The bees living in the monastery garden of Beuron

The garden of the Archabbey of Beuron is embellished by a stunning apiary hosting 15 bee colonies and providing many colourful landing zones for the bees. It is the unquestioned domain of Brother Siegfried who is in charge of the bees. Martin Erdmann, a member of our advisory board, visited him.

He found apiaries emblematic for the romanticised beekeeper’s life as they are widespread in the south-west of Germany, in Switzerland and Austria. They are not simply functional, but testify the beekeeper’s exceptional love for his bee colonies and for his work with them. Inside the apiary, the hives are protected from the elements while the bees are flying out into the countryside and the beekeeper can feel at home and at peace. The garden of the Benedictine Archabbey of Beuron is the home of a particularly lovely apiary that has been standing there for decades. As the garden is located within the enclosed area, it is not open to the public. To give you a little insight, I would like to share with you my words and the fantastic pictures shot by the monastery’s master gardener, Brother Felix.

A home in vivid colours for the bees

The Archabbey of Beuron is located in the Upper Danube Valley, not far from Sigmaringen, in a landscape conservation area. Even though it has a railway station and is visited by many pilgrims throughout the year, who can stay at the abbey’s hotel, one can hardly imagine a more peaceful and tranquil location for a monastery.

The Danube, which is still narrow here, flows around the monastery in a large arc, and all around the rocks rise steeply in a picturesque manner, thus providing ideal conditions for many different herbs and plants – and for keeping bees.

As a visitor you might be taken by surprise when you discover the colourfulness of the apiary located in the monastery garden. The monks use this garden for their own food supply, while Brother Felix also grows plants to produce herbal extracts made from marigolds or artichokes. However, the apiary at the edge of the garden is the unquestioned domain of Brother Siegfried. When I ask whether it was difficult for him to get used to working with bees, his answer is full of enthusiasm:

“Absolutely not. I have always loved animals of all kinds. I grew up on a small farm – my father was a low-ranking post office clerk – and this is where I got used to dealing with animals from my early childhood. The neighbour was keeping bees and I grew a particular interest in them. It’s just very simple: He who can cope with a cow can also do so with bees.”

Having spent some time as a beekeeper myself, I had to smile when I heard this, and wondered: What is more challenging, to protect oneself from the cow’s horns or from the bee’s stingers?

The 78-year-old wiry and active monk must admit: “In the beginning, it was a grind all day and night. This is because I had to take over the apiary from one day to the other when Brother Luitfried, the monastery’s beekeeper at that time, passed away. He was a professional master of beekeeping. I had helped him before, but now I was suddenly left alone with all the bees.”

At that time, there were 40 colonies at stake, and probably everyone who started beekeeping can still remember how much work it was to begin with maybe two or three colonies.

“The bees have been in Beuron for more than 100 years, and, in earlier times, there were up to 100 colonies. Nowadays, there are about 15 left in the apiary and another external beehouse. But indoors the bees are calmer, that’s where I like to work the most. Especially as I also have some images of the beekeeper’s patrons inside: John the Baptist, Ambrose of Milan and Bernard of Clairvaux. Most of the time I work alone, because unfortunately all those I trained left the monastery later on.”

But Brother Siegfried is far from being a solitary man. He enjoys a lively exchange with his colleagues from the regional beekeepers’ association of the city of Sigmaringen and is always up to date. “You learn the most from other beekeepers, not from theory,” says Brother Siegfried, who still wishes to study for the official title of a master beekeeper, if only he were younger.

The beehive as Noah’s Ark

“I let the bees do the work, my job is to support them and to protect them from any harm. For me, the aim is not to trade in honey, but to supply the monastery,” says Brother Siegfried. Honey is so precious to him that he only treats himself to a spoonful for breakfast on Sundays. For the industrious monk, the most rewarding motivation for being a beekeeper is the community life for which the bees are a living symbol and, most of all, the fascination of creation itself. A spirit that corresponds with the Benedictine motto: Ora et labora – Pray and work!

“Our honey yields are made from flowers. They are mixed honeys with a strong flavour originating from the manifold of rare plants growing here. Sometimes we also have a little bit of honeydew honey.”

As a monk, Brother Siegfried also knows the biblical and liturgical references to the bee found, for example, in the Easter Proclamation “Exsultet”, and quotes: “‘It tells us of a candle that is fed by precious wax drawn out by mother bees.’ Unfortunately though, I have no time to draw candles. I trade the raw wax at the beekeeper’s shop.” Who could blame him?

For Brother Siegfried, spring is the most beautiful time to spend with the bees, when the colonies awake to new life:

“You can experience the miracle of creation over and over again. The bees are in their hive, but a few soak up the scent coming through the entrance. The weather is getting better so it’s: Off we go! Search for food! Somewhere, there will be liverleaves in blossom and the bees will surely find them. The queen bee will be laying eggs, more than its own weight in one day. It is a true and astonishing miracle of nature. For me, the beehive always reminds me of Noah’s Ark. You don’t see it from the outside, but inside it bursts with life.”

It is fascinating to hear Brother Siegfried talk about his life, in which he devoted himself to many things, always with the desire to progress, to take on responsibility and to serve the community. After graduating from commercial school, he began a career at the postal service and worked in various positions at the post office directorate of the Freiburg-Constance region. He served in the German Armed Forces and was a reservist for three years: “It was a good time that taught me to be independent”, as Brother Siegfried says. He played in a music association, and from an early age, church life was important to him. It was in 1968 when he finally chose to enter the monastery of Beuron. “It took me 15 years of preparation, but they were good ones,” he concludes in a reflective mood. His skills qualified him for a position in the monastery’s administration followed by many years of work in the art publishing house, before he gathered completely new, exciting experiences during a placement in the press department of the Marienhospital in Stuttgart. Afterwards, he was supposed to work as a porter at the abbey, but things turned out different: The nurse of the monastery suddenly left and his successor was: Brother Siegfried. “For ten years it was a mission of life and death,” he says in all seriousness. And still, he always found a little bit of extra time for the bees and many other monastic assignments. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that the monks spend three to four hours in church every day, a duty from which Brother Siegfried had to be exempted quite a few times.

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