Beekeeping in Podkarpackie Voivodeship
In Poland, among the beekeeping regions, Podkarpackie or Podkarpackie voivodeship occupies a special place. This applies both to varieties of honey from Podkarpackie and to beekeeping events. The nature of Podkarpackie also contributes its features to the beekeeping of Podkarpackie. But first things first.
Read to the end - it will be interesting!
Content
- Natural and climatic conditions of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship
- Development of beekeeping in Podkarpackie Voivodeship
- How many bees are there in Podkarpackie Voivodeship
- What kind of honey is harvested in the Podkarpackie Voivodeship
- What are the bees in the Podkarpackie Voivodeship
- Peculiarities of beekeeping in Podkarpackie Voivodeship
Natural and climatic conditions of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship
The natural and climatic conditions of the Podkarpackie region are quite favorable for beekeeping.
The Podkarpackie Voivodeship is conveniently located between the Vistula and the San, in the Sandomierz Basin and the foothills of the Carpathians.
The northern part of the voivodship is represented by plains, which are almost completely plowed, interspersed with pine and beech forests.
In the south-west of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship, the ridges of the Outer Western Carpathians, called the Southern Beskydy, are stretched, covered with mixed coniferous-broad-leaved forests. It is here that you can find the largest piece of virgin nature in Poland.
First of all, this is Bieszczady - a mountainous region, the highest part of the Polish Eastern Carpathians. The Bieszczady Park is part of the international biosphere reserve Eastern Carpathians, which extends into the territories of Slovakia and Ukraine.
The climate of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship is temperate, changing from maritime to continental. It is characterized by warm winters and long and hot summers. In Rzeszow, the average temperature in January is -3°C, and the average temperature in July is +18.5°C.
Thus nature and climate are favorable for beekeeping in Podkarpackie Voivodship.
Development of beekeeping in Podkarpackie Voivodeship
Beekeeping in Podkarpackie is very well developed, but has its own characteristics. Let's consider the main indicators of beekeeping in Podkarpackie and its features.
How many bees are there in Podkarpackie Voivodeship
How many beekeepers and bees are there in Podkarpackie?
There are more than 4,000 beekeepers in Podkarpackie who keep 110 thousand bee colonies, which gives six bee colonies per square kilometer; while the average for Poland is four colonies of bees.
At the same time, about 2230 beekeepers from the Podkarpackie region are united in a local association of beekeepers with a center in Rzeszow. The remaining 2,000 - 3,000 beekeepers are not registered and own a little less than half of the bees in Podkarpackie.
What kind of honey is harvested in the Podkarpackie Voivodeship
What kind of honey bees collect in Podkarpackie?
Spring honey is not the main product of beekeepers in Podkarpackie. More than half of the apiaries in Podkarpackie produce honey from the honeydew of coniferous trees. Pad, also known as honeydew, stands out in the summer on the needles and branches of fir and spruce, as well as on some deciduous trees. This allows you to get maple honey with honeydew, honeydew fir honey, spruce honey, nectar honeydew honey from linden, herb honey with honeydew from sycamore and linden.
Mostly honeydew honey is produced by apiaries located in the forests of Bieszczady, the Low Beskids and the Dynovsky and Peremys foothills. In addition to Podkarpackie, among other things, you can find apiaries prepared for the collection of honeydew honey in the Świętokrzyskie and Małopolska voivodeships.
But the beekeepers of Podkarpackie also receive flower varieties of honey.
Bees collect nectar from fruit trees that bloom profusely in gardens, rapeseed, and earlier willow and dandelion. An important source of nectar is forests of linden, thickets of goldenrod, raspberries and blackberries, crops of Melilot and phacelia. Beekeepers receive acacia, linden, goldenrod, rapeseed, buckwheat, phacelia, Melilot, heather honey, but especially forest herb honey.
In Podkarpackie, as regional varieties of honey, one can distinguish
- Herb honey and honeydew honey from Korzhenitsa
- Lyubachovsky linden honey
- Podkarpackie honeydew honey
What are the bees in the Podkarpackie Voivodeship
What are the bees in Podkarpackie? In different regions of the voivodship, the breeds of bees are different. The dominant breed of bees in many areas of Podkarpackie is karnika. Beekeepers use different lines of carnica, especially in mountainous areas where there is a lot of honeydew. In the northern regions of the voivodeship, on the plains, beekeepers keep a variety of breeds of bees - dark forest, Caucasian, buckfast, various hybrids based on them, also in the north of the voivodeship, the Carpathian bee, which is imported by neighbors, is popular. In the vicinity of Rzeszow there is no clear dominance of a particular breed of bees.
In Podkarpackie there are apiaries of the only bee bank in the world.
Peculiarities of beekeeping in Podkarpackie Voivodeship
What are the features of beekeeping in Podkarpackie.
The beekeepers of Podkarpackie collect an average of 30 kg of honey from a hive in the highlands in a favorable year. When it is warm, but not hot, and precipitation does not turn into showers, when there is no frost. In the foothills, you can collect up to 50 kg of honey in a good year.
If we take ordinary years, then the beekeepers of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship in the 2022 season managed to collect an average of 22 kilograms of honey from the hive. In 2020 and 2021, they managed to get about 15 kg of honey from one hive.
But there are features that depend on the terrain. For example, in the mountainous areas of Bieszczady, apiaries are small with 30-50 bee colonies, which are kept in Warsaw beds, stationary, which must be protected from bears, while the plants fade quickly, which leads to a short beekeeping season.
In the foothills of Bieszczady, apiaries are small, the largest of 40 families of bees, but already a greater variety of hives, in addition to the Warsaw hives, in apiaries you can find Wielkopolska and Dadan's hives. Several apiaries are nomadic who go to the honey-gathering of heather and rapeseed. Moreover, if no one sows honey plants in mountainous regions (reserve and highlands), then in the foothills beekeepers sow sweet clover, buckwheat, phacelia. To the west, in the foothills around Krosno, several apiaries are certified organic and many more apiaries claim to be certified organic. In the area, several beekeepers are engaged in breeding carnica queens.
On the plains of the north-east of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship, among many small apiaries, large apiaries up to 300 bee colonies appear, apiaries are mostly stationary. Despite the abundance of sowing honey plants and linden forests, the honey collection is mainly 20-30 kg per bee colony.
On the plains of the north-west of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship, among the many small apiaries of 20-30 bee colonies, the largest is 40 bee colonies. Apiaries are stationary, only a few are nomadic, despite the crops of honey plants, the lands are very poor, which provides modest honey collection, so some beekeepers specialize in obtaining packages and queen bees.
In the north of Podkarpackie, in the forests, the bulk of apiaries are 15-30 bee colonies, and only the largest has 260 bee colonies. Apiaries are stationary, but half of them are taken out for flowering honey plants, such as rapeseed or goldenrod, which occupies vast areas in abandoned fields.
The center of Podkarpackie in the region of Rzeszow has many small apiaries, among which nomadic beekeeping is quite widespread, apiaries leave for 1 - 2 honey collections. Honeydew can be provided both by the collection of honeydew in the foothills of Dynow and by the removal of apiaries to the seed crops of sweet clover, which are especially abundant in the Chmielnik-Zdrój region.
Urban beekeeping is well developed in the voivodeship.
