Green hero Marcel Horck takes you into the fascinating world of bees

Nature makes you happy. We can't say it often enough, but we like to show it off. By introducing you to our green heroes. These are people who are overjoyed by nature and have found a way to be fully engaged in it.

Take Marcel Horck. A professional beekeeper who decided 11 years ago to turn his hobby of beekeeping into his work. With a smile from ear to ear, he says that nothing is as fascinating as keeping bees. That he will never want to do anything else and should have taken it up sooner. 

It all started when he was 17 years old. He lived on a farm in the middle of nature. He could be found outside day and night, so when his father started a beekeeping course, he was immediately in interested. He now maintains 150 beehives. A large number of them are in the back garden at elho. Keeping bees makes you look at nature differently and that never gets boring, according to Marcel. "Bees are full of secrets and it is so fascinating!"

He feels that people are becoming more and more removed from nature. They have no idea how important bees are for our food. They no longer make the link between nature and what eventually ends up on your plate. Without bees, without flowers that they can pollinate, there is no fruit. No food.

Take the strawberry. Each seed of the strawberry stands for a successful pollination by a bee. This means that a strawberry must be pollinated 50 times by a bee before it becomes a deliciously juicy, sweet strawberry! By understanding this, you learn to look at nature differently. That is what Marcel strives for.

His tip is: go into nature with your eyes wide open! Look around you and especially at the insects. There are so many species and they all make an important contribution to nature, to the food on your plate. By discovering them, reading about them and getting to know them, you get to know nature better. The funny thing is that it also makes you look differently at everything that grows and blooms in your garden. It might seem obvious: but get rid of the tiles and put flowers in their place. Bees can smell the tasty pollen from miles away and before you know it they will be buzzing all over your garden.

Or you can go for an insect hotel! Place it right in the sun and you are guaranteed to have wild bee entertainment all summer long. Should we worry about stinging bees? "No, bees are only interested in themselves and don't really care about you at all.” 

A contribution to nature can be as simple as that. And you get so much in return. How wonderful!