Yesterday, we drove out to Šempas in the very western part of Slovenia to visit the Šivic Bee Farm. Franc Šivic, who is the Vice President of the Slovenia Beekeepers Organization and who has been beekeeping for 53 years, gave a special tour to a women's group to which Chantelle belongs.
Talk about bee-utiful country (okay, none of that this time around) and an interesting operation... He gave us quite an education on trees, flowers, fruits, how pollination takes place, and how hives work. We now know what acacia trees look like, and realized that castle hill behind our apartment is covered with them (they're in full bloom now, which explains all of the fat bumblebees buzzing around outside our apartment). We now know that many beekeepers place their hives on wheels so they can be moved to where the blooms are. We now know that a long time ago artists started painting the panels of the hives for good luck. We also now know how pollen and propolis are collected, how swarms are controlled, and how the queen bee is replaced from time to time. Franc also took us to his house in Šempas to show us his photo gallery. He is an excellent photographer as well...in fact, several of his photos have won major awards in Europe.
After spending the morning on the bee farm, we had lunch at a tourist farm and then spent the afternoon at a Franciscan Monastery in Nova Gorica (more on that in another post). Then, after a long day in the sun, we started to head back, took a wrong turn, and found ourselves in Italy. Without passports. Which is really funny because I had just told Dad the day before that we probably wouldn't get to Italy before we have to head back to the States.
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