above), this time from the outside. I particularly like the sheltered porch area and bench seat, perfect for relaxing on with a cuppa after working up a sweat.

A luxury bee house

My bee shed starts to look rather plain and dowdy when compared with the nicely decorated side panels in the photograph above. All of the bee houses shown so far have provided basic weather protection together with more or less comfort for the beekeeper and space for storage or relaxation.

The final bee house is spectacular. It houses 40 colonies and has an extractor (centrifuge) room with an adjacent dining room and living room. Upstairs there is space for a flat … “planning laws don’t really apply to beekeepers in Germany – as the need to keep them very happy is recognised”, says Calum).

Luxury bee house

Can you imagine building something like that in the association apiary?

Finally, here’s a close-up view of the entrances to this splendid building. The windows are hinged from the top and the area under the eaves is very shaded. It’s not clear whether the bees that fly during inspections escape through the open windows (in which case hinging them at the bottom would almost certainly be more effective as bees always crawl upwards) or if they exit somehow above the windows.

Hive entrances and windows

The landing boards are painted to try and reduce drifting which might be a major issue with colonies packed so close together. Some of the brood boxes are also decorated with flowers or motifs to help the bees returning from orientation flights find the correct hive. There are a couple of wasp traps fixed to the front of the bee house, one just out of shot and one about 2/3rd the way along in the picture above.

That’s almost the last of this brief review of German bee houses from the photos that Calum kindly sent me. I’m saving one back for another posting which will appear sometime in the future. I’ve also received some additional images of bee houses from another part of Germany and northern France which I’ll post in due course.

I’m off to check the Scottish planning laws …

^† Actually Calum called this the ‘Mercedes’ of bee houses. This either reflects a German opinion of the relative merits of Daimler Benz Mercedes and Rolls-Royce (who are actually owned by BMW these days), or it might suggest that there are even more luxurious bee houses out there …

After a bit more than a year of use I’m convinced of the benefits of a bee house or shed. They provide protection for both the hives and the beekeeper, enabling inspections in otherwise borderline conditions and – at least from my experience this season – earlier colony build-up and longer brood rearing. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to synchronise colony inspections to idyllic “shirtsleeve” days, with warm sunshine and light winds, either due to work commitments or (in our case) because we need brood at particular times of the week for research.

Learn from others and your own mistakes

My bee shed is a simple re-purposed good quality garden shed on a solid base with some holes cut in the walls and custom-built windows. I’ve discussed the perceived and actual benefits of the bee shed previously, and described the design (and evolution) of the hive entrances and shed exits used by the bees. The functionality was achieved by discussion with contributors to the SBAi beekeeping forum, further informed by a tour of a ‘shed’ owned by a respected and experienced UK beekeeper, and with a bit of trial and error.

Despite being broadly satisfied with my current setup I’m always interested to see how others have approached the problem of providing both shelter and access. I was therefore very interested to receive a series of photographs of bee houses from Calum, a regular reader and contributor, who lives in Lindau, Germany. With Calum’s permission I’m posting these as they might also be of interest to other readers.

A simple shelter from the elements

Lindau is in Bavaria, on the northern shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee). The climate there is “mild and generally warm and temperate”, with average temperatures of 9.1°C and rainfall of about 1133mm (according to climate-data.org). The average temperature in the warmest (July) and coldest month (January) is 18.7°C and -0.7°C^†. This gives an idea of the type of conditions these bee houses were designed for. Calum tells me that there are at least 30 he’s aware of within 10km of Lindau.

This simple shelter provides some protection for the beekeeper working the colonies together with an extended porch area to protect the hive entrances – presumably from snow and sun. The hive entrances simply line up with a gap between the bottom of the front wall and the floor, that doubles as a landing board. I particularly like the solitary bee nestbox on one of the end walls of the shelter.

: Rear view

: Front left

: Front right

Here’s another that provides even less shelter for either the beekeeper or the hives, consisting of nothing more than a roof and end walls. Nevertheless, the roof looks pretty sturdy to keep the snow off and the hives are oriented to catch the morning sun.

Barely a bee house …

Three walls and a roof

Finally, here’s something a little more substantial. This is the bee house that Calum inherited when he started out, complete with the sign which I think reads “Vorsicht Stechgefahr Bienen” (Caution danger stinging bees). Clearly this was a rather robust shed originally. Apparently it was built without the front wall making adding/removing hives a simple task – no need to negotiate the door. Security can be provided by installing a couple of planks from the inside that protect the hives. The hives are higher than on a conventional stand, making inspections of a single/double brood box comfortable, but making the removal of supers from the top of the pile a precarious occupation.

Calum’s bee house

In the next instalment (though not next week) I’ll post some rather grander designs, including one with integral dining and living rooms …

^† For comparison, I live in Fife which enjoys about half the rainfall of Lindau and has an annual temperature average of 8.3°C and January and July averages of 2.5°C and 14.7°C respectively.

The Apiarist

Beekeeping, so much more than honey

Tag Archives: Germany

German bee houses part 2