How my beekeeping journey began

I began beekeeping in my teenage years. My father, driven by the intention that we spend our free time doing something more meaningful than idling around, offered each of me and my three brothers five bee colonies to work with. It soon became clear that this decision was not accidental. He himself had once committed to the world of beekeeping with ten hives he had received from his father. He told us that since there were four of us, we each received five colonies, which made twenty altogether – twice as many as his own father had once given him. His plan worked: beekeeping kept us busy. For me, it consumed nearly all my free time. I missed plenty of parties with my friends, because I spent every weekend working with the bees. Yet today I don’t feel I missed out on anything. It was a formative period of my life, and the time I spent with my brothers created a bond between us that others might envy.

We collected our bee colonies in Pécs and placed them on the edge of a field in Pusztaszabolcs. At first we stumbled along, experimenting and struggling a lot. Our father taught us the basics, and for a while he accompanied us to show us the work on site. When his knowledge no longer sufficed, we turned to his sister, Tünde, with our questions. She is a professional beekeeper, running a large apiary together with the Csányi brothers, who themselves had decades of experience. With her daily guidance, we truly learned the craft.

The conditions at that time were marked by an unprecedented spread of pesticides in agriculture, unlike anything before or since. Even though today the situation is still far from ideal, the most dangerous seed dressings have since been banned. Back then, however, our hives placed among the fields were directly exposed to sprays from tractors. As a result, in the following years we spent most of our efforts trying to heal our bees, striving to expand and strengthen the colonies, but the losses came every year: many bees perished. Our activity was a struggle, but we did everything together. We made mistakes together, struggled together, and celebrated when we finally found an effective solution.

Within three to four years we had expanded the apiary to 100 colonies. We did not need to worry about markets, since, like other beekeepers, our father’s company purchased the extracted honey from us. Yet purely from an economic perspective, it was not a profitable period. The joint work came to an end when my older brothers chose different paths: Botond took charge of commercial affairs in the family business – a full-time responsibility – while Áron found work at a software company, and Bernát also turned toward IT. None of them had time left for beekeeping.

I moved the apiary from the fields of Pusztaszabolcs to Nezde in Somogy County, not far from where our father had grown up. I found an excellent location for the hives, safely away from the farmland. The improvement was immediately visible. It became crystal clear that the earlier collapse of colonies had not been due to our lack of knowledge, but to the environmental damage caused by industrial farming.

From then on, with the strengthened bee colonies, I began working on my plan: to find a method that would allow for higher honey yields with relatively less labour. I enjoyed – and still enjoy – the experimentation. I see beekeeping as a lifelong learning process. Even during my easier high school years and later in the more demanding times of studying mechanical engineering at university, this problem fascinated me most. And I can proudly say that with each passing year, my results have improved.