This most notable person of Polish beekeeping was the guest of “Biesiada” A.D. 2014.
Before the conference commenced, Prof. Jerzy Wilde from the University of Warmia and Mazury introduced his teacher and mentor Prof. Jerzy Woyke. The introduction itself sounded more like a laudation than a mere presentation. It started with these words "Professor Jerzy Woyke - our Master and Teacher" that said it all.
We include the summary of the speech below.
On the 3rd of May 2014, the 223rd anniversary of passing the first constitution in Europe, an event important also for beekeepers took place in Warsaw. On that day, the President Bronislaw Komorowski granted orders and national distinctions.
Among the decorated with the Order of Polonia Restituta was Prof. Jerzy Woyke on his merit in development of beekeeping, as well as, his scientific work.
The event was also attended by Prof. Woyke's daughter and the Chairman of the Beekeeping Association, Janusz Kasztelewicz. It was the Beekeeping Association that made the motion to decorate Professor Woyke with this distinction.
Prof. Jerzy Woyke was born in 1926. He started his work in Warsaw University of Life Sciences in 1958. Having retired eighteen years ago, Prof. Woyke is still very active in his scientific work. He conducts research in Poland and abroad, publishes his findings and writes reviews of scientific works for national and foreign magazines.
He has published as many as eight hundred works so far. In his last three articles (2009 and 2010), he correctly described and explained natural insemination of a bee queen. Thanks to his contribution, Polish beekeepers are able to inseminate, artificially and naturally, more bee queens than in any other country in the world. Such a control over parents' selection visibly increases the efficiency of a bee family.
Prof. J. Woyke always takes care to stress the most important events in Polish history of beekeeping. The perfect example of that was the 100th death anniversary of Jan Dzierzon, one of the most prominent Polish beekeepers. Prof. Woyke recovered sixteen over hundred years old foreign volumes containing acknowledgements for Jan Dzierzon. The authors of the books were from Germany, France, Austria, England, Luxemburg, Russia and the USA. Now, the books can be seen in the Museum of Jan Dzierzon in Kluczbork thanks to Professor.
Prof. Woyke, although retired, still conducts research and publishes with the cooperation of foreign colleagues. In his publication from 2006, together with Dr Gencer from Turkey, he has proved that eggs laid by a worker bee are bigger than those laid by a queen.
Prof. J. Woyke is the ambassador of Polish science in the world. He has carried out research in twenty-four countries what resulted in one hundred and sixteen scientific publications. He is probably the only bee researcher in the world who has studied bees in so many countries. Prof. Woyke was also an expert in Food and Agriculture Organization in UN. He organized workshops and gave speeches at universities in eleven countries. He lectured in six languages: English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Russian. Since he is retired he is not entitled to any grants and has to pay for all the expenses himself.
Prof. Jerzy Wilde has summarized him to be the only person in the world who:
- has published so many works on artificial insemination of bee queen;
- has conducted research in so many countries;
- has studied so many species of bees;
- has bee cited so frequently in specialized literature (only these past few years);
- has given lectures in so many languages.
Professor arrived at "Sadecki Batnik" with the company of his daughter and one of his numerous foreign students, Dr Christopher K. Starr from The University of the West Indies in St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.
You can listen to a conversation with Prof. J. Woyke
here (Polish version).
You can also find out more about him on these websites:
http://jerzy_woyke.users.sggw.pl/woystrpol.html
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jerzy_Woyke
http://scholar.google.pl/citations?user=FFXZcMIAAAAJ&hl=en
https://www.academia.edu/people/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Jerzy+Woyke
https://www.facebook.com/jerzy.woyke
