Marie Chapman comes from a family of beekeepers and later established her own operation. We met on the Sunshine Coast with the Gather By team and tasted several Australian honeys, including jelly bush honey. The visit offered a chance to hear about her work and compare the character of the different harvests.
Marie has partnered with Gather By with a test plot planting a variety of leptospurmum. We walked through Marie’s tropical garden to look at the test site and Marie explained why she chose to leave her job as a dental nurse to become a full time beekeeper.
- Marie with Matt from Gatherby. A cup of tea, amazing honey and a good chat.
- Marie with Kieran from Gather By checking the leptosurmum test site. The tropical conditions means they are growing at a fast rate.
Marie’s grandfather and father were beekeepers. After travelling and working as a dental therapist, she returned to beekeeping. She described how her experience helps her observe the colonies and recognise changes in their condition.
Her decision to work with Gather By and produce the Manuka-type honeys is to to make a better living for herself. She explains that producing just table honey alone is hard unless you want to go big. She prefers to produce quality over quantity AND make a living this way. It’s hard work sometimes, it’s heavy work and challenging when there’s a blowout on the Nissan or she has to change a tyre on the tractor, but ultimately she loves working in and around nature, with ‘her girls’ the bees as she calls them and this, she believes, keeps her healthy too.
- The Gather By gang heading out from Marie’s house
- Some of Gather By’s highly medicinal honeys
Marie’s dedication is an important part of this beekeeper story. A honey’s flavour or grading number does not make a food jar a sterile wound-care product. Enjoy food honey for its taste; do not apply it to wounds, burns or infections in place of appropriate care.
Thanks to all the beekeepers and folks I met in Australia and to Gather By for showing me around. My next stop was New Zealand to return to High Peak and catchup with Tom Dunbar who supplies the most amazing honeydew and Royal Manuka to me at Balqees.
