That’s right Slovenian ENVY!

I mean,,, have you ever seen their beautiful hives? I'm simply green.

A much different approach than we do beekeeping here in the United States (and other parts of the world). They build their hives into a shed-like structure, and access them through the back.

I guess they joke about all the American beekeepers, having bad backs because of all the lifting from the Langstroth hives… I mean, they’re not wrong. 😆

Sometimes they’re even on trucks and the Beekeeper can simply get in the back of the truck to access the hives.

I had seen this beekeeping on Pinterest, and heard of it, but at the Treasure Valley Beekeeping Club meeting that I went to last night (4/23/24), one of the local beekeepers recently went to Slovenia and got the full Api-Tour.

Apitourism is a real thing. Seems like I may have blogged about it before? I'll check. But if you're curious, here's more info about it in Slovenia: https://www.apiturizem.si/en/apiturizem/ 

He didn’t know that it was the beekeeping capital of the world until he was already planning to be there, but took full advantage of what it had to offer with his beekeeping.

Apparently, every restaurant, every bar, every household has honey because so many people keep bees. They will pair honey flavors with other foods and beverages depending on the type of honey.

It’s quite Fascinating.

And, ahem, I wanna try some honeycomb brandy!

The guy that he connected with gives these apiary tours seasonally and makes a nice living off of it. He even had an apiary designed to be an almost spa-like setting, where people can go into these Slovenian hive “sheds”, have the hives all around them (no bees flying in the room) and the person can just lay there and take in the smell and the sound and enjoy the meditative and hypnotic environment with the bees. 🐝😵‍💫🐝

Can you imagine? Somebody paying a bunch of money to just go in and take a nap with a bunch of beehives? Who would pay that kind of money just to do that? 🤚 👩🏻‍🦰

Yeah….new bucket list item!

So the buzz in the beekeeper community right now is all about SWARMS. Bees are swarming all over the place and, not gonna lie,,,I want in.

I've never experienced catching a swarm and that's next on my "want to experience" list regarding bees.

Maybe this weekend it will work out that a bee swarm will form around Jim's area and he'll have me come participate.

Hopefully that'll be the next blog post!

Also, my mentor at work teaches Spanish and he's awesome. He loves taking pictures, especially of bees since his brother has a few hives, and he snapped some pictures last weekend. I love how bees bring people together!

Photo cred: David Hardy