The plan for this special room in a typical Slovenian bee house was laid out years ago. Members of the Beekeeping centre in Lukovica have now realized the plan, and visitors can now breathe in the bee house air and sense its beneficial energies.
"This is a new direction in the development of beekeeping. It doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. We have bee houses only in Slovenia. In other countries they do have artificially made api chambers, but we do it inside a bee house, where the beekeeper keeps bees," proudly says the president of the Slovenian Beekeepers’ Association Boštjan Noč.
Vlado Pušnik, an expert in the field of apitherapy, explains: "Slovene bee houses enable us to create an ideal chamber, because the hives are in a protected environment, inside the bee house, which is our national pride. All of the bee houses are very well managed and clean."
Such rooms could be set up in a number of bee houses and could represent a new Slovenian tourist offer. At the same time, they would also generate additional income for the beekeepers themselves. "We’ll offer them to locals, friends, and acquaintances. We’ll present it to them and let them try it. We think that with time it will gain in popularity, people will feel well and will want to come back," says Mitja Nakrst, the president of the Beekeeping centre in Lukovica.
Experts also point to the numerous possibilities of healing with honey bee products - apitherapy, which can be useful for treating many health problems. "Problems like respiratory diseases, low immunity, and also various illnesses and modern day ailments, like when people are burdened with stress," says Pušnik.
Miro Štebe, TV Slovenija; translated by K. J.