Slovenia - Beekeeping Museum

We visited the Beekeeping Museum near Lake Bled in Slovenia in 2007.

There is a tradition in this country to hand paint individual pictures for each colony's identification.

This BeeHouse as it is called is the original one used by Anton Janscha 1734 - 1773.

Janscha used wooden rectangular boxes of about 45 litres volume. A rear end board was used to slide in and out to reduce the space internally for small swarms.

Usually there were 30 such hives in a BeeHouse with entrances to work from inside the building and each colony having a different pattern entrance on the exterior.

Hive entrances in Slovenia today are usually just bright single primary colours.

Janscha's fame arose from the following:

• He was certainly the first man to be appointed specifically as a full-time beekeeping lecturer.
• In 1771, 20 years prior to Huber's publication, he explained the details of virgin queen's mating flight and seeing the 'mating sign' still attached to the tip of her abdomen. He also mentions multiple matings.
• He wrote a comprehensive book on the swarming of bees.