Stadtbienenhonig

Welcome to my bees project. I started Stadtbienenhonig (city bee honey) in 2007 on roof-tops in the center of Berlin. In 2021 Stadtbienenhonig became Italian, it continues in Rome, on a smaller scale. The beehives are placed on the ground.

NEW: I share honey stories with a selected group of interested people. We taste honey together and reflect about bees, the landscape and the season of a certain place. Honey offers an experience, that unfolds the character of a particular envionment.

If you are interested, please send a note.

My philosophy (notes)

Beekeeping is an ancient practice between the human and the natural world.

Relationships that transcend boundaries are complex structures.

Honeybees produce various substances that persist beyond the moment of their creation:

Honey and beeswax are not products, they are resources.

To make them it will take time. They have a memory.

Bees react to every change in their environment.

They learn continuously, finding ways to adapt constantly.

To study the changes in a given area I conduct micro-harvests.

Honeybees build their own combs, so the honey matures in permeable white cells.

I certainly do not replace honey with sugar feed.

I am only one step away from treatment-free beekeeping.

My beekeeping practice is about stimulation, not manipulation.

My goal is not the harvest of a large quantity of honey,

but rather the harvest of honey with a high activity.

It is a practice of observing and sharing.

Therefore please preorder:
Newsletter
Otherwise it might already be gone

Bees and beekeepers face great challenges in the world of today. Landscapes are fragmented, pollution is a problem, there are not enough wild honeybees left to (genetically) support domestic honeybees, too many bee colonies are kept for producing too much honey - or by now, the producers say: too little...

I can't solve problems, that exist in the outside. But I can concentrate on working to improve the inside, their inner strength, by developing a practice that focuses on their survival skills, including their learning capacity. I try to avoid any treatment by contolling mite levels, initiating brood breaks if the bees do not swarm.

Bees are certainly always on my mind, and I go and visit the apiaries, but I rarely intervene. Less disturbance is what is good for them. So they can develop on their own. I only extend/reduce the spaces around them.

Honey is a luxurious natural product, that is full of activity. High quality honey is alive.

My apiaries - unfortunately - no longer stay on one location over the whole year. They face threats that force me to move them once a year to a protected area.

Honey not only reflects the diversity of the landscape, it shows its character, the seasons act like moods. This is why every honey harvest has its own taste and no two years are the same.

We are the bees of the invisible. We passionately bring in the honey of the visible in order to accumulate it in the great golden hive of the invisibile. Rainer Maria Rilke