Two Newcastle grandpas give the honey business a red hot go

But that wasn't enough when they retired. They still wanted something more. So, they became beekeepers.

While their 2 Pops Honey is just about a break-even proposition, the sheer enjoyment they get from constantly learning about bees and the process of making honey more than makes the venture worthwhile.

After six years, the two pops (Tony's son married one of Russell's daughters) are managing 100 hives on their own. "We are taking it out of the hive, spinning it, extracting it and bottling it ourselves," Smith says.

By the looks of things, honey is probably keeping them young.

They are certainly fit - the physical labour of maintaining hives is not for the weak at heart. They have hives at locations around the Wallarah Peninsula area, starting with hives near their Caves Beach processing room (located in the Eastlakes Self Storage business operated by Smith), and at Murrays Beach (where Hendriks lives), Cams Wharf and Martinsville.

Their warehouse room is immaculate, especially considering they clean hives there, and process honey. The warehouse office also doubles as a retail outlet - their major outlet - serving the majority of their clientele.

The two pops know most of their customers come from south of Belmont, basically in their backyard. While they have limited stock (and always sell out their entire production), they have a loyal following.

Those buyers, no doubt, are sold on the fact is made locally ("harvested from the eucalypt forests of the Wallarah Peninsula" as it says on the 2 Pops label). Local honey has been popular for a long time, and the market is growing. You can witness it at the local produce markets.

There are other honey producers in east Lake Macquarie, like Regal Honey & Wraps, and Newcastle - witness the growth of Urban Hum. To take the concept further, Australians have strongly followed the message of buy local honey. The Australian Honey Bee Industry Council noted that Australian supermarkets report that consumers rank the importance of 100 per cent Australian honey higher than price.

The health benefits of honey are well-known, and increasingly appreciated by consumers.

Anecdotally speaking, Hendriks himself swears by consuming a spoonful of honey every night to help him sleep, and there is quite a bit of discussion about that possibly being true if you "Google" it.

Smith spent over 30 years in the retail industry, running a Harvey Norman store, and as much as he's glad to be retired, he hasn't forgotten a few of the lessons he learned. Like "you've got to make sure you don't oversell".

The production of honey varies with the climate, fires, drought and other factors. While their business has seen a pretty steady rise, things can change quickly.

In Smith's eyes, you don't want to overpromise more stock that you can deliver. 2 Pops Honey is only available at a handful of outlets.

"You're always on your guard," Smith says. "The minute you run out of honey, and don't supply that shop, you're opening the door for everybody, aren't you?"

Those other factors are part of the constant education of the two pops. A few years back, when they had hives at a property at Wyee, somebody (probably Smith himself, he acknowledges) left a gate open and a donkey got into the paddock and started to scratch its back and knocked over five hives.

Beekeepers are constantly on the vigil for obstacles nature throws in their way.

Like hive beetle, for which they've developed their own system of protection inside the hives, hoping the bees push the invaders into internal "traps" that lead the beetles to drowning in pools of vegetable oil; or American foulbrood, a fatal bacterial disease of honey bee brood caused by spore forming bacterium, which can be introduced by bees caught in a swarm (both Hendriks and Smith are registered to collect swarms), or spread from poor hygiene practices by keepers. The challenges are endless, and that seems to be one of aspects they both thrive on. It means they are constantly learning how to handle new events, solve problems, make improvements.

"It's a whole learning curve, learning what the bees do and how they do it," Smith says.

They are not alone. There are more than 20,000 registered beekeepers in Australia.

While there are formal education certificates, much of the education is on the job and talking to others in the industry.

Like queen bee breeders, for instance. The two pops have come to rely on local queen bee breeder Jamie Baggs for queen bees, and find him to be a wealth of knowledge.

Learning the role of the queen bee is another detail vital to the operator.

Here is Smith's short explanation for this inquisitive but ignorant journalist: "The bees swarm because generally, the hive is too small.

"The queen is laying like crazy. There's not enough room. They do what they do in nature. The existing queen takes half the hive with her, they go somewhere else. They leave the hive."

"So they are leaving the virgin queen and half the bees in the box. So the cycle starts again. When they leave, the honey production goes down, for five or six weeks, sometimes a year. The virgin queen has to mate, start laying eggs."

That new queen has to mate with several drones, usually in the open air, before returning to the hive.

"She can hold 70,000 sperm in her ovaries. That will keep her going for two or three years," Smith says.

And so it goes. The two pops have to know a lot about a lot.

But back to the basics, they know their own honey.

"We feel our honey is unique," Smith says. "We get big raps on our taste. Some of might be because of the mix of flavours - ground flora, eucalypt, paperbark, a big variety of trees. It all goes into one pot. We don't mix it. It's as it comes off the hives."

They know tastes, like Martinsville honey would reflect more spotted gum or the Murrays Beach honey would show smooth-barked apple.

Last year they produced about 5200kg (a little over 5 tonnes) of honey. It was a good year, considering the drought and fire in surrounding areas.

To get there, they say they work around 10 days a month, checking every hive (that takes five days), extracting honey and then doing cleaning and maintenance.

Smith puts it this way: "I retired out of looking after $50million a year in turnover and 100 staff. When you get out of doing that, there's a lot of ... You need to be active, you need to be doing stuff."

Despite the stings (even through protective suits) and heat of summer, they wouldn't have it any other way. "We both enjoy it," Hendriks says.