organic summer blossom honey
Bienenhilfe
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The project
Adopt {publicVariety} from the apiary "{farmName}" in {cityfarm} ({countryFarm}) and receive your harvest in the form of {production} at home. The Farmer {farmerName} will take care of your adoption and take its picture. Also, you will be able to download the adoption certificate and, if you wish, plan your visit to the farm. As the production coming from one {variety} is big, the adoption is shared among various people. If you wish to have a bigger share, you may adopt more than once. You do not enter into any long-term commitment: once you receive your harvest and you enjoyed the experience, you may decide to renew and extend the adoption.
What do you adopt?
Adopt {publicVariety} that we care for based on the Organic Farming regulations of the European Union since 2019.
You adopt a colony of bees, which you share with eight Crowdfarmers. Each colony has a very special name: that of a wild bee or a bee pasture plant. This is to express our special relationship to the protection of wild bees. In the summer, a colony consists of about 40,000 bees (that is about 5,000 honey bees per adoption).
Living in a wooden house is something special for many people - for the honey bees that live with us it is reality: each colony has its own wooden house, the so-called bee hive. We rely on pine wood, which comes from local forestry. We do not use plastics and the protective glaze for the exterior paint is wax-based. With the "pike-perch hives" we use, we ensure that the bees raise their brood undisturbed, because we can put on the honey room. In our area many beekeepers rely on plastic hives (e.g. Segeberger hives), these are not an option for us.
Our bees do not belong to any particular breed, the only thing that is important to us is that the colonies can take good care of themselves and are peaceful. Therefore we use a mixture of different bee breeds (Apis mellifera carnica, Apis mellifera ligustica, Buckfast). Our bees are not fed. Our bees reproduce through the natural swarming instinct and through small brood honeycomb layers. Queen bees accompany their colony for a lifetime, if once a queen is needed, the bees form a so-called white cell (queen cell) from which a young queen hatches after 16 days.
The drones live one summer, workers one season, queens and the queen about 4 - 5 years. A bee colony is immortal and renews itself again and again.
Each {variety} is adopted by 8 CrowdFarmers who receive a box with {masterUnitsMax} kg of {production}.
The production from one {variety} can vary each season, depending on the weather conditions. During the adoption process you can determine the quantity you wish to reserve.
What will you receive?
CrowdFarmers can freely choose between the __wild bee box__ and the __basic box__.
__Content of the wild bee box:__
5 x organic summer blossom honey (500g each, screw glass)
1 x Organic honeycomb in honey (500g, screw-on glass)
1 x Wild Bee Nesting House (27x15x9cm, 600g)
There are two special features in the wild bee box. You will receive a delicious piece of honeycomb from your adopted colony in one of the six honey jars. The honeycomb is full of honey, edible and makes breakfast a very special experience. Honeycomb honey contains parts of pollen from the plants that have been flown to. We will also send you a wooden house. Don't worry, this is anything but a real estate, it's more like a wild bee nesting aid that you can set up at your home. All you need is a small free space in a window frame, on your balcony or in the garden - and you can start protecting the wild bees yourself. The nesting aids are made of untreated wood, bamboo and reed from sustainable sources. The wood is purchased from a small carpenter from the Westerwald region. The description of the summer blossom honey can be found below.
__Content of the basic box:__
6 x organic summer blossom honey (500g each, screw-on glass)
A summery, radiant organic blossom honey from the current harvest with refreshing aromas and wonderful taste, which unfolds on the tongue first gently, then more powerfully. Certified organic beekeeping. Every year we have our honey tested for flower composition. As soon as we have this information, we will upload it on this page under "Further analyses".
Each glass is filled by hand and labelled with great attention to detail. Our jars are reusable and we use potato starch-based adhesives for our labels made from recycled paper. Our honey has an actually unlimited shelf life, for legal reasons we give it a minimum shelf life of 2 years after bottling. Keep it dry and cool.
When will you receive it?
Please, check the deadline for participating in this project (deadline for adoption) below. As of this date the Farmer will start preparing the orders that are to be shipped.
You may select the delivery date of your box as suggested by the Farmer at check-out.
We harvest our honey over the summer, then process it and bottle it to ship it in September.
Why should you adopt?
* Learn who produces your food, how and where. Receive your food in a conscious manner.
* Buy directly from the farmer. Help to generate wealth and better jobs in the rural areas.
* Plan ahead and enable the Farmer to produce on demand. This way we can avoid overproduction and fight food waste.
* Reward Farmers who make an effort to use environmentally-friendly packaging and cultivation techniques.
How does it work?
Meet the Farmers
Adopt and plan your harvest
Let the Farmer and nature work
Receive your harvest at home
Björn Szeghedi
Wild bees are far less present in the perception of many people than honey bees. Perhaps it is because wild bees do not produce honey.
We asked ourselves: How would it be if we, by producing organic honey, actively contributed to the protection of wild bees, drew attention to their situation and thus appreciated the environment around us? The idea of two friends, Björn Szeghedi and Dirk Weikert, became a registered association in 2017: Bienenhilfe für Umweltschutz e.V.. I, Björn, discovered the fascination of being able to observe honey bees at close range during my law studies. At that time Dirk was head of an auditing department in the public service. For both of us the time with the bees has become more than a hobby: It's a passion. Since I was able to experience the special closeness to the honey bees, I pay much more attention to the course of the seasons and the plant world than before. I love to see the first sallows blooming in spring, because that means the bees get their first food supply in the form of pollen every year. As soon as the cherry trees blossom, the time of abundance begins, which ends in summer with the harvest. That feeling of enjoying organic honey fresh from the honeycomb of our bees is unique to me.
When we founded our association we donated our honey bee colonies to "Bienenhilfe für Umweltschutz e.V." and used the proceeds from the sale of organic honey and organic honey wine in specially initiated projects for wild bee protection. Dirk made most of his land available for this purpose, he is particularly committed to imparting knowledge on the subject of wild bees and takes care of accounting. I myself am responsible for the well-being of the honey bees in organic beekeeping and for organic certification. Our most famous project, entitled "Maya's wild sisters", supports the children of our primary school in building nesting aids and getting to know wild and honey bees during a project week. We believe that CrowdFarming gives us a chance to find many new followers of our project and enjoy our honey! It is a step to help the wild bee and its protection to get more attention. This is why we name our bee families to be adopted after wild bee breeds and plants that promote bee diversity!
Björn Szeghedi
"Share our passion for the protection of wild bees and help us to advance our project "Maya's wild sisters" with your adoption. As thanks and appreciation you will receive delicious organic honey from our honey bees and, depending on the selection, also a nesting aid and comb honey."
Bienenhilfe
Bienenhilfe
We are located in a village in the south of the Bergisches Land (North Rhine-Westphalia) in Much. Our region is surrounded by the water protection area of the Wahnbach, which flows into the river Sieg and into the Rhine near Bonn. We consider ourselves very lucky to be able to experience an amazing amount of biodiversity in fauna and flora around us. The bees live near the forest in the village of Much-Roßhohn. Not far from the apiary there are more colonies on a meadow by the river and also the new colonies of the coming year will find their place there.
The welfare of the bees is a matter of the heart for us, therefore we reject stressful migrations with the bee colonies for the purpose of maximizing yields or the unnatural feeding of sugar for the winter. Instead, we take only the portion of honey produced by the bees in excess of their needs. If the winter lasts longer, we give the bees their honey back. For this purpose, we keep a winter reserve at all times.
We run organically certified beekeeping and dedicate the proceeds to the protection of wild bees: We actively organise regular project weeks with children from our local primary schools - here we can rely on two teachers who are active in beekeeping. We let the children actively experience our honeybee stand in order to arouse their interest in the wild bees worthy of protection. In addition, during the project week, each child makes its own wild bee nest aid from a kit. All costs incurred within the framework of the project are covered by us.
As a registered association (e.V.) we are committed to our self-defined goals. In our statutes the promotion of nature conservation, landscape conservation, animal protection with special consideration of bees as well as all insects of the hymenoptera family and the advocacy for the interests of environmental protection including educational and research work in the mentioned areas are stipulated.
Currently our beekeeping team consists of four employees, Björn, his girlfriend, as well as Dirk and his wife. Furthermore Björn's father supports us with the construction of the hives. We organize the work on the bee colonies after the so-called bee year:
In winter we prepare our materials and especially the recycled wax. We have a closed wax cycle with our own preparation and mid-wall press and actively recycle the wax produced by our bees. The beehives are also renovated in winter, if necessary. As we do not feed sugar, we pay special attention to the supply of the colonies in winter by weighing them regularly. This method is very gentle for the bees, as the bee house does not have to be opened for this. If there is not enough honey in a colony, which has never happened before, we give some back to the bees from the reserve.
Spring is the time of abundance for the bees, a lot of nectar and pollen is flown home. Here we make sure that the colonies can live out their swarm instinct by placing swarm cells together with some bees in new bee houses. This way the colonies multiply. At the end of spring and summer we harvest the honey of our bees. We make sure that there is always enough honey left to supply the colony and we plan this in advance with regard to the amount of honey for your adoption.
At the end of the summer, we ensure that the bees can hibernate and feed on fresh honeycombs. To do this, we remove old honeycombs - already abandoned by the bees - and replace them with recycled beeswax of our own. This process is carried out as a closed wax cycle. To reduce the varroa mite, we use only organic acid - formic acid - at the end of the summer. Unfortunately, the colonies can hardly survive the winter without this treatment. In autumn the cycle closes and starts all over again.
Technical information
Address
Bienenhilfe, Much, DE
Location