Share your garden with bees & enjoy many rewards
Share your garden with bees to empower your family’s ability to make a difference to the planet’s survival, thus enjoy feeling happier, a sense of accomplishment and harmony with nature and the community. A bonus is receiving free honey from the bee-keeper’s harvest, having great pollination of your flowers… and vegetables or fruit trees.
It’s easy to connect up with beehive owners as I found with the Perth Bee Community on facebook . Your kids will learn so much about how & where our food comes from 🙂
Share your garden with bees as reported by ABC.net.au/news/2016-01-20
John Faherty has 30 hives across the metropolitan area, and after starting out as a hobby apiarist has founded a business with the aim of eventually producing honey from every postcode in Perth.
He believes hives in the urban area will aid pollination and increase biodiversity in the suburbs.
Members of the public can volunteer to host one of his hives in their backyards, and he said since 2014 there had not been any complaints.
“We make sure to set them up in areas that are suitable,” Mr Faherty said.
“We have had to turn people down in the past, where neighbours have had allergic children or there just isn’t the space in their backyard.”
He said not all councils required approval and he hoped councils would become more open to residential beekeeping as more people expressed an interest.
Long-term Perth honey maker Dan Dowsett said local honey was special because it had a distinct flavour from the local area.
“In Subiaco you would get a lot of white gum which leads to absolutely fabulous honey,” Mr Dowsett said.
He said councils and would-be beekeepers simply needed to educate themselves and hives could be located in urban areas without problems.
“The wonderful thing about modern beekeeping practice is that the bees never swarm if you learn the craft correctly,” he said.
“I don’t agree that everyone should be allowed to put beehives in suburban areas because some places are far too small and not suitable, but there are lots of places that are [suitable].