In August 2023, I received an email from Kamon Reynolds (Tennessee’s Bees) inviting me to attend the inaugural North American Honey Bee Expo in Louisville, Kentucky. Needless to say, I didn’t think twice before accepting the incredibly generous invitation!
I started my journey to Louisville on the 3rd January 2023, not really knowing what to expect. I have been to a few shows in the UK, with my most recent experience at The Beekeeping Show in Telford in February ’23, so I suppose that’s what I was building my expectations around.
After a 23-hour door-to-door journey, I arrived at the hotel in the middle of a mass evacuation of the Crowne Plaza. Apparently, someone had been testing their bee smoker in their room, prompting a full hotel evacuation (turned out it was actually just a regular smoker not following the rules).
After a short nap, it was straight into Day 1 of the Expo, which was only a 5-minute walk away from the hotel. From the first sight of the Expo centre, I was in total awe of the size of the facility. I know the USA doesn’t tend to do things by halves, but this was on an entirely different level. It didn’t look like an exhibition centre: it looked like an airport! Even the trucks that everyone arrived in were supersized. Richard Noel and I agreed, the jeep was the pick of the bunch.
As I arrived into the building, I was greeted by a friendly team who gave me my name tag for the event. This was such a good idea and something I think the UK shows could adopt. It made you feel a bit special but it also made communicating with people so much easier as you could see their name and where they were from and everyone also got a nice memento to take home with them.
As I walked around the lobby and began to take things in, I still couldn’t quite get over the scale of the event that was about to take place. Everything about the centre was at least 10 times bigger than anything I had ever experienced before. I made my way over to the vendor hall to see how everything was coming together; it was still around two hours before the doors would be opening, yet 3000 beekeepers were already patiently waiting outside in a very orderly queue.
As I walked through the doors into the vendor hall, the sheer size and scale of the event truly hit me. The room was already buzzing with hundreds of staff, vendors and volunteers, all putting together the final touches to their stalls.
Now you can take the boy out of England, but you can’t take England out of the boy, so the next stop had to be a nice cup of tea; I was therefore more than delighted to discover yet another surprise: tea, coffee, biscuits, cakes, muffins – all were free, all day for the full three-day event. It was really nice tea and coffee as well, sponsored very kindly by Rossman’s Apiaries which was just next door to the drinks facility. This was a theme that continued all the way throughout the conference. The Americans never ever miss an opportunity for marketing.
Take Cowen Manufacturing as the next example. As I was wandering around the relatively empty trade show, I was immediately drawn to the droves of heavy-duty extraction equipment: not just a couple of extractors and a token cappings spinner, but literally every conceivable piece of commercial grade extraction equipment you could possibly imagine. It was very impressive but, in my mind, what followed next was even more impressive.
Next to the extraction machinery was a table set up with hoodies, t-shirts, caps etc which I was drawn to as they looked so colourful and appealing. The lady asked, would I like one, and as a typical Brit abroad, I replied: ‘It’s ok, I am only browsing’ to which she replied: ‘Really? They’re all FREE!’ They had brought to the show an unbelievable number of freebies.
Obviously, I promptly changed from browsing to hoarding and politely accepted a cap and a t-shirt. The lady then insisted that I took some more and couldn’t possibly just leave with only two items. So, I left the stall with the following branded freebies: t-shirt, hoodie, hive tool, cap, frisbee, yoyo, planner, pencils, pens, spinners, stickers, badges. It was quite the experience and, in my mind, incredibly effective marketing. We need to bring this to the UK: free stuff for everyone! Being given useful products makes you feel warmly towards the business and that has to be worth a great deal.
This continued throughout the whole conference, every single day. It wasn’t just a first hour smash and grab: all the vendors brought enough freebies for everyone. My pick of the week was some moulded, pink, plastic frames from Acorn Beekeeping in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness. I managed to get 6 frames which I plan to raise a nucleus on and then auction for the charity later this year. Watch this space.
