District - A bee specialist is retiring, but his passion for bees will remain: Arno Bruder, long-time head of specialist advice for beekeeping in the Upper Bavaria district and head of the district beekeeping school in Landsberg, will in future increasingly devote himself to "private offshoots" .
“Today is a special day for me,” says Arno Bruder. “A day of slow saying goodbye.” For 35 years he worked as a “bee consultant” for the Upper Bavaria district. That leaves traces. His departure took place in an appropriate, "bee-worthy" setting: namely following the official award ceremony "Bee-friendly community 2021", which was celebrated last Tuesday in the Argar education center. The award honors three district communities for their commitment to a bee and insect-friendly environment (see below).
As a specialist advisor, Bruder accompanied the competition, in which three municipalities from the Landsberg district also took part.
Quasi his last official act, together with District Assembly President Josef Mederer: the presentation of the Siegerlandkreise and the presentation of the prize money of up to 3,000 euros.
It is nice to see that municipalities take responsibility for the habitat of the bees and thus make an important contribution to the environment, said Mederer.
With a "laughing and a crying eye" Mederer headed the award ceremony to say goodbye to brother.
Starting retirement is actually something pleasant, but after 14 years of working together, saying goodbye is not easy either.
The year 1986, in which Brother, at that time still living in Baden-Württemberg, started his work for the Upper Bavaria district, was not an easy one: bee deaths due to mite infestation, insect deaths due to Chernobyl radiation, great uncertainty throughout the beekeeping community - right from the start a challenge that Bruder solved “expertly and professionally”, according to Mederer. Training courses, bee training stations, participation in support programs, trips to world beekeeping conferences (some with bee power in the battery) - that was all uncharted territory in the past. Brother quickly recognized the importance of such measures and expanded them further.
He has also always wanted to bring the “wonder world of bees” closer to young people - in the form of lectures at schools, for example. He had reached 15,000 students with it. The fruits of this can still be harvested today. Not only in the form of honey, but also of manpower. A former student is now his deputy technical advisor: Christian Altenburger. The brother's successor has not yet been clarified.
Bruder has been accompanying the agricultural education center in Landsberg since 2005, installing the training center, recruiting staff and training young beekeepers at the beekeeping school. Brother is an “active mediator of knowledge”, according to Mederer. And always asked and valued when it comes to bees. In more than 4,000 statements and reports, Bruder has always clearly suggested his responsible position towards the environment, for example when it came to discontinuing pesticides.
Brother was the “right man in the right place”, according to Walter Haefeker, President of the European Professional and Commercial Beekeeping Association.
As a long-standing member of the board of directors, Bruder takes care of specialist beekeeping problems throughout Europe.
For Haefeker, the fact that the specialist advice is suspended from the Upper Bavaria district is a great foresight.
Brother not only advised people professionally, but always infected them with his passion for bees.
The fact that a position can be filled with so much life gives him hope.
Lobbyist for the bees
“I liked being a lobbyist for bees - and for the environment,” says Bruder, who lives in Weilheim. It was an honor and an inner concern for him. Today the topic is more urgent than ever - and he would actually have liked to take care of the field a little more. He is therefore a little wistful. But he is now also looking forward to retirement. Which of course won't be really calm. With his son, Bruder still runs one of the largest beekeepers in Bavaria in Polling. A social project takes him to Tanzania in March, where he will look after beekeeping groups on the edge of the Serengeti National Park. Last but not least, there are offshoots not only in the bee colony, Brother said, but also “in human existence”. He can look at "five small offshoots" himself. And he is already looking forward to spending a lot of time with them in the future.
