Anna Hochreutener is a passionate beekeeper with a federal certificate. She grew up in England where she learned the beekeeping trade from her parents. Her husband was already fascinated by bees through his grandparents. Together they founded the company wabe3. Wabe3 is an innovative beekeeping company in Zurich that stations bee colonies on unused flat roofs - with the best view of the city. wabe3 contributes to diversify nature in urban areas and at the same time brings the fascination of beekeeping to the public.
The constellation of a bee colony is incredibly fascinating. The colony, the interaction and the democratic processes that take place in the colony can also be transferred to society.
Why are bees in particular so important for the environment and also for the survival of mankind?
Bees are incredibly important for our survival. Around 1/3 of our food is pollinated by bees - not only honey bees, but also other pollinating insects and wild bees - and without them all the plants would not exist. So we are very dependent on these insects.
Why does beekeeping work in the city despite all the built-up and concreted-over areas?
Zurich is a very green city. There are different flowers everywhere and it is precisely this huge variety of flowers that bees need. In the countryside, where there is a lot of agriculture and thus a lot of monocultures, this leads to green deserts. After the flowering season, bees here have no more food. In the city, on the other hand, everyone who plants something helps to provide bees with a great variety and a continuous food supply - on their balcony, in their little garden, on their roof terrace, in allotment gardens, in cemeteries and through flowering trees planted by the city.
Only the royal jelly, a kind of super food produced by the worker bees, creates the queen. She lays 2000 eggs a day - her own body weight - and only she can achieve this physical feat.
Only the royal jelly, a kind of super food produced by the worker bees, creates the queen. She lays 2000 eggs a day - her own body weight - and only she can achieve this physical feat.
Besides the production of delicious honey, knowledge transfer is a big concern for you. You give guided tours for school classes, offer the honey as company gifts and run courses for beekeepers. What interests people most about bees?
The constellation of a bee colony and how perfectly the bee colony functions is incredibly fascinating. This topic comes up again and again, especially at team events for companies. People talk about a super-organism, which can also be applied to a company, to the employees, that everyone pulls together and that the individuals cannot survive without the others.
Bees function by all pursuing the same goal. They have two goals in the summer: One is to collect enough nectar so that they can produce enough honey to survive the winter. And the second goal is to reproduce.
Building a business is no piece of cake. Today, however, you have more requests than you can handle.
At the beginning we got a lot of refusals when it came to finding areas to place bees, and yet we noticed that people think it's a great thing. That's why it was really about convincing people that bees are harmless if you leave them alone and keep enough distance. And then we had two door openers: first of all the GZ Riesbach, which even wanted to keep bees of its own accord and which really also propagated that it is important that the natural cycles are guaranteed. And the second door opener was a pilot project that VBZ then brought into the media. From then on, the doors were more or less open.
We pursue the same goals. They say "opposites attract" and that is certainly the case with us personally, that my husband and I are very different people, but our interests are the same.
We pursue the same goals. They say "opposites attract" and that is certainly the case with us personally, that my husband and I are very different people, but our interests are the same.
Anna Hochreutener is a passionate beekeeper with a federal certificate. She grew up in England where she learned the beekeeping trade from her parents. Her husband was already fascinated by bees through his grandparents. Together they founded the company wabe3, an innovative beekeeping company in Zurich. The two have stationed over 100 bee colonies on unused flat roofs. The green city of Zurich with its huge variety of flowers is ideal for bees.
