Slovenian Bee Shed, Lenny Taylor, Smugmug.com"Slovenian bee-houses are unique phenomenon with their high roofs and special forms, which express a particular care and liking for the bees of our beekeepers...""...the reasons [for using these houses] were extremely demanding and quickly changeable climate conditions, short, although sometimes abundant pastures, relief features, small space, tradition, necessity of transports to pastures and other reasons."
Franc Šivic, vice-president of the Bee-keepers’ Association of Slovenia
" They were decorating the small front boards over the gullet with different little pictures depictings Saints, people and animals and especially from everyfay life. The contents of the pictures on the beehive box ends are sometimes religious, sometimes educational but evry often also both humoristic and satirical.
Today we cannot define exactly when the first beehive endings were made and we can only guess as to the cause of such a sort of paintings. We do know that the first dated beehive ending origantes from the year 1758. Unfortunately most of them in the passage of time were lost, partly beacuse people did not know to appreciate their historical and documentary value"
Here is a lovely depiction of some of the box lids of more Slovenian Bee Sheds.
The Virtual Ranger has two nice articles on the same here>> and here>> The ranger also points us to this very impressive page >> (www.pcela.co.yu) that gets into a great deal of the history and style of the Slovenian beekeepers.
Check it out.