Hi everyone!

Well, things are moving along with the GIGANTIC print run, a little bit behind schedule, but certainly really great for how many moving parts this project has!  We got the proofs back from the printer just yesterday, and can finally see how amazing all the different prints are going to turn out!  Many of the posters are a bit larger than they've ever been before... We have a big hunch that y'all are going to be thrilled when your package arrives!

We thought you might like to see what we're finding MOST exciting... The final image for the BLOCKADE poster... We decided to turn it into a Global Solidarity image to celebrate all the amazing rebellions that are taking place around the world right now... The poster is in eight languages!   Hope you like it!

There's a bitty thumbnail below as a teaser, but to really appreciate all the details we've been working so hard on, you can follow this link to a bigger version: http://www.beehivecollective.org/BLOCKADE.html

It looks the giant offset printer will be cranking out all 36,000 posters on this coming Monday!  We've been super busy with getting all the boxes and tubes assembled and labeled... ready to blast them off in your direction while their contents are still warm!

About forty folks still haven't given us their mailing addresses, so if this is you, please expect to hear from us and respond via email in the next couple of days so we can get your poster-cozy all labeled and pointed in your direction!

More from us in the coming days!

chirp chirp!,

the bees

(blush).... this is the last update for awhile, sorry you're getting so many backer emails from us today!

IT'S NOT TOO LATE!

There have been many calls and messages coming in to the Hive asking if folks can still pledge...

and the answer is Yes, Please! We'll be continuing to take pledges at the same levels as listed here up until the day we do the giant mail-out for everyone, approximately February 23rd....

If you're discovering this campaign just now, or someone you know would still like to help out, please just send us a message at pollinators@beehivecollective.org and we'll arrange it!

Thank you!
the bees

Warm greetings from snowbound Maine!,

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Please be sure to respond to the important email you’ll be receiving from Kickstarter alongside this one... it will be asking you for the POSTAL MAILING ADDRESS that you would like us to use for sending you your posters and patches! PLEASE NOTE: WE HAVE NOT YET BEEN SUPPLIED YOUR ADDRESS BY KICKSTARTER>>> YOU'LL NEED TO SEND IT IN THE ACCOMPANYING "SURVEY" EMAIL, or, if that's confusing, just send it along in a message! THANK YOU!
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and...

Phew! Here we go!!
Our Kickstarter team of eight bees is off and running... chipping away at the mountain of final stretch tasks to put this GIANT print run into motion... and launch hundreds of packages out the door into your mailboxes!

We’re sorting through the first installment of packaging materials (boxes, tubes, even Sonotubes!) and there’s a monstrous cube of huge sheets of delightfully thick paper on a pallet ready and waiting at the printshop! We’re finalizing all the edits to a dozen poster files, and on top of booking and getting ready for our three big and concurrent upcoming Spring tours, that’s some serious multitasking!

We expect that we are just about 14 days from seeing the first proofs of this historic print run, puzzled onto those huge sheets. Experience tells us we will be able to approve the proofs in person within a very short timeframe, and the final printed, finished, and cut posters we’re hoping can be ready to load up in our lil’ pickup truck by February 21st! Then it’s dust bunnies beware, ‘cause there’s going to be a Bee Whirlwind as we host a super energetic and cozy potluck workparty in our big wood-heated Grange hall, with lots of local beefriends to help carefully snuggle these gems into their packaging.

We’re probably going to have to bake a cake to appease our tinytown local Postmaster before we stumble in with nearly 300 packages, on the 23rd... and right now that’s as far as we can see past the mountain ahead!

Thanks again everybody! We’ll be keeping you posted as events tumble forward in the coming days!

Love,
the bees

Y'all are totally amazing... solidarity overflows the pollen-baskets and hearts!

Thanks to y'all, we land safely funded on our last day of kickstarter!

ALL YOUR GENEROUS PLEDGES WILL ALLOW US TO:
--make important, and long sought after improvements to the quality and sustainablity of our paper sources... allowing the posters to be printed on paper that feels more like a thicker art print, than a glossy mall poster...and they will be colorable by hand once again!

--allow us to do one big bulk run on huge sheets of paper, utilizing our favorite local, small printhouse, Graphic Litho, in Lawrence, MA who is still running one of the few large format sheet-fed offset printers on the east coast. We LOVE these folks, and are so happy to be able to give them our business.

--print the entirety of our collection of graphic work, many of which have been unavailable for years... most of these posters are currently undergoing tiny and important revisions for their re-release as we busily prepare all the different digital files for our offset printhouse standing by!

--for the first time ever, print in bulk a short run of all of our COLOR posters, which up to this point have been so cost prohibitive that we we have only been able to do them in small batches. When we color print in small amounts, the posters cost up to 4 times as much. Your support will allow us to print them all at once at much better rates, which allows us to gift distribute our color work to audiences in ways we haven't been able to before!

--with this campaign closing at around $17,000, we will actually be able to do ALL of these things without going into debt! It's going to take a few thousand dollars just to fulfill all our pledge rewards that we've promised, postage being an enormous cost of this whole project, and also Kickstarter and Amazon take 8 to 10% in fees. All of these costs we were assuming we'd have to subsidize ourselves to be able to fundraise in this manner... we are SO incredibly grateful that we will be able to proceed with the full amount of money this project needed, production costs and all. This is an incredible relief to us that we are still in astonishment over

--And in case it's not obvious, your support of this print run super works like powerful seed money... meaning that a big ol' stack of thousands of posters has multiple layers of functions... it is the pollen in which we spread stories through the grassroots, the material through which we collect donations from these audiences to financially support the production of new work, maintain infrastructure for our hive, feed and house all our volunteer bees, and gift thousands of posters and educational materials to all sorts of out of the box audiences, internationally.

In short, y'all, this is A BIG DEAL, like, big stack of posters plus lots of bee elbow grease equals a whole year or more of super duper productivity... yay! Bring it on!

We’re starting this 10th Anniversary year off with a big dose of inspiration because of you!

Okey... only a few hours left to go!

Y’all are the bees knees! Many thanks for your support!!! More from us soon!

love, love, love!
the bees