The Urban Bee Co started as a Christmas present of a beehive to my husband in 2018. Talis had been begging me for a while to let him have a beehive. However, reflecting back, I suppose that my hesitance was based on a naive understanding and fear of bees. If we think about it, for the majority of people, their first experience of bees is being stung as a child. This creates the foundations for a negative view of these beautiful little insects. So a week before Christmas, our first beehive arrived. We were lucky enough to have a beekeeping friend who mentored us for out first year as beekeepers. The anxiety was high the first time we opened our new hive, it was the fear of the unknown, it was irrational. For in reality, when we opened the lid and peered inside the hive, there were no vengeful bees out for blood, just thousands of busy little bees, running around the frames, solely focused of their jobs. With the gentle background hum from the hive, we lifted each frame and were utterly mesmerised by what we saw. Brood, honey, pollen, it was all there and so interesting to see up close. We spent some time just watching, observing the bees in awe and wonder. The anxiety we had previously felt seemed to melt away as we welcomed the newest member of our family. She was our first hive and her name is Queeny.
Queeny sparked our love of bees, she is the inspiration for our journey. She changed our lives for the better. Because you can’t have an affection for bees without appreciating the ever-interconnecting world that is life. The life in the soil feeds the plants and trees, which allows them to thrive and flower. But for trees to create new life, flowers need to be pollenated by another flower. Amazingly bees do this as a bi-product of collecting pollen and nectar for their hive. Without bees, plants and trees would find it difficult to reproduce, and similarly, without flowering plant, the bees would not exist. Both need to work and live in unison for all to survive. So is the interconnected relationship humans have with the natural environment, however, this is something as a species we have forgotten over the years. However, it is something the bees reminded us of. Our natural world is so beautiful and so inspiring that through the gateway of beekeeping, our eyes were opened to the amazing world we live in.
From small things, big things grow! And while we have seen the wonderful evolution of our business, it still didn’t feel complete. We felt that we could do more. So over the past 2 years, The Urban Bee Co has partnered with Woolworths and other small supermarkets to collect their vegetable scraps to build the foundations for a regenerative, organic, micro farm in Carbrook. We have composted over 80 tons of vegetable waste that would have been destined for landfill. This is the engine to power our 150 newly planted fruit tress and soon to be market garden. In the very near future, this land will be home to The Urban Bee Co’s training centre, where we aim to work with young people and families in our community, to inspire them to become the best they can.
https://www.urbanbee.qld.edu.au/