Why our bees live in red towers

Anyone passing our apiaries sees them from afar: red towers in the middle of the meadow. These are the hives, the homes our bee colonies live in.

Designed and built by us

Matthias started planning his own hives early on. As a tinkerer with a background in 3D design, he drew the plans on the computer and kept improving them. We then built them together.

A hive is made of several boxes stacked on top of each other. The colony and its queen live at the bottom; above them, in spring and summer, go the honey supers. The more the bees collect, the more supers we add, and the taller the towers grow.

Why red?

Wood that stands outside all year needs protection from rain and sun. So from the start we have painted our hives with linseed oil varnish, a natural wood protection. The colour we chose is called Vulkanrot, volcano red.

We liked the bright red towers so much that they gave our apiary its name. The red in our logo comes from there too.

Safe in a storm

When the towers grow tall with many honey supers in summer, thunderstorms become a risk. We used to strap the hives down and still slept badly in every storm. So in 2024 we built sturdy platforms that the hives are firmly anchored to.

You can read more about the year the platforms were built in looking back at 2024.