Bees knees.
Of course, you hear them long before you see them. The moment we step onto the terrace, there it is: that low, persistent hum. Or buzz. Or, to be precise, hundreds of thousands of low, persistent buzzes coming from hundreds of thousands of bees.
Just how many are there? “Each hive has maybe 30,000 to 80,000 bees,” says Marko. “And I have 40 hives. But I’d like more. Maybe, 100?”
Marko Podlesnik Maurer is a beeliever. He’s one of the growing number of small, independent beekeepers, who are helping to keep bees happy and healthy for all our sakes. A kind of superhero in a mesh mask and white sting-proof suit. But by day he’s an Inntravel hotelier.
Explore the beautiful north-western corner of Slovenia and you may well find Marko welcoming you at the Hotel Rozle in Kranjska-Gora. He’ll very happily point out the best views on your walks or cycle-rides, or which restaurants serve the best traditional Slovenian food, or pizza if you prefer, or – and this is always good to know – where you can find the best local wines. (Slovenia, he explains, has some of the best wine in the world, but because it doesn’t export much, no one knows!).
Marko lives a short drive from KG, in the shadow of the Triglav mountains. As we walk down into his garden towards the hives, the high jagged peaks are strung with clouds. There’s a warm breeze carrying the scent of flowers. And that ever present low hum.
“These bees, they’re a local species, they don’t really like to sting,” he says. Something I’d believe a whole lot more if he wasn’t covered up so much. I put on the veiled hat he offers me quite happily.
Smoke is used to calm the bees. It smells sweet, like pipe tobacco. Carefully, Marko takes the top off a hive and levers out a panel frame which is heavy with honeycomb, wax, bees, and honey.
Marko (or rather, the bees) make only a relatively small amount of honey, which he sells locally but when he gets more hives and more bees, he will sell it on his website, along with some other by-products such as royal jelly and wax.
But his grand plan neatly combines both his worlds, of hotels and of beekeeping, into one genius idea.
At his apartment in Ljubljana, Marko has built a ‘bee sauna’. It isn’t a sauna per se, but it’s the same size, constructed from wood, and with the kind of benches you’d expect to find in a typical sauna, but there’s one very big difference. Or rather, hundreds of thousands of little differences. Bees.
The walls of the shed have been fitted with a number of glass encased hives. The interior and exterior panels to the sauna can be opened to allow light to flood through the honeycomb, and it is quite a magical sight to sit and watch the bees busy at work, without the need of protective gear or smoke.
Close the doors, and you can relax or even meditate in the dark, at one with nature and the sound of bees – a totally beautiful and immersive experience, it has to be said. And the smell. It’s pine and honey and briar and sunshine and wild flowers all mixed up. And quite intoxicating. It’s quite the bee’s knees for a gentle half hour or so.
And it could make Marko quite a rich man. But for now, he’s happy to offer his bee house as a perk to those renting his bolthole for stays in Ljubljana. A kind of AirBnBee, perhaps.
