Over the past months Debora and I have participated in a Crowdfunding project called “honeyflow”, a new way of beekeeping.
We received our Flow Hive early January but couldn’t set the Hive up, until last week. However, it had been a journey with some challenges.
First of all, keeping Bees is an entire art (we knew that) but in Luxembourg you need to jump over a couple more hurdles before being able to have your own home made honey.
Getting a perfect location for your hive!
This is where it all starts, in Luxembourg you need to be aware of a few points you can’t just put a beehive in the back of your garden, you need to be at least 15m away from your neighbor, obtain his consent about placing a hive in your garden, and after that you’ll need to inform local authorities that you have a beehive in your garden (this is to keep count about bee populations etc.)
Convincing a “traditional” beekeeper to give it a try with the Flow Hive!
Beekeeping is somehow like a religion, and to bring something new to the market is always difficult. We contacted several beekeepers but most were skeptical about the Flow Hive and meant that it wouldn’t work etc.
After searching for weeks we finally found a company whose aim it is to educate people about beekeeping and to introduce rookies to the art of beekeeping. Theplacetobee.lu offers actually to companies to install a Hive within the company’s headquarters (if they have the green area at the back of the building) and at the end of the year the honey could be given to its employees or business partners.
We contacted theplacetobee hoping the Flow Hive could interest them as well.
We were finally lucky, Monique from theplacetobee called us back and said that she had heard about Flow Hive but had never tested it and would be interested in helping to set one up with the condition to have a “traditional” hive next to it.
This shouldn’t be a stopper for us because this way we would also learn about “traditional” beekeeping and innovate with the Flow Hive.
We keep to an agreement, and last Friday Monique came with her Hive to install it in the backyard of our office. During two hours we learned the basics and have been able to transfer a colony from a traditional hive into the Flow Hive.
We’ll have a regular visit of the Hives every week in order to check if everything works as planned and maybe the first honey might already flow during summer.
It’s an exciting adventure, of which we will keep you informed with regular posts on Orla and we might even be able to organize a visit to the Hive and have some explanations right on site, show you the bees as well as the difference between the Flow Hive and the traditional Hive (the extraction of the honey, is essentially the biggest difference).
Credits: Photos by Jerry Wagner, hand-lettered & customized by Linda Dieschbourg.