Bee Mountain - a sanctuary for rescued bees built in the Guatemalan forest

hello dear friends!

My friend Ahmid has been a hobby beekeeper for a couple of years now. In mid 2018, he singlehandedly started a bee rescue project called BeeHub. He took calls on his cellphone from people who had unwanted swarms and he would put on his bee suit, drive to wherever the bees were, remove the bees, take them to a farm about 30 miles outside of the city and put them in hives that he built himself; everything paid out of his own pocket!!

One day he asked me if I would like to go on a bee rescue. I'd never even put on a bee suit in my life so I said yes! it sounded like fun, and it was!
Ahmid is so passionate and knowledgeable about this subject so I learned a whole lot about bees and started going to rescues with him more often.

Around June of 2019, Ahmid, three other people and I, got together to find a way make BeeHub sustainable. We made a budget, and a plan to start a crowdfunding campaign to raise the money to build some platforms, hives and some equipment to build a bee sanctuary in the outskirts of the city. The response was amazing! we started getting $5, $10, $20 contributions from folks who were moved by the project. and in about 3 months of campaigning, we reached our goal and started building Bee Mountain.

In December, we invited our friends, some artists that donated works of art and design students who donated some hive themed designs, and a few members of the press and cracked open the champagne; Bee Mountain was officially open!

It was a small project and we raised a small amount of money ($2,500). but every cent was donated by someone who cared about saving the bees and that meant everything to us, the Bee Mountain team.

Here is a little video I made of our opening day celebration.