The "Queen Bee" travels far and wide, taking in beautiful scenery everywhere

From farming to beekeeping, 26 years like a single day, she chases the flowering season: when flowers bloom, she arrives; when flowers fall, she leaves. A life of running about and drifting from place to place has let her harvest liquid gold and transform into the "Queen Bee." For more than 20 years, she and her husband have set foot in more than 20 provinces and cities, including Henan, Hebei, Gansu, Qinghai and Yunnan, taking in beautiful scenery everywhere.

Now, she has gone from migratory beekeeping to selling honey on the internet, riding the east wind of the internet to deliver sweet honey across the country.

She is Zhang Meiqin of Daijia Village, Lixin Town, Jianning County.

On a weekend morning, this writer walked into the Fujian-Jiangxi E-commerce Service Center in Lixin Town, Jianning County, to hear the story of this beekeeper...

Going far from home, transforming into the "Queen Bee"

When it comes to how she became involved in beekeeping, Zhang Meiqin laughed. She said it all starts with her marriage. In the early 1980s, Zhang Meiqin followed her parents to Jianning to do business. "We are from Zhejiang. My father made clothes," Zhang Meiqin said. Jianning has good air and is very suitable for living. Over the years, she and her family have grown to love life here, and she married Yu Aihui, a man from Daijia Village.

After marrying, she and her husband farmed at home. "At the time, neither my husband nor I had any experience with farming, and we could not earn much money in a whole year," Zhang Meiqin said.

If they could not farm, they had to find another way out. In 1989, on the recommendation of relatives, she and her husband left their hometown and went to Luquan County, Kunming, Yunnan, to learn beekeeping techniques.

"That was an ethnic minority area, with flowers blooming all year round and very good bee varieties," Zhang Meiqin said. When they first started beekeeping, severe weather struck, and many bees came down with chalkbrood disease. This is a stubborn fungal infectious disease. Because they did not know how to use medicine, more than half of their 120 hives were lost.

The first beekeeping failure did not make Zhang Meiqin lose confidence. "Others can succeed, so why can't we?" In 1994, the unyielding Zhang Meiqin and her husband started beekeeping again together, and that year they were rewarded: from 120 hives, net income reached 50,000 yuan.

To succeed in breeding, first the techniques must be solid. "To raise bees well, flowers are the key. You have to both lower costs and be good for the bees' growth, ensuring honey quality. There really is a secret to this!" she said. In fact, beekeepers work very hard. Wherever flowers bloom, that is where they go, with no fixed home, drifting from place to place, dealing with the mountains all year round.

For decades, she and her husband have set foot in more than 20 provinces and cities, including Henan, Hebei, Gansu, Qinghai and Yunnan, taking in beautiful scenery everywhere.

After more than 20 years of exploration, Zhang Meiqin transformed from an ordinary farm woman into the "Queen Bee." Now, Zhang Meiqin's beehives have grown from just over 100 at the start to more than 300, more than 700, and now more than 1,200. Annual honey output is more than 60 tons, and her mobile vehicles have gone from 1 truck at the start to 3 trucks now.

Mastering e-commerce, honey fragrance drifting thousands of miles

Over the years, because they kept bees elsewhere, Zhang Meiqin sold honey only in wholesale form. In October 2016, Zhang Meiqin returned to Lixin Town, Jianning County, and learned from a friend that the town had established the Fujian-Jiangxi E-commerce Service Center, which could train students for free and sell agricultural products online.

Hearing this, Zhang Meiqin was very happy. That afternoon she came to the service center, and with the help of Fujian-Jiangxi e-commerce staff, she registered a Taobao shop in Jianning County called "Bee Love."

In order to run the online shop well, Zhang Meiqin began practicing typing, uploading product photos and designing shop pages. Zhang Meiqin said that now her online shop sells 6 major series of honey products at different prices and of different varieties.

"This is acacia honey, counted as first-grade honey. This rapeseed honey counts as second-grade honey, and buckwheat honey counts as third-grade honey..." In front of the computer, Zhang Meiqin pointed to different products and introduced them to us.

Just like bees making honey, Zhang Meiqin's hard work eventually brought sweet rewards. Her original-flavor honey and royal jelly attracted many customers. In just half a month, her online shop sold more than 30 orders of products.

"Now, not only am I an 'internet expert,' my son also sells our own products online," Zhang Meiqin said with a smile. "He has studied more and understands business. He is my teacher. Originally, we all did wholesale offline, but now he does wholesale online, and over a year he can sell more than 200,000 yuan in products."

As for the future, Zhang Meiqin already has a plan. Next, she intends to open her own factory to carry out deep processing of bee products. She said that this is the internet age, and one must learn to transform. To do the beekeeping business well, one must rely on e-commerce platforms for sales and sell across the country.