The Bee House

The Stage is Set in the Bee Theater

“Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen, our performers are ready to present the tiniest show after the flea circus!” Not only will you see how the bees kiss, but also how they work, create, and grow, up close in our “Schaustock-Theater” inside the bee house. You’ll get close to the buzzing swarm and may even notice how your own mind becomes calmer. Every day, the “Bee Theater” features a new stage setting. Sometimes it’s acrobatic feats in the air, other times it’s the precise choreography of the waggle dance. It’s never boring!

Perhaps you’ll witness the touching moment when the bees kiss. What does that mean? It’s the moment when a foraging bee lands and her proboscis intertwines with that of a worker bee. An intimate kiss where nectar flows. They remain connected until the last drop. Then, they part ways—the one returning to the hive, the other flying out again.

There are many more reasons to stay, for there’s much we can learn from the bees—and by extension, from our beekeeper too.

We grow with the bees

Did you know that we owe the bees more than just their delicious honey? They shape words that come naturally to us. In a beehive, it’s dark—pitch dark. It seems the word ‘stockdunkel’ (pitch dark) might have been invented by the bees. They want to show us that there is a kind of ‘seeing’ that doesn’t depend on light. In the darkness, we hear, smell, taste, and touch better. In our small dark corridor inside the bee house, you can embark on a sensory adventure. What do you rely on—buzzing, or your feelers?

The words ‘wachsen’ (to grow) and ‘erwachsen werden’ (to become an adult) also have their roots with the bees. Bees don’t just grow through their experiences and age. They sweat wax flakes from their glands and then shape them into their honeycombs. ‘Wax’ as a symbol of ‘warmth’. Without warmth, there is no growth, no becoming an adult.

For a small contribution, you can roll a piece of wax into a candle in the bee house and take home the scent and light of the bee house. Every time you light your candle
at home and the sweet scent of honey fills the air, let it remind you of your time at Hexenwasser.

Shall We Start to Swarm Together?

A little dance, a loving kiss, and then off to the next adventure. Sometimes, don’t you wish you could trade places with the bees? But their job is far from easy. With their ‘waggle dance’, for example, the bees communicate where to find nectar-rich flowers, how far away they are, and how abundant the supply is. The bees’ language and sense of orientation are truly impressive. In a bee flight show right outside the bee house, the bees demonstrate their departures and arrivals on a small board in front of the hive entrance. You’ll receive opera glasses and marvel at the power, strength, and wisdom of the bees.

The bees swarm, work, and care for their entire environment. Regularly, they come together and buzz as one. Just like us, when we coordinate well with each other. We can observe how large groups of animals—such as flocks of birds, schools of fish, and especially insect species—coordinate their behaviour so that the entire group thrives. A colony or a hive finds solutions to problems that would be unimaginable for individual creatures. Up to 50,000 bees can live in a hive, and they have developed methods to settle disagreements and find the best solutions for the group. This is called swarm intelligence, and it can be useful to us humans as well.

The beehive is like a mind that is open on all sides. What the bees do is essentially the same thing that the mind inside does, as Rudolf Steiner said in 1923.