August 2025 Amber Grant Awarded to Gloucester Sea Hive

Video Transcript

Marcia: Today, we’re speaking with Miraj Budak of Gloucester Sea Hive, who is the WomensNet Amber Grant winner for August 2025. I’m Marcia Layton Turner, an advisory board member who has the great pleasure of chatting with our winners, which I always enjoy. 

Thank you for giving me a little bit of your time, Miraj. I’d love to hear where you got the idea to start your business. What’s the backstory?

Miraj: I have a sideline beekeeping company that focuses on honeybee and pollinator stewardship that encourages community involvement. And most importantly, to me, it’s sustainable. And like a lot of folks, when I heard about colony collapse in 2008, 2010, I knew I wanted to do something. But I had an apartment, I didn’t have any property or land or anything, and I had no idea how to even get started. I was unable to work and was medically discharged from the Coast Guard after an injury.

In February of this year, I saw that there was a practical beekeeping course put on through my county that came with a membership to the Beekeeping Club. And after the first class, I was hooked. I started reading books on honeybee behavior and biology. I watched hours and hours of YouTube videos, listened to podcasts. I got my first two honeybee colonies in May of this year and quickly realized that my relationship with honeybees was more of a true symbiotic one. Not only do my bees produce products like honey and wax, but I also found working the hives incredibly therapeutic.

You’re breathing that fresh, antimicrobial, antiseptic, antibiotic, antifungal air that circulates through the hive. You’re moving slowly and deliberately so as not to disturb your bees. You’re just being extremely careful. And I find that kind of inner peace while you’re doing it. Researching bees is also soothing. So I knew there was something different about this. I was on another level with honeybees, I felt, and I knew this was something that I wanted to share with whoever might be slightly interested in it.

Marcia: I’m fascinated by bees as well. I would love to hear about any resources that you turned to as you were starting your business. It could be a book or a program or an agency, just any outside resource that you turned to that was useful for you. 

Miraj: I didn’t tell anybody I was pursuing beekeeping because I start so many things and don’t see them through, and I didn’t want to present another failure. So I think really having that goal and being driven towards it. As a beekeeper, I think maybe the most important thing you could really…the most valuable resource you have is a very, very attentive, approachable, engaged mentor. You want your mentor to be extremely knowledgeable about all aspects of beekeeping and, I’d say, somebody who’s been doing it for more than five years.

I didn’t have that, so I faced a lot of challenges in my first season. One challenge was getting and keeping my hive’s queen right, meaning the colony has a mature, mated, actively laying queen. And when I reached out to my mentor, who was suggested to me by my bee club based on proximity, I explained the issues I was having, and she told me that she didn’t really know anything about queens. And it was in that moment that I knew I was going to have to figure it out on my own.

So I turned to whatever resources I could. My class used Beekeeping For Dummies, so I read that. I also got the Beekeeper’s Bible, which was very good. And then there’s a really cool book called The Honeybee Democracy, and that was one of the more interesting books I’ve ever read; it has a lot to do with how bees decide where to set up their hives after they swarm. And it’s mind-blowingly fascinating. They actually use a democratic process.

I listened to podcasts, and as I mentioned, I watched a lot of videos. A few of the beekeepers I follow on YouTube also do live sessions. So I would jump onto their live and ask any questions that I couldn’t answer on my own. 

Probably the single tool that I used more than anything else was ChatGPT, and it really helped me organize my thoughts, streamline my plans, get feedback on decisions I’d made, and get advice on my exact specific issue at the time. So those were probably most of the resources that I depended on to get to this point.

Marcia: And how about marketing? Are there any tactics that you’ve tried that you know are working for you? 

Miraj: I think the marketing angle that has worked best for me so far is probably social media. That’s my primary tool. I try to post at least one video a week. I have over 7,000 followers on TikTok. I’m part of the #beetok community. And I share whatever I’m currently doing, inspections, making trips out to get new bees, and I try to show the good and the bad. 

This week has been an extremely trying week for me with the bees. I got some very bad advice, coupled with my own mistakes that I made. I’m about to put that video out, and I just want people to see all of it. And they’ll know that it won’t get worse than what I’m showing them and that they can do it. I think more people need to be doing it. So, I try to pass on what I know, encourage people to give it a shot. 

I have a booth at a farmers’ market where I answer questions about beekeeping, and I’m able to get a list of potential clients for when I start to manage hives for people on their own properties.

Marcia: How cool. Manage hives. I didn’t know that was a thing.

Miraj: Me neither.

Marcia: Excellent. Before we wrap up here, what’s one thing that our WomensNet community can do to support you? What’s one social media account that we can suggest people check you out on? I love #beetok, but where would you like them to go?

Miraj: You can find me at blackgirlbythesea on TikTok.