Rebecca Light is a Diggers Rest resident and a proud bee-lover. Along with her husband, Shane, the pair run BeeResponsible. Their business promotes sustainable beekeeping, educates the community on honeybee health, and advocates for the increase of bee populations around the world. Reporter Oliver Lees spoke with Rebecca to get an insight into the wonderful world of beekeeping.
What is your connection to Sunbury and the Macedon Ranges?
I grew up in Victoria and spent much of my childhood in the Macedon Ranges and my parents owned a property in Ashbourne. Upon moving out of home, I lived in Gisborne for many years and after meeting my now husband, we have settled in Diggers Rest.
How did you first become interested in beekeeping?
My husband and I owned one hive for many years as we have always found it hard to ensure all our fruit and vegetables are pollinated successfully. Since the one hive swarmed, our love for the bees and their protection grew.
Over the years we have built many relationships with those that own large land and are very happy in supporting our growth in hive numbers. This has allowed us to move them on and off their properties as the flow of honey and seasons change. This process, and our ability to document this via social media, has already increased the local community’s education on the importance of bees and pollination of all kinds of species in the local area.
What would you like people to know about sustainable beekeeping?
As keen gardeners and lovers of nature and bees, the area provides a great opportunity to build up the bee population. We try to educate people on the importance of bees and their value to the local ecosystem . WE also move the hives around to areas which contain a variety of tree species, farming crops, from wattles to gums plus much more.
Our home, which doubles as the business operations, is 100 per cent powered by solar with a 13.5kw system. This means we have very little carbon footprint. In addition to this, by working with locals and their available land, we try to reduce our use of trucks by moving hives locally.
All our products that are produced are 100 per cent natural and sold directly into the local areas. Our honey is raw extracted and hand spun, while the candles are made from wax capping from filtering the honey. Other products include lip balms, creams, hair wax and much more.
How can people in the community make a contribution to safeguarding bee populations?
We encourage anyone who has any problems with bees moving in and making a home where the residents may not want them to contact us prior to any exterminator. We can safely remove them and provide them with a nice new home – a hive on a local property.
One key message I would like to get across is the need to reduce pesticides. Local councils, hardware stores and the general population, still haven’t managed the ability to reduce their reliance on these products. Bees forage on poisoned clover and much more and bring it back to the hive. Ultimately, this could lead to a total collapse of a hive, hence contributing to the low numbers already present. This needs to be changed.
More importantly is our ability to build relationships with anyone out there who is also interested in re-homing a hive or two either in their own backyard, or situated in a paddock. These hives can add value to the communities who are needing more of these little pollinators around.
If anyone is interested in learning more about Bees and owning a hive, BeeResponsible will be looking at running some sessions over the course of Spring and Summer with the ability to jump in a suit and experience beekeeping firsthand.
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok: @beeresponsible
