A Market Day and a Bee Year with Beekeeper Moritz Seidler

It’s not yet nine o’clock when neighbor Ulrich Trisolini rounds the corner. With a shopping bag in hand, he strolls through Markthalle Neun before the market opens, greeting everyone warmly. He’s a beekeeper himself—a member of the “Friends of the Honeybee” here in Kreuzberg. “You wouldn’t think so, but the city is good for the bees. No pesticides, and the exhaust fumes don’t affect the honey.” Two beekeepers—one in the city, one in the countryside—ponder the start of the season early in the morning amid wooden boxes and jars filled with silky, flowing, butter-soft, and crystalline honey. How are the colonies doing? They’re doing well—the consistently crisp winter promises healthy hives, both say.

Moritz Seidler—in his yellow-and-black sweater, not unlike the busy bees—sets up his stand. Countless small and large jars, spectacularly lit, gradually cover the entire spectrum: from white to gold to deep amber brown. “You rarely see such variety; I can say that with pride. Berlin and Brandenburg have a lot to offer—from rapeseed to black locust and linden to rarities like buckwheat, berry blossoms, or phacelia—the bees know how to translate these diverse landscapes into honey.” Since 2019, he has been coming to Markthalle Neun every four weeks with his beekeeping business, Bien, to sell the bounty of the beekeeping season. Both beekeeping and the market have long since become routine. And yet, it’s never quite the same. This is true of the weekly market, and it’s even more true of the bees: you never stop learning.

Morning — Spring: A New Beginning

A bee colony doesn’t start its day at sunrise like butchers, bakers, and janitors do, but rather when the temperature rises. Only when it hits double digits do they fly out. Here, too, on a Saturday morning in March, the market vendors swarm out of their production and storage rooms as the temperature reaches a pleasant ten degrees: Stalls are stocked, vegetables arranged, dough prepared. The hum of the market begins softly and grows louder.

Something similar is happening in the beehives out in Brandenburg. After winter—during which the colony hibernates as a tight cluster, with a cozy twenty degrees inside no matter how cold it is outside—it is now slowly awakening. The first foragers fly out, returning with pollen: protein for the brood. The queen begins laying eggs again. The colony grows, from a few thousand bees in February to tens of thousands by May. What looked like a standstill in winter was actually preparation—our indoor beekeeper explains all this in passing while arranging beeswax candles on his stand.

Moritz has known this rhythm since childhood—and not just when it comes to bees. Growing up on a Demeter farm in the Black Forest—a small dairy farm that later became an animal sanctuary with a therapeutic program—he learned early on that animals have their own pace. By the age of seven, he already had sheep, goats, quails, geese, chickens, and ducks. He milked, made cheese, and sold eggs at his own stand on the farm. So he’s known the market stand longer than beekeeping.

The bees came when he was thirteen, at his father’s suggestion. It’s easier to go on vacation with bees than with goats—a compelling argument. The first two hives came from the classifieds; his beekeeping grandfather—that’s what they call the mentor in beekeeping—was a man named Sepp Weber. “That was very exciting. It was a lot of fun,” he says with a simplicity that reveals he still feels exactly the same way.

“Beekeeping is something special: once you start, you can’t stop. Bees are simply fascinating—the way they communicate with one another is unique.” Their primary language is pheromones, invisible chemical signals that convey moods, warnings, and needs throughout the entire colony. And then there’s the waggle dance: A bee that has found a productive nectar source dances its direction and distance into the comb with precise movements—a choreography that her fellow bees read and immediately put into action. No noise, no confusion. He doesn’t say this like someone reciting a slogan. He says it like someone who still stands by the hive every year and thinks: I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s unbelievable.

Noon — Summer: The Great Harvest

The market hall is filling up. The scent of warm wax and sweet honey hangs over the stall, while sunlight streams through the windows, casting golden patches on the wood—who wouldn’t get an appetite here? Here, too, communication happens without many words: At noon, Alp Ocak from Agustos stops by—an advocate for social and ecological justice, a hazelnut activist, and this morning, a ray of sunshine much like the jars on the table. He picks up a few jars of “Nüsschen-Bienchen”—those little jars that Moritz fills with Alp’s biodiverse, decolonized hazelnuts and his own honey. Werner from the herb stand at the other end of the hall takes some honey for his vinegar and mustard. No noise, no fuss. The market is a network that uses what’s available and makes the best of it.

The beehive operates with the same level of cooperation and precision. What its inhabitants find outside is known in beekeeping as a “forage”—everything the landscape has to offer: nectar, pollen, resin, and water. In Brandenburg, where Moritz keeps his colonies, this supply is virtually uninterrupted from spring through late summer. Rapeseed is followed by black locust, and black locust by linden. The black locust is actually an invasive species, introduced from North America—but it is so firmly established in the landscape that it has long been part of it, especially for the bees. Thousands of colonies are brought to Brandenburg from all over Germany specifically for the nectar flow season. “A dream location,” says Moritz.

But he also ventures off the beaten path. Almost no one grows buckwheat anymore—you practically have to track down the fields. In the Baruth glacial valley, his colonies are there for the berry bloom: aronia, gooseberries, currants. The farmers are happy about the pollination; he’s happy about the honey. A partnership as old as agriculture itself.

By midsummer, the colony has grown to as many as sixty thousand bees and is under a peculiar pressure: the urge to swarm. The old queen wants to leave, taking part of the colony with her to found a new colony—this is how bees have ensured their survival for millions of years. As a beekeeper, Moritz doesn’t stop this brutally; instead, he gets ahead of the colony: he divides it himself, at the right moment, before the swarm decides on its own. Then it’s time to harvest, extract, and sift—all at the right moment, because the bee waits for no one.

“The bee translates the landscape,” says Moritz as he explains the differences between two jars to a customer. It’s one of those phrases that say more than they promise at first glance. Every jar on the stand is a reflection: of a place, a season, a specific flower in a specific landscape. Anyone who can taste the difference—and you always can—understands what diversity truly means.

Afternoon — Fall: The Harvest

“Wow, they really all taste different. I wouldn’t have thought so.”

Moritz hears this often, and it makes him happy every time. Most people buy one or two jars and look as if they’ve discovered something they’ve always known. “Like the honey from my childhood,” some say. It’s perhaps the best feedback you can get for years of hard work.

Yet the honey Moritz sells is actually a byproduct. The bees keep the majority of the harvest for themselves anyway: during the season, they aren’t fed; they live exclusively on what they’ve gathered themselves. They make their royal jelly from nectar, pollen, propolis, and water, and the concentrated nectar becomes honey. Whatever remains in the hive at the end of the season beyond what’s needed for the winter—that’s what can be harvested.

To help the bees survive the winter as a colony, their food supply is supplemented with sugar syrup. A colony needs enough food to get through the cold months. Moritz pays attention to every detail—going even beyond the requirements of organic and Naturland certification. No Styrofoam boxes, only wood. No synthetic chemicals. The honey is gently heated, never above 38.5 degrees—the same temperature at which bees process their own honey. Between forty and eighty percent of the honey traded worldwide is adulterated, diluted with rice syrup or sugar solutions. “I’m personally behind this,” he says. “That creates a different connection to the product, a different kind of transparency that no supermarket can achieve.”

“As a beekeeper,” he says with a small smile, “you’re usually a bit of an oddball.” You spend a lot of time alone with your colonies, talk little about it, but understand all the more. The market is something else—a place where you can share: the product, the knowledge, the quiet joy when someone realizes for the first time that not all honey is created equal.

Evening—Winter: End of Season and Market

Toward the end of the market day, things quiet down. The jars that are still there stand a little more forlornly in the light. Moritz talks to the last customers—explaining why the buckwheat honey is so dark, what phacelia actually is, why this winter was so good for the colonies. There’s always something to explain. That’s just part of the job.

Out in Brandenburg, the bee year is drawing to a close. Buckwheat and sunflowers are the last to bloom; when they fade, a different kind of work begins. The winter bees being raised now are no ordinary foragers. They are fed differently and live significantly longer than their summer counterparts—they are designed for overwintering, not for production. When the last warm day is over, the colony retreats into its cluster. Inside: cozy and warm, as always. Every bee contributes her share to the collective warmth.

What looks like a standstill from the outside is, in reality, a state of focused readiness. The honeycombs are being built, supplies are being secured, and the colony is keeping warm. In January, when temperatures rise even briefly into the double digits, the first bees fly out again.

All around Moritz, the other vendors are packing up too. Boxes are stacked, cloths draped over counters, leftovers stowed away. If you look closely, you don’t see an end, but rather the same thing happening as in the beehive: preparation. In a few days, everything will be back here as if it had never been gone.

Moritz closes the last box. He’ll be back, with new jars and the same sense of wonder. The social aspect, the community, the collaborative effort without a conductor or a plan—that’s what has kept him connected to the bees for decades. And perhaps to the market scene as well.

The market is closing. But neither the market hall nor the bees are taking a break.

Still have questions? At Naschmarkt International on Sunday, March 29, Moritz will be collaborating with beekeeper Anna from the Markthalle Neun cultural association to present the “Sweets Exhibit”—where honey will be examined from various angles. Click here for more information!