Deborah Batchelor

A warm sunshine welcome to my crowd funding campaign. I'm Deborah Batchelor and I'm looking to fund the purchase of a specialised honey creamer machine for my beekeeping business.

HOW WILL THE FUNDS BE USED?

WHO ARE TWO BUSY BEES HONEY?

It all began in 2016 with just three hives and back then my Dad asked a simple request of me . . . "Could you come and help me with the Bees?" and who knew then how much I would grow to love Beekeeping! Those three beehives were the start and at last count we have nearly 100 hives! It's still the two of us working hence our business name Two Busy Bees Honey. Since then we have worked hard, taste tested and fine tuned our range by creating a selection of unique honey products, nut butter blends, marinades, dressings and sauces. Using our own unique Two Busy Bees Honey multi-floral honey as a starting point.

Two Busy Bees Honey beehives are based in sunny sub tropical Geebung in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. I feel lucky that the bees enjoy copious amounts of glorious sunshine during the year and I harvest this golden liquid sunshine especially for you so that you too can have ‘a little sunshine in your day!’ Surrounding the Apiary is large established Australian native trees, beautiful wildflowers and lovely garden flowers and the bees work all this to produce a wonderfully unique many flowered honey with a real depth of flavour. Delicious, raw, unheated, untreated and unprocessed. Just as honey should be and bottled fresh from the bee hives! Two Busy Bees Honey pure honey contains Australian sunshine, all the natural pollens, raw goodness and nectar as nature intended.

WHERE ARE YOU NOW?

Current range - As a beekeeper and good food producer I practice natural beekeeping and cultivate a unique multi-floral honey, introducing people to the divine taste of a honey produced by bees with varied and multiple pollen and nectar sources. Taking my honey as a starting point I create artisan small batch products using only the most natural of Queensland grown ingredients. Honey BBQ Sauce with sugar cane molasses from Bundaberg, Ginger Honey with Buderim Ginger, Peanut Butter with Hi Oleic peanuts from Kingaroy and Red Berry Creamed Honey with raspberry and strawberry freeze dried dust from Luvaberry

WHAT DO I NEED YOUR HELP WITH?

Purchasing a specialised piece of equipment for my honey room called a Lyson Honey Creamer which is solely designed for just one purpose which is creaming honey. This piece of equipment is manufactured in Poland which is the only place in the world where this type of honey equipment is made. Construction of the mixing blade (made of stainless steel) allows for creaming honey precisely. Creating a smooth, thick and buttery texture after a long slow mixing process. Honey creaming consists of inoculation of liquid honey with crystallized honey and abrasion of the honey crystals using a low rotational speed. It has an automation for creaming the honey for 15 minutes then resting for 15 minutes and this cycle repeats all day. The capacity of the drum is 70Kg. So I'll be able to make all the creamed honey you want and need! 

Once the creaming process is finished, the tap at the bottome is opened and then the creamed honey is poured into jars and stored in the fridge for two months to complete the process. It takes a lot of hard work, love and commitment to produce creamed honey and this comes though in the taste. Just like wine and cheese, the best things take time!

WHAT WILL YOU BE USING THE CREAMER MACHINE FOR?

Creamed honey is a real crowd pleaser, all natural, handcrafted, small batch and my most popular product! When I first started producing it, I couldn’t keep up with all your orders and was making it all by hand. Burning out the mixers and there was creamed honey everywhere!

Creamed honey is created with two styles of delicious natural honey from Two Busy Bees Honey. Two million florals go into every jar of honey. The bees in my apiary have naturally distilled their surrounding environment into a unique multi-floral honey. This mixture of seasonal wild flowers, native Australian trees and cultivated garden flowers creates the most wonderful tasting creamed honey that is both delicate and deep with delicious flavours. 

To make my delicious creamed honey I start with a special reserve aged honey is set aside for at least a year to allow a unique deep flavour to develop naturally. Then we carefully combine this fragrant magical product with liquid honey, it's creamed together, poured into jars and set over time naturally. This slow long process creates the most unique product that is a delight for you to enjoy!  A divinely delicious creamy and smooth pot set natural honey. 

With the success of this campaign I hope to be bringing back our popular Creamed Honey (in two glass jar sizes - 230g and 490g) and adding a second yummy creamed honey flavour, Creamed Honey with Red Berries. Freeze dried raspberry powder and freeze dried strawberry powder from Queensland based strawberry farm Luvaberry is added gradually at the end of the creaming process and its all whipped very slowly. The end product is the creamiest and most buttery textured honey with a pretty pink blush hue and a delicious hint of summer berries!

Strawberries – and other berries – gathered after rain are often thrown away. LuvaBerry has been saving these damaged, but deliciously edible, berries and freeze-drying them. Retaining all the flavour and colour of fresh fruit – without any nasties!

WHAT DO PEOPLE SAY ABOUT MY CREAMED HONEY?

WHO ARE THE MAKERS?

I'm part of a father and daughter team of organic minded apiculturists and specialty food makers. As a family we come from a long line of makers, creators and good food eaters. Creating artisan cold filtered polyfloral honey, natural peanut butter, nut butter blends, honey sauces and fresh honeycomb, with only the most natural of Queensland grown ingredients. As bee keepers and good food producers we practice natural beekeeping and cultivate a multi-floral honey, introducing people to the divine taste of a honey produced by bees with varied and multiple pollen and nectar sources. Two Busy Bees Honey beehives are based in sunny sub tropical Geebung in Queensland. We are lucky to enjoy copious amounts of glorious sunshine during the year and harvest our liquid sunshine honey especially for you so that you too can have 'a little sunshine in your day!' 

PLEASE PLEDGE NOW!

Please pledge now to make this happen for me. This campaign is an all or nothing campaign for me! I need to raise the full amount for my campaign to be a success and I can only make this a reality with your support! So to keep on producing our delicious Creamed Honey, I need the help of lovely people just like you.

GET IN TOUCH AND SHARE

Follow me for updates and news on this campaign and new products:

Facebook

Instagram

Come and see my store here:

twobusybeeshoney.com.au 

WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES OF BEEKEEPING?

To be honest if you thought too hard about the challenges of beekeeping at the beginning, it’s probably not something that you would get into! 2020 has proved to be one of our most challenging years to date! 

The year started with severe drought, then the Bush Fires which resulted in a massive decline in the availability for the bees of pollen and nectar. This situation meant that there was no honey being produced by the bees for harvesting and barely enough food stores for the bees themselves to survive. For the first time ever we had to bring food stores in for the bees and finally they managed to make it through and slowly started to produce honey for themselves.  Then Covid arrived and all our large in-person events planned out for the year were canceled. Which unfortunately reduced our income by half!

But we changed things up very quickly in order to keep our business going through the tough times. By producing natural peanut butter, offering 'click and collect' for local people and concentrating on online sales. We produce everything ourselves, and because of that, we are able to change quickly while still putting huge amounts of care into everything we do. 

December 2020 saw a big change in the Apiary and we harvested our first lot of honey in ten months! And we are optimistic now for a good year ahead!

The budget overview for the campaign is $4000 and here is the breakdown of costs.

Lyson Creamer Machine: $2034

Lyson Creamer Delivery Costs: $100.00

Pozible Campaign Fees: $150

Luvaberry Dust - Red Berry Combination (Raspberry and Strawberry) 1.8kg $220

375ml Squexagonal glass jars and gold twist caps (Large) $748

190ml Squexagonal glass jars and gold twist caps (Medium) $748