Jessie | Bethells Beach

“So, the last time I hung out with someone that I think is really different to me was when I was checking a beehive at the Rydges Hotel, hanging out with the maintenance guy up on the rooftop. So, what I gained from that experience was that I was able to teach somebody who had never looked into a beehive before, the importance of bees, and also, the importance of pollination.

So, one-third of the world’s food is pollinated by bees. Basically, no bees – no food. So, it was really cool to go into the beehive with this guy and just to see the questions that followed, and to really explain pollination to him. It gave me a huge buzz. 

So, I’m an urban bee-keeper. I rescue bees from being exterminated, and then I re-home them on the roof-tops of Auckland City, and I go into the bee-hives once a month, and check that the bees are okay. One of the coolest things about my job is that I rescue a bee swarm, and then I re-home it on a rooftop in really diverse areas of Auckland. So, I have beehives in schools, in cafes, and even on banks, but every client has the same common goal. They celebrate the bees, and they really respect them and treat them with huge care and love, because they know the importance of bees and pollination.

I think it’s really important to have diversity here in Auckland because if we were all the same it would be pretty boring. I learned bee-keeping from my flatmate, who was about 30 years older than me. So, if he wasn’t around, then I wouldn’t have learned bee-keeping, and I wouldn’t have rescued a whole lot of bees. They would have been exterminated. So, it’s really important to have a diverse range of people living in one community so that you can learn from each other.

I grew up at Bethells Beach on the rugged, wild West Coast. Being outdoors is really important to me. So is family, and of course bees. Not exterminating bees is huge to me. I’d love to see the extermination of bees being made illegal at some point. I suppose growing up at Bethell’s has given me huge respect and care for the environment, but the way that I got into bee-keeping was I had done a course on bee-keeping and then I was looking for a flat, and I moved in with a bee-keeper. He had a beehive in his back garden, and it was like it was meant to be. The next three years of my life just became all about bees. The part that really hooked me in was when I needed a new queen for my beehive, and I ordered one on the internet, and the postman delivered it to my front door. 

So, one-third of the world’s food is pollinated by bees, right and how that happens is from bees carrying pollen from flower to flower. They basically drop a piece of pollen on a flower, and it turns a flower into fruit, and every fruit and vegetable that has a seed or a pip? That used to be a piece of pollen, and it was pollinated by a bee. So, if we didn’t have bees, we wouldn’t have all the fruits and vegetables and nuts that have seeds or pips. We need bees.”