Except I don’t know where, so as my cousin says just write and figure it out later. This post was supposed to be written a couple of weeks ago so will be a bit of a ramble. I will try to post daily, even if only to say hi and will figure out subscription so interested parties can interact.
It has been a busy few weeks and we are well and truly on the scary path to a major career change. A number of hives have been placed in preparation for spring, the YouTube channel has been started, the website has some content and social media sign ups have been commenced. While I am good on computers social media has not been my thing so it is a very new world to me, much like beekeeping.
There have been six new hives put out so far in preparation for spring and in the process of investigating a possible seventh and eight. I am also helping a friend at work prep a bee box as he has a wild hive in a possum box on his property and is hoping to attract a swarm from it. I have place another box and nuc in my own yard as well as one a few streets away. Three boxes and a nuc have gone to cus’s place out on Ngarrindjeri country, while this does not quite fit in with my Urban beekeeping plans they have a lovely property and a wild hive that has had ownership of a small shed on the property for nigh on twenty years. I am hoping to put one or two up on Peramangk country where good friends of ours have a nice property in a semi-urban area.
The box a few streets away is the first one in my urban apiary. I was introduced to the couple who will home the hive through a mutual acquaintance from the opportunity shop we go to regularly. They have a lovely garden and had mentioned they would love a bee hive but did not want to be beekeepers which met perfectly with what i dreamed of doing. As I talked more and more about my idea, with pretty much anyone I could trap long enough to listen, I realised that there were many people who would happily home a hive if they did not have to keep bees. And thus an idea was born. Probably not an original one but original to me and I am not aware of anyone else who does it in the city.
My cousin is in the process of going over the website content to make it all pretty like. She is really good at the wordy stuff and can rewrite anything to sound great with proper punctuation. I have put a link in the Bee Informed page.
Bee Somewhere Better. The YouTube channel has a few videos up. At this stage it is hive watch videos that give a real time snapshot of the comings and goings of the girls. I am a little behind in regards to footage date versus upload date, but will catch up at some stage soonish. Still learning to use the go pro and have not had a play with the external microphones yet. I also have some footage to put up regarding new hives and their relevant set ups that will go up when both time and editing skills allow. We are still getting our heads around DaVinci so fancy editing will come later. I am also super uncomfortable with the camera so that is a big learning curve.
It is all super scary and time is a huge factor. As we want to do everything in a holistic manner it is going to take some time for things to produce any sort of results. Not just in terms of honey production, it will take some time for the YouTube to gain traction, the website still needs a lot of work and there are many other ancillary things like merchandise, label design, logo etc, to be completed. As I want to attract natural swarms in the relevant local area to their new homes I don’t know how successful I will be. A friend came around the other week and he asked ‘How do you know the bees will move in?’ my answer ‘I don’t’. When/If the bees move in there is no real produce for around eighteen months as the first season is all about building hive strength so I will need to keep working full time till at least the middle of next year. It does mean they will only require regular maintenance between now and then so will have some time to figure some other logistics out, like how a suitable vehicle for hauling hives around and building other income sources so I can concentrate more fully on the business. Once I figure out transport I can look at extending my network as I have a number of interested parties but I have to be able to service the hives before I pursue these possibilities.
We are also going to be doing single hive honey. This will mean our honey will not be mixed even between hives on the same property. While this will require additional work I believe it will make for a high quality product and allow people to truly buy local where possible. It will also mean people with pollen allergies will be able to source honey as close to their own post code as possible.
Okay I think that is more than enough ramble from me for now.
Sam Bee