Heinrich Freudenstein

Heinrich Freudenstein (born February 1, 1863 in Maden ; † February 15, 1935 in Marbach (Marburg) ) was a German beekeeper and teacher. Through experiments on his own apiaries, he realized that bees hibernate better on sugar than on honey, as was customary at the time. Most bees are in the temperate zones after the end of costume fattened with sugar solutions with a fiber free to reach winter feed loss-free as possible wintering. Even if he did not invent the process, he has spread it widely in beekeeping circles. Today it is considered good professional practice in beekeeping. He is also the author of numerous monographs on beekeeping and beekeeping.

Childhood and first job as a teacher

Born and raised in Maden in the Fritzlar district in 1863. His father was a landowner and shareholder in the sugar factory in Wabern. In 1883 he took up his first job as a teacher in Bortshausen near Marburg and then switched to the elementary school in Marbach (Marburg), where, like many of the Prussian rural school teachers, he acquired some bee colonies on the side to improve the teacher's salary by selling honey. During his beekeeping he experienced the effects of the bee dysfunction in the colonies that overwintered on late-registered forest honey.

Activity as a bee scientist

Before winter feeding, some of the honey was left in the colony. Came this honey from a so-called. Honeydew , ie from honeydew , so often affected countless people in the Ruhr and walked one. Feeding with sugar as a winter supply was very controversial in beekeeping circles at the time, but gradually gained acceptance. As a result, the population deaths on the Ruhr are said to have decreased drastically. The colonies are fed from late summer to early autumn. Below about 10 degrees Celsius, the bees can no longer take in food and store it as winter supply.

Freudenstein was already feeding his bees with sugar as early as the fall of 1879. The connection between the disease only came about when he saved a colony of bees from starvation in late autumn only by feeding them sugar, and this colony then got through the winter as best and without premature cleaning flight . Freudenstein was not the inventor of winter feeding with cane sugar (as it is often portrayed in the literature and also in tradition), but as an autodidact and through thorough research in numerous specialist books he found the causes of Nosema and the possibilities for remedying it. He passed on his profound experience with sugar feeding through lectures and scientific articles.

He shared his thoughts and findings on September 23, 1886 in a lecture to the beekeeping community in Treysa . They reacted with horror and outrage when Freudenstein tried to explain to them why it was better to feed the bees with sugar than to leave the supply of honey. In the general commotion, the beekeeper Keck spoke up: “ I'm not a speaker, otherwise I would have met you! How can you advise people to do this? The bees are sure to get dysentery! "

His position as a candidate for the Reichstag in his home district, in which he ran against two anti-Semitic right- wing nationalists, ultimately led to early forced retirement via a penalty transfer. He used this to further change his beekeeping: he became a professional beekeeper. He also wrote the "Beekeeping Textbook" with several editions, wrote articles on various beekeeping topics and, after much hostility, founded his own beekeeping newspaper in 1902, the Neue Bienenzeitung , which with its innovative work approaches and recommendations quickly reached a circulation of 11,000 copies.

From 1919 to 1934 Heinrich Freudenstein held the office of mayor of Marbach (Marburg), where, among other things, he built a new elementary school and was responsible for building the settlement on Landgrafenweg. In 1934 he had to resign from his offices for political reasons .

Heinrich Freudenstein died on February 5, 1935 at the age of 72 in Marbach. He was buried in the Marbach forest cemetery.

Inventor of the Freudenstein booty

The invention of the Freudenstein hive is closely related to bee hygiene, a main problem is when there are honey residues on the hibernation combs, which can act as the germ cell of the dysentery. This knowledge led to the construction of a small wide honeycomb with the dimensions 33.8 × 20 cm and the construction of his Freudenstein hive . On the small wide honeycombs, the honey no longer has any space in the brood chamber and is therefore stored in the honey chamber . The depth of the Einetager is 60 cm, it fits about 16 frames. As a honey stick, he developed the two-day bed. The Freudenstein hive is designed as an aftertreatment hive.

Freudenstein names the following advantages of his prey:

• Well suited in areas with low costumes. Due to the small size, there is always a safe harvest, even under poor conditions.
• Very suitable for traditional lappers.
• Even the smallest people can protect themselves from the cold, mold and wax moths in a low honeycomb cane .
• Swarms develop quickly.
• Saves winter feed because the bees have less space to heat through muscle contraction .
• Fewer deaths after an excursion, because the winter clusters are stored near the floor board and the entrance hole, the bees that have flown out can quickly return to the warmth.

Two different colonies can be kept and overwintered at the same time in a two-day camp. This is quite significant in areas with early garb, where it is important to bring the colonies to the greatest possible strength as quickly as possible. The two bee colonies kept in one hive are united in early spring so that the foraging bees of two colonies are available for early forage, but only the brood of one queen has to be cared for.

Freudenstein had a long dispute about his prey with his beekeeper colleague Ferdinand Gerstung . Gerstung first called his stick a "bee-killing stick" without being able to give any reason for it. Freudenstein's arguments against Gerstung's theses: Large honeycombs and large peoples make small honey pots; small honeycombs and "underdeveloped" colonies result in large honey pots!

Personality and aftermath of his activities

The dog lover and passionate hunter was headstrong and headstrong, but he remained open to art and music, formed a small concert group around him and made music with his cello in the Collegium musicum. In old age he still learned foreign languages ​​and published a. a. in American magazines.

In his orchard he is tentatively with Krainer Bauer sticks of Anton Janša have geimkert. He was a great admirer of the Carnica breed , whose distribution in the Marburg countryside came from him; it was continued in the later establishment of pure breeding areas and mating sites .

Many beekeepers, especially in the Marburg countryside, kept their bees in Freudenstein hives until the Varroa mite appeared in the 1980s.

Marriage and offspring

Heinrich Freudenstein was married to Katharina, née Preiß. They had five children (two sons and three daughters). His son, Dr. Karl Freudenstein, became the first director of the teaching and research institute for beekeeping founded in Marburg in 1928.

Works

• The life of bees: based on almost forty years of observation and experience, Neue Bienenzeitung, 1924 (80 pages).
• Beekeeping Textbook, 6th edition, Neue Bienenzeitung, 1924 (471 pages).
• Auslese and Königinnenzucht - from leaflets to promote domestic beekeeping, 3rd edition, Pabst Verlag, 1938 (35 pages).

literature

• Freudenstein, Heinrich: Textbook of beekeeping . 4th edition Marburg 1912.
• Freudenstein, Karl: Beekeeper, wake up! In: Neue Bienen-Zeitung, illustrated monthly for reform of beekeeping 24, 1925, pp. 3–7.

Individual evidence

1. Jump up ↑ Flügel H.-J .: Bee mortality through the ages : From Columella to CCD ; published in the Entomological Journal (2015); Schwanfeld 125 (1) (p. 31)
2. ^ Freudenstein, H. (1902): Neue Bienen-Zeitung, first volume, 192 p., Marburg
3. ↑ Freudenstein, H. (1912): Textbook of beekeeping , 4th improved and increased edition, 358 p., Marburg
4. ↑ Zuckerpabst.html newspaper: HNA (from January 31, 2013)
5. ↑ Freudenstein, H. (1912): Textbook of beekeeping , 4th improved and increased edition, 358 p., Marburg