Broomfield family create Australian flavour-infused honey at ShortHive

When this family started thinking about how to develop a different spin on honey, they got creative. And there was a simple motivation behind the move.

Sweet twist: ShortHive honey is infused with other flavours using ingredients such as chilli, coffee, salt and cacao.

HONEY runs in this family’s veins, so how do you create a business that does not put you in competition with each other?

It was a conundrum the Broomfield family — husband and wife Greg and Corrina and two of their children, Robyn and Tom — had to puzzle out in 2016.

Greg and Corrina had moved back to southwest Victoria from Melbourne, on to a 6ha farm at Nalangil, near Lake Corangamite, and Greg was keen to get back into beekeeping. It is a passion inherited through his dad Keith, a beekeeper around the Colac region for more than 50 years.

Robyn says they wanted to avoid targeting the same customer base as Keith, who by that time was working with Greg’s brother, Andrew, selling honey.

The answer was to make honey, but then infuse it with different ingredients. They named the business ShortHive, and started selling their product in October 2017.

“We thought, what if we added something like saffron into honey and therefore value-add that honey but turn it into something different?” Robyn explains.

While the saffron honey never came to fruition, the seed was planted. Now, ShortHive makes four flavours — initially there was salted, espresso and chilli infusions, while cacao honey launched in May.

Family team: ShortHive’s Rachel and Tom (with their daughter), beekeeper Greg, Corrina and Robyn Broomfield.

The hives spend 10 months of the year at the farm — Robyn says her mum has created “a massive bee haven in her garden to make sure there is pollen and nectar for those bees all year round.”

In midsummer the hives are taken to a sugar gum plantation near Cressy for 6-8 weeks.

They rent a commercial kitchen in Colac for the infusion process, which takes about two weeks, and is done in small batches throughout the year. While the Murray River salt dissolves into the honey, the Padre coffee grinds and dried Habanero chilli then need to be filtered out afterwards.

Usually the family would attend four markets every weekend, covering southwest Victoria as far away as Warrnambool, and also Melbourne. Prior to March, before coronavirus struck, 80 per cent of their sales came from markets, about 10-15 per cent in wholesale, with the rest from online.

That has since shifted significantly — they have not been to a market since March and many of the cafes they supply are temporarily closed.

“We’re getting a lot of gift hamper orders … there’s a lot of pop-ups all over Australia of people who are making gift hampers and they’re looking for unique Australian products,” Robyn says.

“The online side of the business has increased — obviously that’s been my main focus this year.”

Meanwhile Keith, 83, and Andrew sell their Broomfield Honey through the Chinese medicine shop Andrew runs in Colac.

Robyn says Andrew partnered with his dad when Keith almost walked away from beekeeping.

And when it comes to honey extraction, Robyn says the whole family jumps in to help each other.

“We will have a day when we will all go and extract granddad’s honey that day, and then the next day we will all go back and extract our honey,” she says.

“We’ve still got him doing it today, we’re so glad my uncle didn’t let my granddad give it up.”

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