Beekeeping family puts bees first
Soft trails of smoke swirl around the beehives as nine-year-old Miranda Roebig pumps the smoker. She knows the drill: it’s a critical step so her parents, Natasha and Jason, can open one of the hives they keep on their Jimboomba property.
Miranda has grown up around bees. She knows they send out a warning signal from the hive and that the smoke gently interrupts it. It’s also what protects the Roebig family as they check on their workers.
In the eight years since they bought their first beehives, the Roebigs have created a thriving cottage industry in the City of Logan. Selling raw honey and a wide range of lush honey-based body care products, the business has grown from an honesty system – where people collected a jar of honey and dropped the money off at their front door – to sales via their farmgate and online store.
Their own journey started when Miranda was a baby and suffering with eczema. Steroid creams made her skin drier and more irritated, and the Roebigs needed an alternative.
Natasha says healthcare advice prompted them to research the benefits of beeswax and honey. It sparked a conversation, and then an idea. “We started with two beehives, a few books – and lots of bee stings – and from those first hives, we developed our own bee balm,” she says.
“It worked really well for Miranda. We then thought we’d like to try and help other people.”
“Each season, our apiary grew,” Natasha says. “We split and maintained our hives, and we had all this excess honey, which we began to sell from home. Then there was all the extra beeswax and cappings. We didn’t want it to go to waste. We try to use 100% of the by-product from our beehives.”
Natasha, Miranda and Jason Roebig with the smoker.
“You need to be ethical, sustainable and respectful of the bees. Our bees come first”
— Jason Roebig
Today, the family of beekeepers has 15 hives on their City of Logan property and around 125 more spread across the region.
With a wide range of honey on the market under their core brand ‘Bee All Natural’, they also have an expanding range of natural lip balms, body balms, and moisturisers, all without parabens or other synthetic products, that sit under the brand ‘Bee You’.
Jason says the way they keep bees is as important as the products they produce. “We’re going back to how bees were kept generations ago,’ he says.
“You need to be ethical, sustainable and respectful of the bees. Our bees come first. Last season we didn’t take any honey off our bees at all, as there just wasn’t enough to go around. This year, the bees were happier and healthier and we could take away honey they don’t need.”
In 2019, Natasha’s passion for sustainable and ethical beekeeping saw her take out the 2019 Queensland Rural Women’s Award, which acknowledges the essential role that women play in developing rural industries, businesses and communities.
Both Jason and Natasha have lived in the City of Logan since they were teenagers and are enthusiastic about the future for those like themselves operating small to medium businesses in the region.
“I really see Logan as a small business hub that happens to have a really good food producing arm,” Natasha says.
Back at the hives, Miranda wanders over to her parents. “I think there’s a bee in my suit,” she calmly tells them as the lid goes back on.
The family walks a safe distance away and Natasha and Jason help her out of her protective suit to safely release one of their precious workers back into the wild.
Find our more: https://beeallnatural.com.au/
