Where it all started

It is wonderful what a hobby can do for you. Twenty seven years ago, my father started with four beehives on his father’s farm. My father was the eldest of three brothers and each one of them had a hobby, like the youngest one planted vegetables and the other one had doves, so my father’s hobby was beekeeping.

A few year later his hobby got bigger and bigger, and became later on a business. So at that young age to have twenty five beehives was quite big, but not everything went smoothly for his business because on that stage my father owned an old Mercedes car and harvesting honey with a car, can you think of all the honey making the car seats all sticky and dirty, but like the saying goes “drastic times call for drastic measures”. The beehives are between bushes, can you imagine a twee wheel drive car driving through bushes and thick sand? No ways! It was impossible, my father needed to walk from beehive to beehive.

As you can see my father is a hard worker and so in fifteen to twenty years time his business grown up to three hundred beehives. The beehives was spread over a few thousand hectare of ground on farms nearby. Of course he is very fortunate to know so many farmers in the nearby areas where he could put the beehives.

Four years ago my father’s fishing factory where he worked at closed, because of financial problems and so he lost his job. But luckily thanks to his hobby and hard work, the beekeeping business consist now of four hundred and fifty beehives. During the honey season my father gets his income from all the honey harvested in that period.

I have learned a lot from his story, to begin with is that you need to do something you love to do, like a hobby. Then within a business you begin with scratch and built yourself up into a big and successful business although the journey to success is not always going to be easy. The beekeeping business was like a sideline job for my father and in life it is good to have a plan B or second option to choose from. After the factory closed my father did not needed to go and look for work, he had the beekeeping business that was his new full-time job.

“Diligence is the mother of good fortune”, meaning hard work brings rewards. And here is another one which is similar to the previous one “Elbow grease is the best polish”, hard work gives the best results.