The Experience Beekeeping in Hemsloh

image author: Imkerei Hanking

Amidst the large mixed forest, the Bockel Switzerland, is the experience beekeeping of the family Hanking situated. Here one can look over the shoulder of a professional apiculturist and get to know the fascinating world of bees.

image author: Imkerei Hanking

The honey

Honey is nourishment for bees, which they produce from nectar or honey dew with adding their body-secretions. Humans from the Stone Age already used honey as food and the Egyptians admired honey as 'food of the gods' and assigned it great value.
At the experience beekeeping different kinds of honey are being produced.

image author: Imkerei Hanking

Also guided tours are offered as a beekeeping experience. Particularly children are completely astonished when they learn about the performance of the bees.
These bees belong to the group of the colony-building insects, meaning that such a bee colony exists in an extraordinary social harmony. The bee colony has one queen, many hundreds of drones (male bees), and 45.000 to 60.000 female working bees. The working bees have always new challenges during their lives: Initially they are cleaning bees, thereafter they become wet nurses for the bee larvae and than the constructors of the honeycombs. They create the desired honey, rework the collected pollen and finally produce the Gelée Royal. Actually they are swarming out collecting food. They reach a speed of up to 30 km/h at about 180 to 250 wing flaps per second. Honey bees have to fly about 120.000 km in order to collect nectar for one glass of honey. This is a distance of about 3 times around the world.