Who we are and why we do all this
The Čmeláci PLUS zs Association is a non-profit legal entity in the Czech Republic.
Read more about the group Čmeláci PLUS , which preceded the Association.
Our original intention was to establish a non-formal group. We did not need any legal personality or subsidies for our activities.
However, over time and as our activities expanded, we began to encounter limits created by the lack of legal personality.
Ultimately, it was precisely the need to participate in formal nature protection proceedings where we wanted to actively act as a subject. That is why, after several years of our activity, we decided in December 2021 to establish
With the Polek Čmeláci PLUS zs
Not much will change in our activities and work, but we believe that a certain degree of formalization and registration of the Association will help us better fulfill our goals - they remain the same. However, we will gain additional opportunities, including possible financing of larger projects that members' own pockets are not enough for. However, this does not change the principle of our independence.
But we don't want to forget how we were founded and who was behind the creation of the group and subsequently the Association .
The group was created as a confirmation of the long friendship of a small group of enthusiasts. We had known each other for a long time and one fine day we decided to establish our own Facebook page. We wanted to create a counterbalance to the number of commercial activities that have been and are still riding the wave of interest in bumblebees. The information provided by these entities/pages is often incomplete, misleading and sometimes downright incorrect. This is what we wanted to address and we are succeeding in doing so to some extent.
In 2019, we launched our website www.cmelaciplus.cz. We established the website as a set of instructions for breeders, but also for those who want to create a suitable living environment for social insects in their gardens. Their content continues to develop as environmental conditions change and bumblebee breeding develops.
In 2020, we expanded the website with other important elements - instructions for school projects, instructions and experiences from environmental care in municipalities. We established cooperation with a number of associations. We received the first space in the media and began our communication with the Ministry of the Environment and the Czech Environmental Inspectorate.
In 2021, we embarked on our own catalog of bumblebee and bumblebee species in the Czech Republic, just as we founded the Čmeláčí PLUS Seed Plant. However, the main milestone is the establishment of the Association and the establishment of legal personality.
Our association has been gradually growing since 2021. But we still adhere to the rule "We do not need a massive membership base, therefore the association only includes truly active members who are willing to get involved personally and are not afraid of work"
Below are the founding members of the Čmeláci PLUS group. Ála has already left the ranks of the association, but she still works with us and helps where needed and where she can.
At an early age, I accidentally discovered a bumblebee nest in my garden. Since then, I have been looking for bumblebees everywhere and everywhere. I was fascinated by the diversity of their species, colors and shapes. At that time, there were many of them in nature. However, I was unable to share my enthusiasm with my friends - my peers. They were more interested in airplanes, sports league tables, etc.
So I continued to learn about bumblebees more or less alone. I soon became interested in the work of J. May "Bees of the Czech Republic" and "Methodology of Bumblebee Breeding" by F. Zapletal. From it I copied my first bumblebee hive. Thanks to the help of my grandfather, it was quite successful. However, I had to breed bumblebees at that time from a distance. I could visit the hives (later there were more of them) on weekends and holidays.
Later I managed to promote my hobby in my home town – Prague. Here I focused my interest on the reproduction of rarer species of bumblebees and the problems associated with it. Later I switched to controlled reproduction, in isolators of fertilized young queens – mothers, and subsequently to their artificial hibernation. At that time I already had the opportunity to cooperate with my long-time friend Miroslav Stuchl.
Thanks to the Internet, we have access to foreign sources of information in our field. I am also very grateful for the friendship and cooperation with doc. Vladimír Ptáček, the founder of laboratory breeding of bumblebees in our country. Thanks to Vladimír, I then met another kindred spirit, Ph.D. Alena Votavová. All these names will certainly not sound familiar to those interested in bumblebees abroad.
An important moment in the growth of public interest in bumblebees in our country was undoubtedly the activity of another friend of mine – businessman Petr Dobrý. Petr knew very well how to popularize bumblebee breeding and for that he rightly deserves our thanks. Unfortunately, popularization does not always include only what we would welcome for the protection of bumblebees.
During our activity on the Internet, I met other important promoters and friends, Ondra Hercog, and a group of other excellent people - experts in the field, who voluntarily devote a lot of time to our common interest. When they offered me cooperation, I gladly accepted it and joined them in the work of improving bumblebee breeding, beehives for them and supporting novice and experienced breeders. The promotion and protection of bumblebees is a demanding but beautiful job, so it is nice that there are more of us for it.
So, happy surfing the internet!!
Jaromir
I started raising bumblebees when I was about six years old. My grandfather found a plan for making a beehive in a magazine and made the first prototype, to which several more hives were gradually added.
My dad was immediately interested, so I started breeding bumblebees under the supervision of my dad and grandfather. After a few years, I started breeding bumblebees completely independently. I have been breeding with only a short break during my studies until today. I can offer about 29 years of experience. The beginnings of breeding were not easy, there was a minimum of information. For example, the methods of settling queens were different. In the best years, our garden was directly lined with beehives, there were about 12-13 of them. I also made some beehives from hollow trunks, something like birdhouses.
Of course, I struggled with pests. Protective flaps did not exist back then, which meant annual battles with the woodpecker, when I was forced to clean the infested nest. Fortunately, today this pest can be fought quite successfully.
However, times have moved on in all aspects. Breeding requirements are changing, we have annual weather fluctuations and probably a gradual climate change, new dangerous pests /Melittobia acasta/. If you want to be successful in breeding, you need to respond to these changes.
I am happy to be a member of this group of friends and breeders who feel the same way. Among other things, I am involved in mapping the occurrence and searching for rare bumblebee species.
My long-term goal is to help return at least some rare species to our nature. I also follow and contribute ideas to foreign websites, where I try to communicate and possibly consult with local experts on the given topics.
Bumblebee breeding provides me with a really nice break from my mentally demanding job.
John
Photo: Ondrej Hercog
I have been interested in nature since I was a child. I was greatly influenced by my uncle Dada (doc. RNDr. Vladimír Řehořek, CSc.). He was for me as a boy (and still is) an inexhaustible well of answers to all things related to nature. His boyish collection of insects from Kořenec and the surrounding area also left its mark on my fate. Dado – thank you! 🙂
This was followed by books by ET Seton, G. Durell and similar pieces, which I breathed in and experienced. I often spent weekends and holidays in the huge garden in Kořenec – a garden full of flowers, insects and birds. It was all the same adventures as the young Durell experienced.
Then it continued in nature, hiking with the Neskenon Indian troop with elements of scouting and Woodcraft (League of Forest Wisdom).
Although I chose a technical education for my life, I keep coming back to nature, and bumblebees are one such path.
I got into bumblebees by chance, apart from experiments in childhood, and I completely fell in love with them. Thanks to chance and a colleague, I came across the website Czech Bumblebee and it was clear. Thanks to Alena Votavová, I soon met Jaromír Čížek, from whom I learned a lot of useful things. Thanks to him, I understood that bumblebees are a lifelong passion and I soon started calling it "bombophilia". 😀
I then administered other bumblebee pages on FB for several years, but I left them. Their focus was commercial and supporting bumblebees, and interest in them was, at best, secondary.
On March 1, 2019, thanks mainly to Ála Ungerová and her banter, we founded the project of the commercially independent group Čmeláci Plus. We invited other similar enthusiasts to this project. They accepted the idea and together we are developing it further. There are more of us and we are growing. It is not a "one man and woman show" and that is better.
Most of us spend hours around bumblebees at the expense of family and other hobbies. Thanks to this, we manage to fulfill our bumblebee motto and together move this "megahorse" forward. As an example, we can cite a number of technical improvements that are from our joint workshop and that we offer without any claim to further free use. We often argue constructively, as I jokingly say "about the size of the hole", but the result of bumblebee breeding always advances. At the same time, we test everything and select the good ones for further use. I am very happy with this group and the idea of working with them, even though we rarely meet in person and communication usually takes place only via the Internet and phone.
My personal goal and the group's common goal is to promote and protect bumblebees as a way to nature. I don't want everyone to breed bumblebees, everyone can help them in their own way. This will make them realize how fragile nature is and how little we do for it and that we only take from it. Thanks to the protection of bumblebees, we can change that. I focus a lot of my work on promoting the Bumblebees Plus project and other areas that we will tackle in the project.
We all contribute to the common goal in some way. It's time-consuming, but I think it's working. People are already aware of us, and thanks to that, we have a wider scope and possibilities.
Since the spring when Ála and I launched the project and its Facebook page, we have been growing as a team, managing to attract more enthusiasts and expanding our topics. We are also going deeper and working in places we could not have dreamed of in March.
I think that together with my friends we have something to offer, and that is exactly the PLUS in our name. The launch of the website in 2019 is one of the next steps, and the others that we want to implement together with you will follow.
Thanks to all this, I can subscribe to the motto "WE'RE IN IT!"
Ondra
We started breeding bumblebees when I was 9 years old, at that time one issue of the ABC magazine 12/r30, which my parents found under the counter, basically influenced my future life... In addition to a cutout of an ambulance and an article about the rescue service, there was also an article about helping nature, specifically bumblebees, which I had admired since I was a child. My parents built my first two hives according to the drawing, my mother searched the Jičín district for bumblebee breeders as part of the medical emergency services and then passed on their experience to me. For a long time there was no other way to exchange information..
ABC magazine 1985 volume 30 issue 12, page 12
Since then, over 30 years have passed, during which I have been engaged in beekeeping with various study and work breaks. And in that time, an awful lot has changed, the number of bumblebees has increased even more and has decreased much more drastically, but they are enjoying much greater interest. In my beginnings, there was no other way than to make a hive and everything for it from what the house had. Today, we have a vast selection of products, quality materials and, most importantly, disproportionately more options for exchanging information, at a speed that no one could even dream of a few years ago.
Unfortunately, where people are interested, there is also something that my early days didn't know - a simple business that targets where the wheat will bloom the most. The easy target is beginners and people who have been enchanted by bumblebees, or who are not indifferent to the state of nature and want to help at least within their garden. They can all be as lost as I was when I started. There was no information back then, today everyone is waving their hands in the air with the help of nature and offering a guaranteed, tried and tested product that makes my hair stand on end... At the same time, the traders usually don't care whether there are new bumblebee queens at the end or not, none of them, with one honorable exception, follow the results. Some wash their hands of the Pilátsky in one of their company articles, others don't even mention the bumblebee at all. Especially when the customer buying the "bumblebee" is satisfied and sales are going up. I am very happy for this group, whose code reflects what I myself have come to during my breeding.
The cornerstone of help is a garden close to insects and nature, where bumblebee breeding is only the final step in helping them, but it must be a successful final step. Since we lie to the bumblebee queen with our hives that what we offer her is the best for her, it is our duty to make sure that this is indeed the case, using the knowledge we have so far. Otherwise, the hive actually becomes a trap for her, in which the colony bakes, freezes or is destroyed by parasites before it can fulfill its life's task. And for us, this is not pretty workers and a pollinated garden, but a new generation of mothers and males, necessary for the survival of the species in the next year . Only then does the entire breeding effort make sense, and here, unfortunately, with the dwindling number of bumblebees in nature, there is no room for shoddy, half-baked solutions aimed only at pleasing people. So I am very happy to be a member of a group of people who feel the same way.
Ala Ungerová
Lover of natural gardens, everything living in them (except snails), passionate gardener and grammar tamer
Alas
PS.
Since Ála hasn't written much about herself, I'll write something about her without her kind permission.
Ála from Děčín is an ethereal being, but at the same time a distinctive and strong personality. Gardener, photographer, mother of two beautiful daughters, author of several gardens and the mastermind behind the broken hearts of many men.
Although she lives in the North, she is not cold at all and whoever lives with her will certainly never be bored.
Therefore, she deserves my admiration – both of them 🙂
Ála and I met on other bumblebee sites, where I churned out and, as she says, "splintered" texts, and she polished and edited them grammatically with incredible patience. In 2018, she got much more involved in the work and was the administrator of that site with me. When we understood at the beginning of 2019 that the founders of that site put business first, we ended our cooperation with him.
It was Ála who told me that quitting is too easy and that the community of those who have fallen for the passion for bumblebees does not deserve it. She was the one who came up with the idea of setting up new bumblebee pages on FB and the website. She was also the one who kicked me into it and literally drilled me into it. Thanks to her, we launched FB Čmeláci PLUS on March 1, 2019.
Ála has now put our baby on hold for a while and has flown away to pursue other hobbies. Despite this, and perhaps that's why, everything I've written about her here is still with us and one of us.
Thanks, Alo!
O.