YouTube is a free social media platform that mainly caters to people who want to share videos online. The chances of the online video you watched or planning to watch being on YouTube is high because this company logs in 6 billion hours of videos each month. It is the perfect video sharing website to use when uploading tutorials, promotional videos, and other useful videos.
The billions of users and viewers allow many account holders to have access to a global network that can significantly increase their presence and influence. It is this reason why beekeepers stormed this website in force.
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Hive Cast – School of Bees
Naturally, we had to set up own channel. It seems its pretty much a given now that if you have a website, you have a YouTube channel. So, the Hive Cast was born…here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo5eNncfR-VDtpo0XXx6gcA
We plan to add more interesting videos and learning resources soon but please let us know what you think of the production value so far!
5 Interesting And Useful YouTube Channels To Checkout
Most of us would automatically resort to tutorial videos when trying to figure out how to do things we have no or little knowledge about. Which is why there are a bunch of YouTube channels that cater to the beekeeping community.
Barnyard Bees
This company has had a YouTube channel since 2012. With over a hundred videos in their library, there is always something for someone here. Beginners can learn the basics of beekeeping while professionals can pick up tips and tricks for them to try. Since Barnyard Bees is also a supplier of beekeeping materials, tools, and equipment, viewers can also find videos discussing some of the products they carry as well as “how-to videos” for their equipment.
With over 127 thousand subscribers, this channel continues to attract more audience because of the wide selection of videos they have. Among their videos, one video about the Colony Collapse Disorder garnered 201 thousand views since it was uploaded one year ago.
David Burns (HoneyBees Online)
David Burns is half of the duo that owns HoneyBees Online. His partner is his wife, Sheri Burns, who is also a fellow bee lover. They are based in Illinois, and this couple started beekeeping way back in 1994 and then began to build beekeeping equipment by 2005. David’s YouTube channel serves as the official channel for their company, and they have more than 21 thousand subscribers to date.
This guy covers all the basics of beekeeping in this channel. Both beginners and long-time beekeepers can benefit from following this channel. It is an excellent source of information and tips that you can use in the future. More than a hundred videos are in this channel, and they range from the simple show and tell type that most beginners would appreciate up to the more advanced videos for long-time beekeepers.
Flow Hive
This company is the brainchild of the father and son duo, Stuart and Cedar Anderson. Beekeeping has been in their family for three generations, and it is the love for the bees that spurred the father and son to develop a better way of harvesting honey from the hive.
According to their website, it was Cedar who really wanted to find a better way. Back when he was a young boy, he felt terrible for inadvertently crushing some bees during honey harvest and of course he was also sick of getting stung. It also took a week to harvest their honey the traditional way. So when the little boy grew up, he and his father spent almost a decade in their shed trying to find a better way of harvesting honey, a way that is less invasive to bees.
When Stu and Cedar finally came up with an idea, they immediately created prototypes and drafted some of their friendly beekeepers to try out their system. When their prototypes produced positive feedback, they were ecstatic. The father and son called their system Flow Hive because of its ability to harvest honey with less work and stress on both the bees and the humans.
Their YouTube channel is a collection of “how to’s”, testimonies of flow hive users, videos of Cedar doing site visits and the evolution of the Flow Hive system into the current one that they are selling on their website right now. They currently have 126 thousand subscribers in their channel. This vast number of followers can be attributed to Flow Hive’s very successful crowdfunding campaign and of course, the ingenuity of their invention.
JPthebeeman
This channel is exciting because the owner is a man whose love and obsession for honeybees led him to become the man to call when you want bees that inhabit man-made or natural structures removed and transported. JP is located in Louisiana and very much admits that he and his friends are honeybee adorers. His channel is filled with videos of his honeybee encounters, and it is fun to watch how he (sometimes with a friend) deals with swarms and bee colony removal and transportation. This might not be a channel for beginners, but there are a few videos that address some beginner concerns. Long-time beekeepers will mostly appreciate most of the videos.
JP’s love for honeybees shows in every video, and his knowledge can be seen on how he handles the bees during extraction. I mean, the man is a freaking bee whisperer. His expertise can be easily seen by just how many bee extraction videos there are on his channel. Sure, there are a few frogging, crabbing, and fishing, but it is his honeybee videos that really capture his competence in the beekeeping community. His funny and playful attitude also helps a lot in attracting more subscribers on his channel. He currently has 92 thousand subscribers, and I do not doubt that this will climb in the future.
Maddie Moate
Maddie’s YouTube channel is packed with different videos about animals, plants, her travel and technologies she thinks are cool and useful. However, when you browse her videos, you’ll find that bee related videos are included in her channel. Her bee videos are all under a playlist called “Beekeeping With Maddie”, it shows how she, together with her mom, do their regular inspection or honey harvest.
She is an EduTuber according to her channel, which means that she posts educational videos on her channel. She’s been doing this for the since 2009, and her channel is chock-full of educational videos that are very enjoyable to watch. Because of her social media presence and influence, Maddie’s channel amassed more than 30 million views in the past years and 69 thousand subscribers to date.
You’ll often see Maddie’s closest loved ones on video with her because her love for nature and animals (including bees) came from generations upon generations of experience and knowledge passed down to her. What I really love about her beekeeping videos or any videos in her channel is that she encourages her viewers to “stay curious” which is the ending line for most of her videos she uploads.
How Social Media Can Help The Beekeeping Community
Capitalizing on the global network a social media put on your fingertips has been the norm for many large beekeeping companies, and the small scale beekeeping community followed their footsteps as well. There are several reasons how social media can be utilized by both large and small scale beekeeping companies, communities and organizations. Below are some samples of these reasons.
Financially
A successfully managed social media can be the difference between a potential sale to an actual sale. There is no denying the power and influence social media have. A few well-created bee videos, posts, and pictures will certainly bring in more people on your website. And since social media connects people from all corners of the globe, your market just got bigger. With that in mind, a broader market will generate more leads that can then later become potential customers, and before you know it you are sending packages of your products or offering beekeeping services outside your hometown in no time. Pretty soon, your account will be doing a happy dance because of the income you are getting.
Keep in mind that social media accounts need managing, and this can be a very tedious task, but with the right tool and proper time management, you will be able to do it. In fact, there are already beekeepers who are successfully doing this as you read this article. Beekeeping community can use social media to gather funding for whatever project and campaign they have on their plate.
Bigger Network, More Connections
Social media accounts will also open up doors into not just a more significant market but bigger business network as well. No business-person can ever underestimate the power of networking. It is in this practice that many business owners and even individuals gather their ideas to craft their future business ventures.
Social media accounts can provide the same networking experience only on a more global scale and without physically going to networking gatherings. Like-minded beekeepers can create their group within the social media website where they can share experiences, ideas, and tips on how they can grow their businesses and further their campaign. Also, this opens up the opportunity to find future partners, investors and people who are willing to finance your cause.
Your beekeeping products can be purchased in bulk and then sold in different locations if you find a network of people willing to back you up. In addition, you have the chance to learn more about how you can become a better beekeeper when you engage with your social media network. This is also a great way to stay informed about the current situation of bees, what problems they are facing, and what government movements are being done to address the issues. From there, you can come up with campaigns, fundraising activities, and other projects that are specifically targeted to what the bees need.
A Chance To Become A Social Media Influencer
Many say that once you have a brand, you will then need a face. Organizations use mascots and CGI renderings as the face of their cause. Individual beekeepers, on the other hand, usually end up being the face of their cause or business. And because the internet is a place where people typically search for information (throw in the fact that social media is a huge influencer), then you have a massive tool where anyone can become a superstar in their given niche.
Beekeepers, both small and large scale, are now tapping this tool to widen their reach. And because social media is a hit to the current generation (and I am predicting to the future generations too), being visible in it means that you are reaching and influencing people whom you would not usually reach in the old fashioned ways. And as a person increase his presence and popularity in the social media realm, he will have a greater ability to influence his followers and audience. Thus, leading to a bigger and louder voice for the bees.
Better Opportunities To Help The Bees
Nothing is more powerful than the influence social media has when it comes to advertising. With this idea in mind, many of the beekeepers use that same influence to spread the word of their business and presence. Foundations, organizations, and communities who are concerned about the bee’s survival also use social media to invite more people to support their projects and campaigns.
In addition to that, some social media websites offer fundraising platform that any of their users can use. I’ve seen many “save the bees” fundraising campaigns hosted by these social media websites and I must say that there are plenty that successfully achieved their target goal.
Other Social Media Platforms To Take Advantage Of
Now, YouTube is a great social media, video-sharing website, but you are not bound to just this one. There are plenty of other social media websites you can exploit to your advantage. Keep in mind that these are just some of the social media website you can look at, but there are others out there that are not as popular as the ones I will mention below.
This probably is the most popular social media website to take advantage right now. With an average of 2.3 billion monthly active users, this social media website can help you reach a wider network. In addition to being a source of a vast network, Facebook has evolved into a social media site that can be used by small scale and large scale entrepreneurs to sell their products and merchandise. But for the purpose of spreading the word of the bees predicament, Facebook can be a place where you can launch campaigns or crowdfunding projects that are designed to help the bees in their fight for survival.
Did you know? According to Buffer.com, more than 65 million businesses use Facebook Page, and more than 6 million advertisers use this site to make their presence known.
This is another popular social media platform for both businesses and individuals. It allows users to upload pictures and short videos into their account. In addition to that, Instagram allows its users to follow other users. Following a user in Instagram instructs the social media platform to prioritize the followed user, allowing the follower to see new posts from the users they follow in their feed.
That kind of prioritization and following capability is what lead many entrepreneurs to see the potential of Instagram as a tool to further their business. That same concept can be adopted by beekeeping communities who are selling products or trying to educate the world regarding the bee population decline. With an estimated 1 billion monthly active users (and it is increasing), this platform can really help bees by influencing users from around the globe.
Designed to be a social media website to allow people to briefly and quickly post things like news, entertainment gossip, sports happenings, political developments, and other topics. Most celebrities have Twitter accounts that they use to interact with their fans and to promote their current projects.
Having said that, you can now have a clear picture of how this platform can help in educating the world about the bees. I usually find tweets (that is what a post on Twitter is called), that contain links to blogs and websites that I can view. The beekeeping community does have a foot in this domain, and I must say that they are using this platform really effectively by directing their followers to relevant websites that promote the bee’s cause.
This social media platform started as a messaging app but then quickly morphed into an app where business owners communicate with their clients and potential clients.
This actually has roughly 1.5 billion monthly active users, which is a large number. Given that rough monthly estimate, you can quickly see how this can help your bee campaign or crowdfunding project. Add the fact that WhatsApp is created to service over 180 countries; then this can be a resource to tap to get that much-needed traffic and attention.
Conclusion
Social media is a huge influencer, and there is no arguing about that. A person who has gained authority in his field will certainly have a much broader reach if he uses any social media platforms out there. The beekeeping community has tapped into this tool as well because most people nowadays will probably refer to the internet to look for any information they might need. However, YouTube videos are the best source of “how-to” videos, and they are also the best source of inspirational videos about bees. You’ll find that plenty of bee lovers on YouTube, ranging from professionals who deal with capturing and relocating bee hives and swarms to videos of people who are passionate about helping bees and have taken up beekeeping themselves.
But don’t get yourself stuck in just exploring or exploiting the bee information on YouTube, try other social media websites and platforms too!
