My beekeeping journey started by joining the Northside Beekeepers Association at Lawnton to learn all I could about my hobby before putting bees in a FlowHive in my suburban backyard in 2016. The ancient art of mentoring was the gold in the raw honey and I rapidly made many friends who never tired of talking, discussing, and sharing ideas about bees.
With my passion about bees and their impact on the environment, it didn’t take long for me to start thinking about getting away from 9 – 5 and doing something to connect with nature.
I’m keen to help others learn about bees and share how amazing they are. Ideally, what got me into bees and hence beekeeping was a visit to a Sustainable Open House Day at New Farm where Roman had a bee hive in his vertical garden unit complex. I thought there was no reason why I can’t do this!
I met Craig in 2018, who followed my passion head first into beekeeping and was keen to ditch the overworked carpenter and shopping center maintenance to rekindle his passion for being in nature.
It’s not every partner that understands why there is a queen bee sitting on the dining room table. While living in a tiny house at North Lakes surrounded by consumerism, with 24 hives in a 18m2 backyard, it was just the push we needed when the Moreton Bay Council said the hives have to go… so we did. And found some land up around Gympie to start a new lifestyle for our family. Two beekeepers are never enough so we made two more.
Now there are beehives in our paddock, our friends and family’s suburban backyards and paddocks. All these bee hosts care deeply for their gardens and the little friends in them. So you know your honey is coming from happy bees that are well looked after. Many of our hosts now postpone mowing their lawn until the dandelions have finished flowering.
We have a strong ethical compass towards trying to make every dollar spent to go back into local businesses. We believe supporting a local beekeeper where you know your honey is coming from the bees that are probably sitting on your garden flowers, supports the continuation of small local family run businesses over big corporations and supports the environment on a micro scale. AND IT TASTES BETTER.
We want to inspire others to use natural and shop local. We want to start conversations around beekeeping and natural top quality farmed food. We really do have the best job in the world and the best lifestyle for our family.
Dream big for local impact.
We are always making incremental changes at decision points towards sustainability in our business. We don’t say this because it changes our honey but it might give other businesses ideas on how small changes at the purchasing decision point can lead to big overall change over time towards more supportive impacts on the planet. Some of our considerations and changes are:
Future environmental wishes to work towards:
– sustainably food grade plastics for our honey tubs, squeeze and honeycomb containers
– shift our glass jar range to fully using Australian glass
– recycled cardboard replacement for deodorant paste
– remaining electricity use on the property moved to off grid solar generation
– 4wd electric vehicle for hive management
– mill more invasive camphaloral trees from our property into hive boxes
If you have any suggestions or ideas on ways we can improve contact Liby via email to discuss.
