Heroes of Mother Nature — A Series of Interviews
An interview with one of the Heroes of Mother Nature exploring the fascinating world of Australian native bees
Disclaimer: I receive no financial or other material benefit from writing about this business. The views expressed are my own and contain no conflict of interest. Clicking on the links in this article will bring me no financial or other benefit unless explicitly stated.
When I first discovered Little Bee’s Secret Garden, I was online. I remember seeing the name and discovering it was a real place. The address? All it said on Facebook was: “It’s a secret, Canungra”. I had to find it!
Eventually, I did find it and I wasn’t disappointed.
This is the first interview in the Heroes of Mother Nature series. I can’t help thinking Mother Nature would be delighted by this little hidden gem in the Gold Coast hinterland which champions biodiversity and in particular Australian Native bees.
If the name takes you back to your childhood, you’re not alone and the “secret garden” in the business name is indeed a reference to the famous book.
The business was created to combine the passions of owner, Alex, after some personal setbacks forced her to return to the workforce and cease home-schooling her children. Homeschooling for her sons had included weekly visits to the community garden which Alex managed.
When the community garden got a Native Australian Stingless bee hive, she says “Almost overnight I was, hook, line and sinker, addicted”. To her disappointment, it was difficult to find information and resources on the stingless bees to use for her sons’ education.
This was where the magic started. To support her family and care for her own mental health, Alex conceptualised a business that would serve her passions for gardening, native bees, connecting her sons with nature and hopefully supply an income.
It was not an easy time in the region. There were catastrophic bushfires that devastated not only the beautiful forests but the tourism industry that many in the area relied upon. A few months later, COVID19 found its way to Australia and the region was in lockdown for 7 weeks.
Since then, like much of the world, the region has had restrictions and lockdowns which have impacted on the business, but Alex has taken this in her stride and adapted by developing online resources and as she puts it, “pivoting” with the conditions.
I sat down with Alex and spent a delightful hour in the secret garden talking about her business and nature.
Inspiration for the business
Alex’s passion is evident when she talks about this business that she has created to enjoy with her own children as well as a wider audience of tourists and locals.
“I wanted to create that space where kids, when they’re kids, can enjoy finding things in the garden so I have things hidden in the garden that they can discover.”
This enjoyment is evident from the photos of happy children that litter the feeds of Little Bee’s social media channels. Photos of joy and wonder and pride in discovery, but that’s not just the children.
“I think people are seeking a little bit of an adventure and I wanted to make it a bit exciting and make people think they’ve stumbled across something that was hidden that they’ve been really privy to.”
The stars of the show
Alex doesn’t just run a bee-related business or function as a beekeeper. She’s a fierce advocate for these buzzing pollinators that are the cornerstone of the ecosystems all around the world.
She articulates the excitement of developments in Native Bee research. Native Bees are exciting, and there is a feeling that researchers and beekeepers alike are on the cusp of great discoveries, because the research is really just beginning. Previous information has been gathered from Indigenous Australians and anecdotal records but the science is still catching up.
Having said that, there has been research in the past, but with new species still being discovered the scope of that research is changing all the time.
Alex talks about being inspired by the words of well-known, experienced entomologist, Dr. Toby Smith, when he appealed to a group of beekeepers at the Australian Native Bee Association to gather data and send it in.
Moments of wonder
I asked Alex for a moment of wonder in nature. She talked about how seeing the looks of wonder during her workshops on other people’s faces takes her right back to her first moments with the bees. I’m not surprised that this charismatic businesswoman with a gentle sense of humour inspires her audiences and takes them with her on her journey of discovery.
She continued her reflection on moments of wonder by highlighting the matrifocal societies of stingless bees and how much we could learn from the way they structure their communities.
As far as a single incident goes, she talked about a young Great Carpenter Bee. This moment is inspiring and you’ll find Alex’s description at the end of this article because I can’t think of a better way to round off than with an emphasis on Alex’s pure commitment to connecting with nature through her business and bringing that experience to others.
Advice to herself
When I asked Alex what advice she would give to her past self, she paused and then ran through a number of options revealing her modest nature. She finally settled on advice that many of us can probably relate to:
“Accept help, ask for help, delegate. Find people that you trust and learn to ask for help. You can’t do it all on your own.”
Greatest hope for the future of Little Bee’s Secret Garden
The greatest hope Alex has for the future of the business is tempered by her life experience and her priorities.
“All I want is to be able to enjoy my life with my children while I can.”
She talked about the 24/7 nature of running a small business. She wants to get to a point where she can take time off with the business still running, because in her own words, “what I do really matters” and “half the time you don’t even know the impact you leave”.
One can’t help but wholeheartedly agree and admire her sense of purpose.
Little Bee’s greatest achievement to date
The business’ greatest accomplishment for Alex is feedback about the garden or her teachings about native bees. She refers to the words of David Attenborough,
‘No one will protect what they don’t care about; and no one will care about what they have never experiened’
She expresses that it “fills her cup” when she sees people inspired by new knowledge and experience of native bees through her business.
Alex’s favourite products
When I asked Alex if she had a favourite product I could see from her reaction that her passion extends throughout the range that is carefully curated to nurture a love of nature and native bees.
She expressed that this question was like being asked which was your favourite child.
This year Alex has a new product, perfect for Christmas! Her hand-crafted, custom-made and delightfully named “Tic Tac Toe Boards — Bees and Bugs Edition” are perfect for the gardener who has everything or the child who loves to investigate the crawling members of an ecosystem. She invests significant time and effort into these beautiful creations which are well worth the cost.
The bee hotels are always big at Christmas and Alex has a big range available.
- There’s the hotels built by the Logan Village Womens’ Shed that is a social outlet for women to also learn woodworking and other practical skills. They make the budget range that fills some of the shelves in Little Bee’s Secret Garden.
- In the mid-range, Alex is working with a boy through the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) funding to build bee hotels. She’s thrilled by his recent purchase of a companion dog with the money he has earned from this project.
- The stunning painted range of bee hotels filling the rest of the shelves are a “family gig” and they are truly works of art that could take pride of place in any garden. Alex’s dad builds them and her mother paints them. At the moment there are a lot of pink ones to fit with “Turn Canungra Pink” which is dedicated to raising funds and awareness for all kinds of Cancer and used to assist people in the community who are battling with cancer. One of these pink bee hotels will be used for a silent auction as a part of the campaign.
Alex is also experimenting with a new Honey range that she describes as “dangerous” with her characteristic good humour. She’s infusing it with cocoa nibs that she says could be eaten it by the spoonful. Hopefully this delicious temptation will be ready by Christmas.
As always she has a great range of plants and she has new pots coming in for Christmas selections.
What is evident from this product list are the connections that Alex is making, not only with nature, but with community. Much of her work seems to centre on spreading the love, which in this writer’s opinion makes the business even more worthy of support.
To highlight Alex’s commitment to sharing Nature’s wonders, let’s finish with her own description of a moment of wonder in Nature.
The moment of wonder with a Great Carpenter Bee in Alex’s own words
“It was the start of Spring and I had yet to see a single solitary bee. So, most of our solitary bees will die off over Winter and you don’t see much activity. I think there’s one or two that sort of survive through Winter but not many. On the whole there’s nothing.
I hadn’t seen anything. I hadn’t seen a single solitary bee for ages and I was walking through the carpark of the BP and something caught my attention. I’m not sure what it was, whether it was a noise or what and I looked down and there’s a Great Carpenter Bee, a female, attached to my shoelace.
And first and foremost, she’s not only just a native bee. She’s a spectacular native bee! She’s our largest native bee. She’s got this bright yellow fuzzy waistcoat and this sort of shiny black abdomen and she’s beautiful. She’s a beautiful bee.
And I saw her on my shoelace and I squealed loudly, like a complete girl. And I looked up and I didn’t have my phone on me and it’s in that moment that of course, you want to enjoy the moment, but I’m like this is a moment you want to share with people because it was so out of the blue.
It really, it just took me by surprise.
So I squealed first and started gesturing madly to the guy I’m seeing who runs the fruit shop. He thought I’d run over myself with my car somehow, so he runs out. I’m like ‘get my phone’!
So he grabs my phone and I was able to video it, but at that point she fell off my shoelace and I managed to pick her up and I took her over to the table and was able to get some more footage of her. But she was really, she wasn’t able to fly initially. It did take probably five minutes and she’s walking around in circles.
So the assumption I made is that she’s newly hatched. She did look pretty fresh. She was drying her wings off. They hadn’t yet sort of dried.
The carpenter bee will come out of soft, rotting wood. So they’ll chew their way into soft wood, hence the name.
And then so she crawled all over me for some time which … I would never pick up a bee, but I should have put a footnote on that video saying don’t try this at home, because she does have the capacity to sting.
And here I was with this bee running all over my hand and you know, I wasn’t concerned that she would sting me because I was not a threat to her.
They would only sting you if you’re grabbing a hold of them and threatening them. They’re not aggressive, but it was the last thing that crossed my mind.
I was so blown away by the fact that she was running up and down my hand without any real inclination to get off. I wasn’t trying to hold on to her. And then eventually she did, she walked off.”
https://janegrowsgardenrooms.wordpress.com/media/fa75c89ea8e804bcde12a0b20e4098de
If you’d like to connect with this wonderful business, you can find it on Facebook and Instagram. There is also a website linked below.
Bee plants and gifts | Little Bee’s Secret Garden | Queensland
Assist native bee populations to thrive Enjoy learning about Australia’s native bees Improve pollination in your…www.littlebeessecretgarden.com
Like to motivate Jane to keep writing? Buy her a coffee using this link. Or help her monetise her YouTube channel by subscribing and/or watching some of her videos.
Jane Grows Garden Rooms 