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The four-legged bird of death, from an old Slovenian bee panel.
Slovenia has an old and glorious tradition of decorating the front boards of beehives, known as poslikane panjske konÄ?nice.
The first one appeared as early as 1758, and featured the Virgin Mary.
Biblical themes remained popular after that, so you’ll find scenes
ranging from the Garden of Eden to the crucifixion to Job sitting on a large pile of manure. (Job was considered the protector of beekeepers in Slovenia. Also popular were depictions of St. Florian, the protector against fire.)
The boards were often painted by the beekeepers themselves and showed scenes from everday life back then, such as people dancing, drinking, enjoying a windy day, or taking a large dump in the middle of a field.
This page has 142 pictures of decorated Slovenian bee boards, including the one you see above: the mighty "bird of death." The phrase Mertvaška Tica ki se je na turškem perkazala
means something like "The bird of death that appeared in Turkey." It’s
old Slovene. I suppose they’re talking about a military defeat of the
Turks — perhaps the Battle of Sisak in 1593. I’m not sure. However, "bird of death" would be a great name for a band, even though it reminds me a bit of the Duck of Death.
For more bee-related goodness, see: A virtual tour of the Museum of Apiculture in Radovljica and this page about Slovenia’s famous Carniolan bees.
(Via Metafilter)
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WOOT! A new post.Did you know that the Carniolan bee is the hardest working bee in ze vorld?
I just finished my
)
late breakfast of homemade bread with the awesome Slovenian honey from the beekeeper
here in my neighborhood. It made me feel so happy. Then I checked your blog to find this post. Great article. I love
Slovenian honey and their awesome beehives. I hope this tradition never dies
out. Long live Carniola! (The bee of course
Wow. This may be my favorite post in recent memory. I have always loved
bees and their fine work, and when I learned that Slovenia was the
birthplace of modern apiculture and the Carniolan Grey Bee, it seemed
that I was fated to come here to live. Thanks especially for providing
the links. Good work and worth the wait.
Finally, an update! Great! As far as the bird of death,
there is a heavy metal band called Hatebeak,
featuring a bird as the lead singer. Check out some of the
sample mp3s. You will regret it.
Yes, that is a great post…
Why are the best ideas always taken? I listened to a Hatebeak sample, and it was excellently terrible, although it sounded more like a pig than a parrot.I was in Radovljica once, for the annual music festival there, and can strongly recommend the museum. It has a huge hive covered in glass that you can inspect, which is neat-o libido. I also remember that one of the performers at the festival that year (a violinist from the U.K., I think) got stung by a Carniolan bee shortly before her scheduled performance. She had an allergic reaction and almost couldn’t perform. It was quite dramatic.
Hatebeak link and sample mp3s. Dude, the new editing interface sucks for links. Just leave the good ol’ HTML.
Crni, what sucks about?
I sometimes get a weird lag when I try to delete something — don’t know if I’m the only one. Otherwise it’s all good.
I guess I was just used to HTML. When I putthe HTML in, it totally
messed up my mesage. Then I tried to fix it, I changed all the < and
> symbols back to sybold, but it still didn’t work. Then I tried the
link button, but what sucks about it is it doesnt light up until you
have some text selected. So now I have to select text with mouse and
click the button. Then enter the stuff in the popup window. Then click
the unlink button. Also, the link description didn’t show up from the
popup form, but rather stayed whatever the highlighted text was. It was
less hassle to just type everything in using HTML.
Anyway, don’t mind me. Just a litle grumpy today.