At the Nordic Baltic Bee Research meeting in February in Oslo, I did meet Sissel Goodgame. A Norwegian female beekeeper showing the most wonderful pictures of her new home in the artic close to some of the northernmost part of Norway. Close to 1.800 km north of the capital Oslo in Norway. Same distance as from Copenhagen to Rome. Showing the extend of Norway to the north. Very close to the Russian border. Nature is wild, clean, unpolluted, rough, and amazing. From the 17th of May there is 24 hours daylight. Everything is close to nature. Sissel and her husband moved from Bergen to the new place. Since there is no varroa in the northern part of Norway, Sissel had to buy new colonies and transport them on a trailer over 1700 km. Long distance transport!
The picture showing the coverage of snow in mid-March. All colonies are covered with extra insulation wall, which stay there until the snow has melted in April-May. There have been beekeepers in the area earlier. Now it is Sissel’s turn. Now she regards herself as the most northern beekeeper in the world. She wants to introduce beekeeping in the area and has already invited other people to beekeeping. This project is very exciting and very promising. For sure the season is short up there. But plenty of nature and flowers for the bees. I did present our INSIGNIA project at the same symposia, and it was here that Sissel did come up with the idea of using her apiary as a reference apiary. Luckily our project did have exactly 10 spare APIStrips, that we can use in one colony up there. This is very exciting. Welcome to Sissel and we are very excited to see the result from the world Northern most bee colonies.
Flemming Vejsnæs
