We love bees!
My name is Ingeborg Seitz and I have been working at the Austria Classic Hotel Vienna for almost 35 years. Today we introduce our newest guests: 40,000 bees on the roof!
The bee project
Bees don't have it easy in times of global warming. Far too early they think it is already warm, leave their hives in search of food and find no flowers. They return hungry and die of exhaustion. Our trusted beekeeper, Mr. Krottendorfer, informed me of this in one of the numerous preliminary talks. We decided a long time ago that we would like to give bee colonies a home in Vienna and a few days ago the time had come: around 40,000 bees came to us and live on our unused terrace at the top of the 4th floor.
The beekeeper
We found Mr. Krottendorfer on Google. He is President of State Association of Beekeeping in Vienna and we liked him straight away. His enthusiasm wowed us and we have now rented 4 beehives from him. He takes care of the care and the honey harvest and will check on our protégés every 10-14 days. After the harvest, Mr. Krottendorfer supplies us with delicious honey from our own bees. This will not be enough to offer to our guests at breakfast, but we will have small jars filled and give away to our guests.
The moving in
It was exciting when the little bees moved in. On the terrace, shawl stones were set up with wooden beams on them and the empty beehives were placed there. Then the bees came in transport boxes. Unfortunately, it was still too cold for the animals and only a few female scouts could be seen carefully exploring the new surroundings around the hive. Now we hope that it will soon be warm and our "guests" can fly out. They fly up to 3 KM and will probably romp around in the Prater. Each hive will quadruple over the course of the season. So there are about 160,000 bees with us.
The concerns
Of course, we also talked beforehand about whether it isn't dangerous if so many bees live with us. The answer was: no! Bees aren't interested in human food (quite unlike those pesky wasps we all know). I got a beekeeping outfit from Mr. Krottendorfer. But he said that if you're calm, approach the sticks slowly and don't gesticulate wildly, you don't even need to wear them. He knows his stuff, as he has numerous beehives in the 22nd district of Vienna that he looks after. We are all very happy about the new guests and wish them a nice life on the roof with lots of sun and safe trips to the beautiful Prater. Please always come back safely and feel comfortable with us.
Hum hum hum
Yours, Ingeborg Seitz
