Bee Love

 I've had my eye on Melbourne City Rooftop Honey ever since I heard them speak at The Hive earlier this year. Local beekeepers, they are committed to save the honey bee because:

If The Honey Bees Are In Trouble, We Are In Trouble As Well!

Read here for more.

One of the many things I love about Rooftop Honey is that Vanessa and Mat would like to have hives in different Melbourne suburbs so that we can each be proud of the honey our suburb produces and perhaps get competitive about; similar to the way we get competitive about our football teams!

So that's something I've had back of mind throughout the year, even going so far as to referring to Rooftop Honey about what plants I should have in my garden to help bees; gardening being a new hobby I'm fostering...

Then on the weekend just past, I experienced a dessert made with Rooftop Honey at O'Connells in South Melbourne when I was out for lunch with some tweetettes. Chef Paul Cooper has made this lovely iced nougat dessert that quite simply made me happy:

The iced nougat by Paul Cooper at O'Connells Image: Lou Pardi

The next morning I happened to notice that the lavender bush in my garden was full of bees that were merrily doing their thing! It was a lovely morning and I was fascinated such that I ended up standing for sometime in my PJs watching and photographing the bees at work whilst thinking about whether this meant that the honey for my suburb would have notes of lavender...

Coincidentally later on in the day I visited Moral Fairground at Federation Square when I came across Mat and Vanessa of Rooftop Honey giving a cooking demonstration and talking about their work! Interestingly, I heard Mat share that a bee will only make about a teaspoon of honey in their whole life which leads me to suppose that the chances of Richmond honey tasting of lavender are actually quite slim...

Mat and Vanessa of Rooftop Honey at Moral Fairground

Nonetheless I've been happy to observe that there have been more and more happy bees in my lavender each morning that I inspect it! Today I got to see one of my dear partners in crime Lara McPherson where I confessed to her my new found obsession for bees. Imagine my surprise when Lara promptly showed me this blogpost she had put together over the weekend featuring the following images:

Bees taking in the lavender at Dederang

A bee taking in the lavender at Dederang

SO the moral of this random shit is that bees are integral to the survival of human beings who eat, which is most of us and I think that more of us need to learn about bees - although we don't all have to get as fixated as I have...

I next hope to plant some strawberry plants which are on the list of what plants bees like. And I'm trying to think of ways that I can help support the Rooftop Honey cause - like would anyone be interested in buying greeting cards bearing my photos of bees in the lavender?

If the answer is no, check out the more useful things you can buy to aid the bees, here.