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In January, 2018 a small South African business called Beegin opened its doors to the international beekeeping industry. Three years of design research, field-testing and development at the University of Johannesburg's Department of Industrial Design resulted in a lightweight concrete beehive and a set of moulds for its distributed production. The appropriate beekeeping technology system (ABTS) produced good results in trials, however, the hardest part of any technological intervention, especially in a developing context, lies in its implementation at scale. Careful theoretical and methodological choices guided the design process through a focus on design for impact (Prestero, 2012), and learnings from the successes and failures of other appropriate technology (AT) projects (Hazeltine & Bull, 2003). This recipe became the foundation from which the delivery strategy for Beegin was planned. Two years later, Beegin has successfully delivered products to over 200 clients in 11 countries. The technology is beginning to have its intended impact, but the implementation process has been far from straightforward. Most of the early expectations were not achieved and plans had to be constantly revisited as Beegin struggled through the phases of business start-up, despite and in some ways due to, its innovative product offering. This paper will briefly document the development of the Beegin beekeeping technology system, the contextual problems it tried to address, and the theoretical framework and methods that led to its creation. The main focus of the paper is an exploration of the transition phase of the Beegin beehive as an AT intervention that took the route from a University-based research project to commercial enterprise. This is relevant for AT discourse, firstly because not much has been written on the subject, and secondly because there are useful lessons to be learnt from the practical experience of commercial implementation versus theoretical AT delivery.
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