BY day Simon Mildren is a Mornington Peninsula firefighter – but it’s his work outside the fire station that’s now gaining international acclaim as a beekeeper. His company HiveKeepers, one of Australia’s most-forward thinking tech start-ups, took out Gold for Innovation at the Apimondia World Beekeeping Awards in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The win, on 7 October, marks a major milestone for Mildren, also a peninsula resident and a Fire Rescue Victoria senior station officer at Mornington Fire Brigade’s Station 94. “Receiving gold at Apimondia is a career-defining moment, not just for HiveKeepers but for Australian innovation,” said
Mildren, who founded HiveKeepers and led the design collaboration with Melbourne’s Katapult Design.
The award is the highest global honour in the field of apiculture in recognition of his pioneering Micro Honey Harvester, a device developed to simplify and modernise honey collection for backyard and commercial beekeepers alike.
Held every two years, the Apimondia World Beekeeping Awards are often described as the “Olympics of beekeeping” – spotlighting the most forward-thinking ideas advancing global bee health, sustainability and industry resilience.
HiveKeepers’ winning innovation is a compact, portable system that streamlines one of the most physically demanding parts of beekeeping: honey harvesting. “We wanted to take the pain out of harvesting,” Mildren said. “Beekeepers deserve a cleaner, faster and more respectful way to collect honey, one that allows speedy harvests and more time to focus on bee care.”
Beyond making beekeeping more accessible, the device also addresses honey fraud, a growing issue in the global supply chain. “We talk a lot about farm-to-plate in agriculture, and now we are delivering that same transparency to honey,” Mildren said. “When you taste honey from a Micro Honey Harvester, you know exactly where it came from. It is real, local and honest.”
HiveKeepers spent years testing and refining the device across Australia and Europe, drawing on its deep knowledge of bee behaviour and the needs of real-world beekeepers. “We did not just want to make another piece of equipment. We wanted to create a platform for change, one where technology makes beekeeping more accessible, traceable and sustainable,” Mildren said.
The gold award is the result of international collaboration, with contributions from Australian designers, Romanian beekeepers, and supporters from a successful Kickstarter campaign whose support helped bring the Micro Honey Harvester to life.
First published in the Mornington News – 14 October 2025
