Denise Alison of Humans of Lismore spent the afternoon over a cuppa chatting to fourth-generation beekeeper Frewoini Baume, to bring you this week's Sunday Profile:

Frewoini:

“I was born in Ethiopia and came here to Australia with my sister when I was 6 years old. Of all the places we could’ve ended up, we ended up in Australia and of all the parts of Australia we could’ve ended up, we ended up here in the Northern Rivers in little old Lismore. So lucky! So, so lucky! 

I think I’m definitely one of the luckiest people in the world. To grow up in a community like this is so good. You are surrounded by role models, people who you really admire and look up to, people who are active and who are engaged and encouraging in your life. It’s one thing to have that in your family but to have it in your community too, that’s just on a dreamland level.

We picked up English pretty quickly because Mum and Dad were so organised and they made sure they were really educated about the process. Dad was also studying to be a Primary School teacher at the time.

Our Primary school teachers had little Amharic Dictionaries on their desks so they could figure out what we were saying. On the first day of school, it was only my sister who was supposed to be going. I went along and was ready to go to school too.

We walked my sister in on the first day and in I went as well. I didn’t have a bag or lunch because I wasn’t meant to be going. My teacher, Miss Banks who is absolutely amazing and taught me to read and write at school, she was like… Just let her come in. Dad brought in my lunch later and there I stayed. 

I really enjoyed school. I went to Coffee Camp for Primary School and Trinity for high school and I was honoured to be School Captain at both schools. The school is fabulous.

Fundamentally school can be just an educational institution and you can see it as a chore but you can make it so much more than that. I’ve had amazing teachers who were so encouraging of me doing further studies or researching areas I’m interested in and doing extracurricular activities.

That’s what makes your school experience unique to other peoples, is by adding your interests.

The great thing about the 2 schools I went to was, not only did they give me a high level of quality education but they also provided me with good morals and values and ethics to be able to go out into the world with a lot of courage and a lot of conviction and a lot of pride to want to make the world a better place.

Mum always reminds us that it takes a village to raise a child. Anything I’ve done is simply a credit to both my parents and my family but also my community. They’ve been so dedicated and they instilled a lot of empowerment into me to think that I really can do anything which is definitely a driving force.

I didn’t really know what I was going to do when I finished school. I went on a trip with some friends and their Dads’ to Darwin and that was amazing, to be exposed to that landscape. You can’t come back the same. I loved it soooo much.

Since leaving school I’ve been working. I love my jobs. I’m so fortunate to have 2 jobs that I really love. Bees! What can I say other than I love Bees and I can’t stop smiling when I say the word Bees. Bees really have been a repeating motif throughout my life.

On both sides of my family, I’m a 4th generation Beekeeper and my family in Ethiopia were also Beekeepers. I remember the morning that my first swarm arrived. My Mum had dropped my sister off at the bus stop and she honked the horn from the carport.

She said.… You better go outside because some sort of God has been listening to you. I walked out and there was the smallest swarm of bees on a tiny Banksia and that’s how it started. I’m in absolute awe of Bees. I’m obsessed! D

ad’s always saying, those poor Bees, you never leave them alone (laughs). It’s true!

I’ve been Beekeeping in the Northern Rivers for 11 years now. I’ve been a part of lots of Beekeeping groups. I’ve attended Beekeeping conferences. All my school projects related to Bees. My friend reminded me of a time when we were trying to raise money for an endangered species.

Everyone was doing like Sumatran Tigers, etc, and she said…You were there going, we need to do Bees. I listen to Podcasts about Bees, I watch Youtube videos on Bees. In 2015 I was the far North Coast Lions Youth of the Year. My 5-minute speech was about the importance of Bees in this world. Since finishing school I’ve been working with commercial and recreational Beekeepers in my spare time. This last season I’ve been helping people who are interested in starting their Beekeeping journey. It’s so fulfilling watching people become just as obsessed as me. 

I work at Santosha Mushroom Farm and for Flow Hive who have very generously taken me on. I feel like I’ve peaked way too early in my workplace. As young people, born into a climate crisis and an ecological crisis, when you are entering the workforce, you really want to make sure, or it’s more important to you, that the companies you are working for mirror your ethics and values.

For me, definitely having environmental protocols is really important. There will be companies that say, Sometimes you need to separate your work from your ethics but there’s no room for that. That’s why I’m really glad that I love both my jobs. I get to enter the workforce with these kinds of people, people who are my idols and I look up to every single day. I just have a high standard for life now. 

I’m doing my 3rd instalment of my Beekeeping course which is a Cert 3 in Beekeeping through the Department of Primary Industries. It’s the highest qualification you can get in Australia to date but they are working on a Cert 4 which will be exciting.

This week is all about Queen breeding and looking at the genetics of your Queens. It’s all so interesting and I love it. People think Bees, honey, you see this little box with Bees flying ion and out but it’s the biggest misconception. They are just fooling you. Inside is the most complex systems and so difficult to understand. 

Everyone in my family is quite crafty. Both my parents went to Art school, my sister does collages. Growing up my parents encouraged us to pursue and do arts and crafts but to also have a deeper appreciation for the Arts and their role within our society.

We went to a lot of art galleries, a lot of music performances, music festivals and Mum also taught us how to knit, how to sew so we can make our own clothes.

We’d have stalls at the markets with our stuff. I did music in my HSC and I love it. Music is definitely what my parents and a lot of my friends would want me to pursue but Bees have got my heart.

I love Lismore, I absolutely love it. It’s a very accepting town and I think it’s a town with a lot of potential. Lismore has a lot of community members who are so invested in the community and various parts of it.

Even just looking at Claudie Frock and her dedication to the Arts, you and your Humans of Lismore page that you’re running, Maddy Rose Braddon and all her climate action, so many good people. The moment I think I really appreciated that I was able to be brought up here was in the floods.

The way everyone came together and were so willing to help. The methods that they applied so that it was so effective, efficient and organised. Everyone was so looked after and it was amazing. 

I have a little exhibition at Claudie’s gallery under the Conservatorium. My works are called Eco Prints. It’s a way for me to go out, check what my Bees are on, take a sample of that plant, make a print of it and be able to document what my Bees are on throughout particular times of the year. Those prints are mounted onto board and coated with my own Beeswax. They may have some drawing or stitching.

They are presented in honeycomb frames which also come out of the hive. Bees go through different stages in their life. The very final stages when we see them is when they are out foraging, collecting nectar and pollen. When they die, they usually die out in the field but some die in the hive.

The Bees wait for them to dehydrate and then fly them toward the front of the hive. I collected those dead Bees and I made a necklace. It’s about a poem called The Necklace which is a really old poem and it explores the importance of the role of Bees in providing the sunshine and providing the golden, wonderful things that they provide for us in our life.

The necklace has petals from Zinnias dipped in wax in between the little dead Bees. At first people don’t quite know that they are Bees until they go really close. What I’m really trying to get at is, if you have a personal relationship or an intimate connection with a particular thing, your ability to then go out and destruct that natural thing is a lot harder.

If you are close to it, you have a level of empathy towards that thing as a living being. It’s trying to get people a little bit closer to nature. There’s Honey Bees, Native Bees, there’s Solitary Bees and it’s this whole diverse world which is all so important.

Just because they don’t produce honey doesn’t mean that they are not important. Flowers all need to be pollinated in different ways. Macadamias, for example, need the native bees because they are so much smaller and can get into the tiny flowers.

I look at Covid and I think it can be really easy to get bogged down in what’s going on and when you are a young person who is passionate about things, your Politicians who are meant to be your leaders and your representatives aren’t representing what your points of view are, it’s really disheartening. It can be really easy to go…Oh well, that’s that! kind of thing. I think the fact that there’s no room for, Oh well, that’s that! At this point of time is a real instigator to keep on going, maybe a lot harder than we may have otherwise gone. 

The world is changing and definitely, you see our response to Covid. We took on professional advice. We did exactly what they said to do, everything worked, people complied and the outcome was good. That’s exactly what we need to do for the climate crisis.

What Covid has proven, is that it’s not a lack of scientific evidence or a lack of knowledge or a lack of funding that’s stopping them from acting on Climate change, it’s really just a lack of political will. In some ways, it’s gutting to think they don’t care but in another way, it’s also quite enlightening. That particular demographic of people who just so happen to be leading our country at this particular time don’t find it important when there are countries in such worse situations doing way better on this issue.

To see our impact of our actions on migration and rising sea levels all due to our temporary selfishness. You don’t get any more unempathetic than that. It definitely goes to show that it’s about attitudes and values and perhaps the social fabrication in society for that demographic not evolving as quickly as they might be for other generations or communities within our country.

I do think that it will be ok and I do think that you have to be hopeful. Hope gives you the opportunity to imagine a better future and that’s exactly what we need to keep on doing.

I suppose my life could have ended up in a completely different way. I had the great fortune of not ending up that way. This is the product of having access to education, having access to health care, having opportunities and having a community who are dedicated and supportive.

While they feel like fundamental things that everybody should have, they’re just not.”