Discover the rich variety of flavors created by your local honeybees and support one of the key species that sustains life on Earth! Local honey delivers the unique flavors from all the flowers ac...
Next door honey is unique to your community. The flavor comes directly from the nectar of local flowers. Produced by the hard work of local beekeepers and their honeybees, honey is a natural product of highest quality: no synthetic flavors and no fuss. Organic, raw and vegetarian – honey is enjoyed by everyone.
Ordinarily, finding local honey is difficult. Beekeeping is an artisanal practice, and connecting with local customers can be a challenging endeavor for beekeepers. That’s why we radically simplified the way of selling honey and developed nearBees - an easy online marketplace with fair commission. In this way we ensure that local beekeepers can continue caring for their bees, who in turn, care for a blooming neighbourhood.
You wonder why that is not already existing? One reason might be that there is no lobby for hobbyist beekeepers and that selling local honey is a small niche, not interesting for big players – so there is a huge lack of innovation. The second reason is that platforms as ebay, etsy and others, who radically modernized the way artisans and private people could sell their products do not work with honey. The traditional packaging of honey does just not fit the criteria of ecommerce – the honey jar is bulky, heavy and fragile what results in very high delivery costs. So we innovated the honey packaging and developed a new environmentally-friendly refill pack – cost-effective to deliver and slim enough to be fit any mailbox.
How to purchase nearBees honey:
How to sell with nearBees honey:
So why buy honey from far away regions like Argentina, Mexico, China or Brazil if there is the opportunity to get fresh, aromatic local honey, sent right to your mailbox? – So close by that the honey might even contain nectar and pollen from your garden or balcony!
Our goal is to create an online honey market – an innovative social platform to support local beekeeper and enrich communities – all while being fun, informative and socially responsible!
We aim to connect two target audiences. First, we want to attract local community members who enjoy honey. These people are healthy, responsible, socially minded individuals who appreciate the value of local ingredients and small business. Our second target audience is the local beekeeper, particularly small hobbyist beekeepers, who watch over the honeybees that sustain the local flora. The nearBees online platform provides beekeepers with an easy and time-saving marketing opportunity – no membership fees, expectations of high output volumes or expensive equipment.
We hope our crowdfunding campaign will help nearBees to reach the goal of expanding the local platform to additional cities, communities and neighborhoods. So that one day everyone can experience the benefits we offer to the beekeepers, their bees, the honey lovers and our natural environment.
Beside all these social benefits our sustainable packaging solution will reduce CO2 emissions, consumption of energy and resources.
Now it’s your turn to discover a fun and sweet approach to environmental stewardship. Started in Munich, help us now to expand our network all over Germany and beyond!
Environment – Sustainability – Local – Conscientious consumption. For good reasons, these topics have become increasingly critical in recent years. That’s why we do our part by focusing on beekeeping – a fundamental layer of the local community – the beekeepers, honeybees and nature. But that’s not where the good things end. All in all you can do something good for yourself – with healthy, pure and untreated honey. Try it out.
And your nearby bees will not just reward you with one-of-a-kind honey, they are essential for the pollination of our nature as well. It is estimated that one third of all food is directly or indirectly dependent on the bees. Cautious projections calculate the societal value of the bees pollination on 2,5 billion a year – and that’s just Germany!
nearBees started in Munich during fall 2014 and worked the entire winter in a test phase. That’s the reason why the Munich area is already able to enjoy delicious, locally sourced honey. We want to offer this opportunity to you, your family and friends all over Germany.
Just as the beekeepers are preparing for their new season and honeybees take their first joint returns, our nearBees team begins the expansion in Germany. What we need to progress further are additional funding resources to expand our regional coverage and to promote our cause. We need to bring the pleasure of local honey to all corners of Germany.
Thanks to our supporters the costs of our office and the salaries of our interns and our freelancers are covered. Our founders work free of charge on their vision. For the expandation and especially the prominence of nearBees we need further more people with field experience and manpower. It is important for us to motivate as many beekeepers as possible to work with us right after the start of the expandation. Because the switch from honey jar to honey bag might be hard to imagine, we would like to send a set of free packages to all the beekeepers who are interested in trying out our new, environmentally friendly concept.
In case we exceed our funding targets we will invest the extra money in increasing platform visibility and in the construction of a dense beekeepers network.
20.000€ - funding threshold: next door honey – now
in your area.
Upon reaching this funding level we will put all of our available
resources into expanding nearBees throughout Germany.
40.000€ - funding target: faster and
better!
Hopefully you’ll understand that the website will be launched
sooner in some areas than others. But if your support exceeds our
initial funding goal, we will immediately invest the extra money in
expanding our network in as many areas as possible. Additionally we
would like to offer you more detailed information about your bees
and their beekeepers.
But that’s not all - in the case that we exceed our funding goal, we’ve already thought about some extras as sweet as honey: We would like to offer even more detailed profiles, an app for beekeepers that enables easy news directly for the hives and a lot more to bring bees, beekeepers and honey lovers closer.
With your support we will launch a Germany-wide movement for beekeepers and honeybees. The payback is the preservation of species richness and the natural diversity of the environment.
First and foremost, the driving force of nearBees is the participation of the local beekeepers from Munich with their rich honeybee colonies.
Beekeeping and agriculture have a long tradition in the nearBees family. Prior to suggesting the original idea for the online honey platform, Viktoria kept bees for three years as a hobbyist beekeeper. In fact, for her master thesis, she explored the “relationship between humans and bees.” The result of the master thesis is nearBees.
But it was a long journey to delivering the very first batch of
honey to Munich in autumn 2014. Viktoria teamed together with
Michael Gelhaus, Kristian Knobloch, and Dominik Krebs.Thanks to
diverse support, the effort has transformed from a master thesis to
the social startup “nearBees – honey next door”.
Because of the intense cooperation with our first beekeepers from
Munich, we could further adapt our concept to the needs of a
smaller beekeeper. Additionally, we were able to collect countless
bits of useful feedback for the further development of
nearBees.
On March 2015 we became official: with the newly founded nearBees GmbH, we moved into our first office! We grew to a strong eight person team of part-time employees and threshold workers. Our founders still work for free in pursuit of making our vision a reality.
During the execution of our campaign we have benefitted from the kind help of others. Therefore we want to offer a very sincere thanks to:
Together, we have invested much time in our project, even more passion and a lot of ideas. We are very happy – and a bit proud – that we have done it.
To go further we need every one of you as part of our team! No matter if you are beekeeper, honey lover or if you just want to be part of our movement – we appreciate every member who supports us!
For questions, suggestions or feedback on nearBees, you can have a look at our website www.nearbees.de. Or write us at [email protected] If you want to speak with us in person you can call us of course! + 49 (0)89 38153514.
Matchfunding! Um den Honig von Nebenan von München nach ganz Deutschland zu bringen legt Ben & Jerry's auf jede Unterstützung von euch noch einmal 20% Extra* oben drauf!
*Unterstützung als Gewinner des "Join our Core" Sozialunternehmer Wettbewerbs von Ben & Jerry's in Partnerschaft mit Ashoka. Bis zu einer Fundingsumme von 40.000€
"Social StartUp" category winner of the "Neumacher Gründerwettbewerb" by the german business news magazine "WirtschaftsWoche".
