Overcoming Obstacles - Incredible Stories Shared With The CS Team

Beekeeping - Basics
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The Flow customer support (CS) team receive a steady stream of inspirational stories from customers around the world who have overcome a huge range of obstacles to fulfil their dream of becoming a beekeeper.

The stories range across the following:

  • Beekeeping in a wheelchair
  • Beekeeping whilst fighting significant health issues e.g. cancer
  • Beekeeping whilst overcoming significant personal trauma
  • Beekeeping in challenging climates such as high snowfall and freezing temperatures
  • Beekeeping in challenging terrain e.g. high altitude and mountainous ranges, only accessible by donkey
  • Beekeeping on micro balconies in concrete jungles
  • Beekeeping in severe weather conditions such as drought or flood

The stories shared are incredibly inspirational and the common theme is that the benefits of keeping bees outweigh the difficulties faced by those with significant challenges. In many health-related cases, I believe the calming, soothing, and sense-of-purpose effect bees have on a beekeeper, even by just observing the landing board with a morning cup of tea, can offer such an unexpected value for general wellbeing.

Does anyone on the forum feel inclined to share their story and tips for others in a similar situation?

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I’m medically diagnosed with Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, 2 separate accounts of PTSD relating to being sexually abused as a young child aged 10-13 and from my time serving in the Army in Bosnia and to top it off I also suffer from severe social anxiety.

Getting out of bed, normal day to day activities, communicating and managing everyday life is a real challenge.

7 attempts at suicide, 3 resulting in hospitalisation and the most recent in 2018 was a very close call.

My employer of the past 3 years Jaguar Landrover has a fantastic support programme for mental health and as a beekeeper I asked them if having onsite apiaries to educate and support other colleagues with mental health disabilities would be something they would support.

We are now 2 years into our 1,000,000 bee project. Multiple sites with apiaries, internal beekeepers forum gone from 12-70+ members.

I have 1 FlowHive2 already on site with another ordered today and an additional flow super to use on a 3rd hive I donated to the project all funded by JLR.

Friday we present the project to the Snr team as part of our Global Team Improvement scheme where employees are challenged to improve something within the business. Over 1000 teams globally.

I use beekeeping as an alternative form of CBT.

It helps me to slow down, all the thoughts and noises that normally consume my head disappear and the joy of looking after the bees and introducing others has saved my life literally.

I’m never happier than messing with my bees.

The project also includes our onsite nursery children which is an additional distraction throughout the year.

Life can be hard at times and not always something your in control of.

Beekeeping is such a tonic.

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Dean I am incredibly touched that you’ve shared some of your story with Flow and with the other members of our forum. What you have overcome is remarkable and shows your strength as a person - of course you should never have had to face such obstacles but it’s such a credit to you are continuing to move ahead and create positive outcomes for yourself and others. I really love what you’re doing with the programs you’ve implemented through your work too and agree that bees can be wonderfully therapeutic through their ability to bring things into perspective and provide focus and connection with nature. Love and admiration from the team here Dean - and a few glassy eyes over here this morning. Thanks again and we’ll be in touch with you again soon.

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