Hey, It's Livia!
I am a master beekeeper and my greatest passion is my bees.
My fascination with honeybees began much earlier, when I was about 11 years old. At that time, my mother started keeping a few bee colonies as a hobby and increasingly brought me honeycombs directly from the colony, which I accepted with great pleasure and enthusiasm.
At 16, my desire to have my own colony was so strong that my mother divided one of her colonies and placed the nuc in our garden. She had already gained a lot of experience by that point, and I was fortunate enough to be able to learn everything from her from the very beginning until I was finally allowed to take over the beekeeping business from her.
Growing up with the bees
My mother was always there when I proudly worked on my colony, initially at a snail's pace. I can still remember very well how I lost all sense of time when I was with my bees.
and she often reminded me to work faster so that the people wouldn't be open for so long.
In fact, I wasn't stung for a very long time and had the crazy thought that maybe this would never happen. Today, I can only remember the stings I received during my years as a beekeeper.
of course no longer count.
My Beekeeping career
At school, I decided to dedicate my pre-scientific work to the decline of bees and thus learned for the first time something about beekeeping in other countries.
As part of my bachelor's degree at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, I had to complete an internship, and I was offered the opportunity to do it in queen breeding at a commercial beekeeping facility. I stayed there for the following years and was able to learn a great deal and, of course, produce numerous queen cells and queens.
From Austria to Australia
One day at work, I had an international visitor from Australia, a beekeeper. He invited me to visit him and his wife in Australia and work with him in his beekeeping business. I subsequently spent two years in Australia during my university summer holidays and got to know beekeeping from a completely different perspective.