Our apiculture can be traced back to 3 generations. My grandfather was a railwayman, he worked with 20-30 bee colonies in addition to his work. From the 1940s he produced honey, comb honey, pollen and propolis, and sold them to the villagers.
Meanwhile my father was the chief of the bus-station in Szekszárd, and he was not particularly interested in apiculture. Then, in 1964 he changed his mind and tried it. So my grandfather gave him two small Boczonád – type straw-hives with bees. Three years later the Nagydorog ÁFÉSZ sold its apiary, and my father bought from that apiary 20 bee colonies in NB18 brood nest – superhive hives, and continuously developed them up 60 bee colonies. Every year he migrated to various flowers and honey plants with his other local beekeeper friends. This was a very good payment supplement at that time.
My parents had an opportunity in 1982. One old friend of them wanted to sell a ½ NB frame container with 40 bee colonies in Vas county. They grabbed the opportunity and bought it, and thus began a new era in their beekeeping. My dad managed to rear his own queen bees in his apiary, then from 1985 he reared for selling too, while he continued migrating until 2000, from the time he was only dealing with queen bee rearing.
I started beekeeping in 1993 with two bee colonies in the same small Boczonádi hives which had been used by my father before. Then with his help, I was expanding my beekeeping year after year, first only with one – two, later with more and more bee colonies. In 1997 I got a beekeeper-degree in Eger, and in 2002 I got a master degree in beekeeping.
I started to use my first container, type NB 24 with 80 colonies, in 1999. This gave the idea for today’s „Tolnai” container, which has a lifting corridor. In those days we saw several NB18 warm way hives in containers in Zala and Vas counties, but they were without lifing corridors. From the combination of these two containers we developed a container in which many bee colonies can be easily handled. In 2000 there were completed two of them, one for my father and one for me. I was developing from this one up to 5 containers, and we (I and my wife) have been migrating with them.
Nowadays we have 460 bee colonies in our apiary. I have been raising queen bees mainly for my beekeeping and only a small number of queens for selling, until 2015. After my father’s death, I came to a crossroads. Because of the high demand I decided to develop our beekeeping to raising queen bees. So now we are changing our apiary from honey production to rearing queen bees.
We are very confident that one of our three sons will continue beekeeping, and will enhance our family’s reputation.
We would like to serve all our old and new customers in the future with reliable and productive queen bees, and the honey consumers with premium quality honey.
Sándor Illés