The beekeeper model

4Bees is an open platform for innovative beekeepers and developers to develop products that improve the quality of life of bees and beekeepers.

The philosophy of 4Bees can best be described using the "beekeeper model":

4Bees sees itself as an open platform for the development of open source projects. The platform functions through the exchange of two types of groups: an open developer community and the product consumers. Consumers want a finished product and the corresponding support, and are willing to pay for it. The money earned by 4Bees is used to pay full-time employees to create the necessary infrastructure and to initiate and drive product development. These resources are then made freely available to the open developer community. The developer community, in turn, helps to improve the design, functionality, and quality of the products. The improved products, in turn, become more attractive to more consumers and bring 4Bees more money, which can then be reinvested in new projects. This should create a cycle from which everyone involved can benefit.

• The developer community can directly use the open source projects for their own purposes. 4Bees' professional work enables them to provide better products than would be possible through purely open source development. The developer community thus benefits directly from 4Bees.
   
• Consumers receive better products with a more attractive design, more functionality, and better quality at a lower price. Consumers thus benefit from the developer community and 4Bees, who develop and produce better products at an affordable price.
   
• 4Bees benefits from increasing growth and increased appreciation as a result of the functioning cycle.

The analogy to the beekeeper

The beekeeper creates an attractive environment for his bees: shelter and a location that provides the bees with sufficient food. The bees do what they naturally do best: they collect honey, pollen, and propolis and build honeycombs from beeswax. The beekeeper sells the honey and other bee products to consumers and uses the money to expand the beekeeping operation.

But the analogy goes even further:

• The bees can fly and have the option to leave their shelter whenever they want. Therefore, the beekeeper must take good care of their bees. The beekeeper has little control over the bees. They cannot demand anything they would like from the bees. The same applies to an open developer community. They, too, can leave a project or, even worse, develop the same project on their own. Therefore, it is important to 4Bees to keep its developer community happy. 4Bees cannot rely on the developer community adhering to a plan or instructions. Bees can sting. Members of the developer community can publicly criticize a project.
   
• The growth of a beekeeping operation depends on how much honey and wax the beekeeper can sell to his customers. How much he can sell depends on how well he can sell and on the other hand on how much honey and wax he has. How much honey and wax he has depends mainly on the number of bees he has. How many bees he has depends on how much honey he leaves the bees and how well he feeds them. To achieve maximum growth, the beekeeper must simultaneously increase his customer base and the bee population. It is therefore also necessary for 4Bees to always create a balanced relationship between consumers and the development community.
   
• The bees come first. The beekeeper must first invest time and money in his bees before he can sell anything to his consumers. The longer he can invest in his beekeeping without selling anything, the faster his beekeeping will grow. The same applies to 4Bees and its developer community. First, the developer community must grow to develop better products. Only then can these be brought to market.
   
• Every bee colony has a queen. For a bee colony to survive a long winter, the queen needs enough bees. The same applies to open source projects. Most open source projects have a single founder and administrator. But only when this person manages to attract enough active developers will the project develop vibrantly and rapidly.
   
• Consumers of honey and other bee products don't want to deal with bees. However, a single bee or a colony of bees cannot meet a consumer's needs. The work of the beekeeper is necessary: ​​they take the honey from the colony, extract it, bottle it in honey jars, and then sell it to their customers at the market. Likewise, consumers don't want to deal with "open source" projects; they want to buy the finished product.
   
• Bees can't do anything with the money beekeepers receive for their honey. A banknote or coin is worthless to bees. However, beekeepers can buy food, hives, and Varroa mite treatments for the bees. The situation is similar with 4Bees. The developer community doesn't directly benefit when 4Bees sells a lot of products. However, the developers also benefit indirectly when 4Bees invests the money in expanding the platform and developing products.
   
• Each individual bee can only make a small contribution to its colony. But the large number of bees in a colony is capable of achieving a great deal. Similarly, the contribution of a single developer may be small, but with many developers, the overall performance is still very great.