Our journey with bees
We are an Anglo/Dutch couple based in La Creuse on the Northern edge of the Parc Naturel Régional de Millevaches en Limousin in central France.
​In June 2012 we obtained our first hive with bees, and within a week a swarm of bees arrived in our garden from somewhere unknown. This phenomenon was again repeated during following swarming seasons.
Reading contemporary literature and research into wild living honeybees we set out to find the source of these swarms and in 2015 found our first beetree. We soon found more beetrees in the local area and became fascinated by the reasons why these colonies were thriving whilst the beekeeping community were reporting large numbers of colony losses. We decided to step back from our own beekeeping efforts and look at the situation, particularly regarding the hiving of honeybees after visiting an apiary with a thriving log hive in the UK in 2015.
As our interest in the hiving of bees and how it related to the health of the honeybee colony increased, our beehives also evolved away from boxy hives with square interiors to cylinder cavities. Insulation always remained the most important feature. The growing interest in bee centered beekeeping provided us with the opportunity to set up a micro-enterprise providing species appropriate beehives here in central France.
Our beehives are now situated across France as well as in Switzerland, The Netherlands and Spain, and further afield in South Afrcia.
We owe much to our fantastic customers who have taken time to research a different way to keep bees and step away from the perceived normality of beekeeping. Going forwards we are looking to develop methods to build hive using new and different ecologically responsible materials to provide species appropriate hives for honeybees.
