Anna Maurizio

Anna Maurizio in the laboratory of the bee department at the Liebefeld research station around 1960

Anna Maurizio in her house on Rosenweg in Liebefeld around 1970

Anna Maurizio (born November 26, 1900 in Lemberg ; † July 24, 1993 in Liebefeld near Bern ) was a Swiss bee researcher . For over three decades she worked in the bee department of the Federal Dairy and Bacteriological Institute in Liebefeld. She coined the term " bee botany " and developed new methods for determining the pollen in honey .

Stations in her life

Anna Maurizio, daughter of the botanist and cultural historian Adam Maurizio , came from an old family in the canton of Graubünden. Your ancestors lived in Poland as "Swiss Abroad" for decades. She was born in Lviv in 1900. There they visited several schools to Graduate and studied botany and entomology at the Technical University of Lvov . In 1923 she obtained the degree of agricultural engineer. In 1924 she went to Switzerland and continued her studies at the University of Bern . There she received her doctorate in 1927 with a dissertation on powdery mildew fungi of the genus Podosphaera .

In 1928 Anna Maurizio took on a traineeship at the Federal Dairy and Bacteriological Institute in Liebefeld near Bern . At first she worked there on the damage caused by mold to Emmentaler cheese . However, she soon became interested in the mycological problems of beekeeping . After 1930 she switched to the bee department of the Liebefeld research institute as a research assistant and from then on worked on the core problems in the entire field of apiculture and honey research . She retired in 1965 .

Research services

In her mycological work in the field of apiculture , Anna Maurizio first examined various types of fungi in beehives and examined their living conditions depending on the climatic conditions. However, the focus of her further research was the pollen analysis of honeys . She developed new microscopic examination methods with the help of pollen analysis to quantitatively determine the geographical origin of honey varieties. For decades she was considered the undisputed expert in the field of honey pollen analysis. This branch of bee science, melissa palynology , experienced a quantum leap with her research work.

Anna Maurizio coined the term "bee botany". By this she understood the relationship between bees and the plant environment. Above all, knowledge of the foraging plants , the nutritional physiology of bees, the poisoning of bees by plants and plant protection measures as well as the fundamental relationships between beekeeping and agriculture are topics of bee botany. Anna Maurizio did research in all of these areas. On her initiative, following the beekeeping congress in Leamington Spa (England) in 1951, an International Commission for Bee Botany was founded, which she presided over for almost two decades.

The list of publications of Anna Maurizio includes 150 articles in professional journals and several magazines and books. Her main work is Das Trachtenpflanze , a work written together with Ina Grafl, a manual on nectar and pollen as the most important food sources for honey bees. It was first published in 1969, and then in further editions. After Anna Maurizio's death, Friedgard Schaper published a fourth expanded edition in 1994.

Anna Maurizio belongs to the ranks of the outstanding, also internationally known bee researchers of the 20th century. More recently, Dorothea Brückner, head of the Apiculture Research Center at the University of Bremen, presented her life's scientific achievement and collectibles from her research at the Darwin's Sisters exhibition. This science presentation, presented as a traveling exhibition , was on view at the beginning of 2009 in the House of Science in Bremen . The next exhibition location was the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim .

Fonts

• On the biology and systematics of the pomaceous podosphere . Diss. Univ. Bern 1927.
• Observations on the lifespan and feed consumption of captive bees. Contribution to the methodology of feeding experiments . With statistical analysis by A. Linder. Schweizerische Bienen-Zeitung 1946, supplement; H. 13 - Vol. 2.
• Pollen analysis tests on honey and pollen pants . Schweizerische Bienen-Zeitung 1949, supplement; H. 18 = vol. 2.
• Further studies on pollen pants. Contribution to the recording of pollen consumption in different areas of Switzerland . Schweizerische Bienen-Zeitung 1953, supplement; H. 20 = vol. 2.
• Blossom, nectar, pollen, honey . Publishing house of the German bee industry Munich 1960.
• Werner Kloft, Anna Maurizio and Walter Kaeser: The forest honey book. Origin and properties of forest honey . Ehrenwirth Verlag Munich 1965; 2nd supplement and exp. Ed. With the collaboration of A. Fossel under the title forest costume and forest honey in the beekeeping. Origin, production and properties of forest honey . Ibid. 1985.
• Anna Maurizio and Ina Grafl: The Trachtpflanze book. Nectar and pollen - the honeybees' main food sources . Ehrenwirth Verlag Munich 1969; 2nd edition 1980; 3rd edition 1982; 4th revised and significantly expanded edition by Anna Maurizio and Friedgard Schaper, ibid. 1994.
• The honey. Origin, production, properties and examination of the honey . First edition 1927 by Enoch Zander and Albert Koch. Completely reworked by Anna Maurizio. Beekeeping Handbook in individual presentations, 2nd edition, Vol. 6, Verlag Eugen Ulmer Stuttgart 1975.

literature

• Otto Morgenthaler: On the resignation of Dr. Anna Maurizio . In: Zeitschrift für Bienenforschung , Vol. 8 (1965/66), Issue 5, pp. 130–140, (with list of publications and picture on p. 129).
• Joachim Evenius: Dr. Maurizio's contribution to practical beekeeping . In: Zeitschrift für Bienenforschung , Vol. 8 (1965/66), Issue 5, pp. 141–142
• Jean Louveaux: The Scientific Work of Anna Maurizio . In: Apidologie , Vol. 21 (1990), pp. 397-416, (French-language text; German and English summaries with list of publications and picture on p. 381).
• Jean Louveaux: In memoriam. Anna Maurizio (1900-1993) . In: Apidologie , Vol. 24 (1993), p. 536, (French-language text).
• Peter Fluri and Jean-Daniel Charrière: Anna Maurizio, pioneer of bee botany, would be 100 years old . In: Schweizerische Bienenzeitung vol. 123 (2000), issue 11, pp. 660–661, (with several photos).
• Irmgard Jung-Hoffmann: Women and other oddities . In: Deutsches Bienen-Journal , vol. 16 (2008), issue 7, pp. 308-309, (short biography of Anna Maurizio, with picture).

Web links

• Literature by and about Anna Maurizio in the catalog of the German National Library
• The exhibition Darwin's Sisters