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It started with my father, Murray. A single hive from his Uncle Len, a teacher's holidays spent chasing Red Gum flows, and a partnership we struck in 1982.
This is how a backyard of bee boxes grew into a family apiary spread right across western Victoria.
My father, Murray Edmonds, started beekeeping after the Second World War. He received his first hive from his Uncle Len Williams. Before that, he'd spent holidays with beekeeping family near Tallangatta, working hives on Red Gum honey flows. Dad kept bees at Ruby, in Gippsland, where he worked as a teacher.
He shifted back to Geelong and kept his bees at the You Yangs, Brisbane Ranges, Bannockburn and Balliang. As a child I'd tag along and help a little, retiring after a few bee stings to go explore the bush.
When I started at Hawkes Bros, times were tough and the company looked like closing its Hardware section. So every night Dad and I would nail bee boxes and frames together, and I began keeping my own bees.
I bought bee hives and a honey-extracting caravan from a retiring beekeeper, and Dad suggested we form a partnership. In 1982, Edmonds Honey was born.
We gathered a huge crop from Grey Box at Castlemaine and couldn't sell it to the packers, the market was glutted. So we started packing it ourselves and selling at markets. The business grew, and soon we were supplying fruit and vegetable shops and distributors right across the region.
We couldn't sell the crop, so we started packing it ourselves, one jar at a time.
We reared queens for our own hives at first, but soon other beekeepers wanted a supply. We tried every race of bee, and found the best for southern Victoria was the Carniolan: thrifty, docile, still on comb, productive, disease-resistant and an excellent winterer.
Dad retired from the business in 2001, after a nasty car accident. Around the same time my friend Leon Layton became ill, and I took over his beekeeping-equipment sales.
I run around 500 bee hives across the western half of Victoria for honey production, mostly on forest bee sites or on farms beside the natural bushland. The honey is produced without chemicals, as natural as possible, and we work hard to keep straight-line varieties. I still operate nucleus hives for queen breeding around Geelong.
On top of a comprehensive range of standard stock, I'm the Victorian agent for AgriSea bee supplement and specific China Bee equipment. I have my own lightweight blue beekeeping jackets made, and I own the moulds for the EzyComb honeycomb cassette system.
Small-batch, hand-labelled honey, or come and say hello at the Mount Duneed shop.