The Bee Collective
Video Entry
Business Information
Female Founder:
Jenni McLeod
Links:
How has the business been funded to date?
Bootstrapped
Tell us about your business:
The Bee Collective is a beekeeping, education and consulting business. I sell products and focus on education for women and children. Through different initiatives, I write and publish books with children, develop educational documents about chemical spraying, I have a petition with 31k signatures to protect Leatherwood and in 2023, led out 2 World records in beekeeping reaching 27 countries, impacting millions. I have since established 'International Day of Women in Beekeeping' on the day we set the records. One of the programs I run is 'Bee Queens' - a 12 month beekeeping program providing community, connection and skills. The World records highlighted how much women in beekeeping want the kind of connections created through Bee Queens, and I want to facilitate that.
How would $5k or $10k enable you to create more profit and impact in your business?
Women make up 20% of the beekeeping workforce in Australia (in all other industries women's participation averages 48%). This funding would allow me to scale the program to mainland Australia whilst also maintaining the program here in Tasmania. Women who have already completed the program would be paid to facilitate Bee Queens workshops. It allows me to establish a bigger reach and community of women beekeepers beyond Tasmania, building leaders and creating pathways to employment, whilst building the impact of The Bee Collective.
Please outline what you would spend the grant on:
The funding would be spent on venue hire, running expenses and sessional fees to pay women who have graduated from previous programs to run Bee Queens workshops in Tasmania.
