Our Bees

Sustainability and regionality are important topics at trigema. Our slogan „100% Made in Germany“ represents Germany as our production location. As the employee park gradually became greener, we also had the idea of creating a habitat for insects.

The idea of being able to produce our own honey with our own bee colonies was met with immediate enthusiasm. For this reason, five bee colonies are now based on the trigema company premises, and female employees from our company family are being trained so that, in cooperation with a professional beekeeper, they can regularly and properly care for the bees.

With these hardworking pollen collectors, there is always something to do. It is important to acquire basic knowledge in order to respond to the bees' varied needs and keep the hive healthy and clean. As bees are not naturally aggressive, working with them is generally a safe activity and offers our employees a relaxing change from their working day while also allowing them to spend time outdoors in nature.

Of course, the decision to keep our own bees was not made for the honey alone. Through their pollination work, bees make an invaluable contribution to biodiversity and natural ecosystems. Bees are also essential to agriculture, helping to secure harvests and increase yields. For us at trigema, it therefore seemed a natural step to create a habitat for bees on our company premises with five bee colonies.

Bees as Important Pollinators of Crops and Wild Plants

To collect honeydew, nectar or pollen, bees need pasture rich in flowers and blossoms, which is being created around the location of our bees on the trigema premises. Flowering meadows with their colourful variety also enrich our landscapes and make them more attractive for people seeking recreation, as well as for the many insects whose existence depends on this rich supply.

In Baden-Württemberg alone, nectar and pollen provide a food source for more than 450 species of bees and are used to feed their offspring. As in many areas of life, there is a constant give and take: flowering plants depend on hard-working bees for reproduction. When collecting nectar and pollen, bees transfer pollen and therefore perform a key function in landscape ecosystems. Without their considerable pollination work, both cultivated and wild plants would have far greater difficulty producing fruit or seeds.

Bees are among the most important animals for the pollination of around 3,000 cultivated and wild plants and are responsible for a significant share of the pollination of fruit crops. Without them, fewer flowers would be pollinated and fruit formation would be reduced. For many crops, there is also a direct link between visits by honeybees and the resulting yield. Rapeseed pods, for example, produce more seeds the more frequently they are visited by bees. The importance of wild bees should not be overlooked either. Numerous important crops such as beans, peas and clover are pollinated exclusively by them.

Bees therefore also play an important role in the pollination of many crops.

Cotton is also one of the crops for which pollinators can play a role. As we cannot imagine a world without colour, we are pleased to provide a habitat for bees with our colonies on the company premises.

Perhaps the sense of community within a bee colony also reminded us a little of our trigema company family. Every member of the colony fulfils an important role and contributes to the well-being of the community. Everything is organised down to the smallest detail and there is a strong sense of cohesion.

The Beekeeper's Responsibility Goes into Great Detail

For beekeeping, it is essential to know the environment in which the bees live in detail. For example, it is important to know at all times which plants are flowering and what weather is expected, including whether conditions may become too cold or too dry for the bees. The beekeeper must therefore visit the colonies regularly to make sure they are doing well. During these visits, the beekeeper checks which sources the bees are currently collecting from in order to determine whether the result will be a single-flower or mixed honey. Based on this, the right time for removing the honeycombs is determined.

One to three times a year comes the highlight of every beekeeper's work: harvesting their own honey. There is an early harvest, a summer harvest and a late harvest before the bees are prepared for winter. To obtain the precious honey, the beekeeper removes the combs from the hive. Once opened, the honey can be extracted using a centrifugal process. It is then strained, stirred and filled into containers before being stored and offered for sale.

The first harvest of our own trigema honey has already taken place. As you can see in the pictures, we received plenty of support from our company family, from extracting the honey to filling the jars with our first own trigema honey, which we offered for sale in the Burladingen Test Store under the quality statement „100% Made in Germany“. Thanks to the active support of our beekeeper, everything worked very well and, thanks to his extensive knowledge, the experience was also highly informative.

A Taste of trigema's Home in Every Drop of Honey

Honey is a unique food and natural product that can only be produced by honeybees. They collect sweet plant juices and transform them into honey inside the honeycomb cells of the hive. Honey contains more than 180 different constituents, including enzymes, easily digestible carbohydrates such as fructose and glucose, minerals, trace elements and vitamins. Honey also reflects the landscape in which a bee colony lives – in our case, the Swabian Alb. The aroma, flavour and consistency of the honey are influenced by the flowering plants growing in the immediate surroundings of the colonies. We can support this regional character through the use of native wildflower seeds.