Orange Blossom Honeycomb

Snives Hives — Rescued Bees, Raw Local Honey

Every jar starts with a rescue.

Somewhere in Sydney right now, a colony of bees is living inside a wall, a roof cavity or a chimney. Most people's first instinct is to call pest control. Andrew and the Snives Hives crew get the call instead — and those bees end up making the honey on your toast.

Snives Hives is a team of seven beekeepers who humanely rescue wild colonies across Sydney and the Central Coast, rehome them in managed apiaries, and harvest raw, small-batch honey from them. 100% of their colonies are rescued. 100% of their honey is pure and raw. Nothing in between.

The Story

Snives Hives works hand in hand with Sydney Bee Rescue — the beekeepers Sydneysiders call when a swarm moves into the eaves or a colony turns up behind the plasterboard. Rather than letting those bees be sprayed, Andrew and his team carefully extract them, find the queen, and move the whole colony into a proper hive.

Those rescued colonies needed somewhere to live. So the team built a network of apiaries — now 32 of them — stretching from Sydney's suburbs up to the Central Coast. The shed is in Somersby, and you'll find their honey cart in St Ives.

The honey is the happy by-product of doing the right thing by the bees. It's local in the truest sense: made by Sydney bees, from Sydney and Central Coast flowers, by beekeepers who are out in those apiaries every week.

How They Do It

1. Rescue. Colonies are humanely extracted from walls, roofs and swarm sites across Sydney and the Central Coast — no spraying, no poison.

2. Rehome. Each colony moves into a managed hive at one of 32 apiaries, spread across suburban gardens, farms and bushland.

3. Harvest. Honey and pollen are taken in small batches and jarred raw — pure, chemical-free, nothing added.

The result tastes of where it was made. Because every apiary forages on different flowers, each batch has its own colour and character, and it shifts with the seasons.