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:
- our wonderful teammates Marco, Gedi, Christian, Joschka, Katha,
Jeannine and Felizitas
- the creative agency denkwerk, the media production Field of
View, the Görlitz foundation and its ISSO institute, the IT4Change
program initiated by Ashoka, the Social Entrepreneurship Academy,
the Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship, the founding promotion
of the Zeppelin University
- all consultants and supporters who have accompanied us
throughout the past year
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.
