About this site
What this publication does, what it refuses to do, who reviews the work, and every way it currently earns money. Written plainly, and kept current rather than aspirational.
What we publish
A searchable directory of small independent businesses and a reference framework, each to be examined by a named person against a published bar and confirmed as trading on a stated date. The register currently holds no entries. Alongside it, a discovery surface that draws from the register, and a body of editorial work about how the listing ecosystem actually operates.
We describe. We do not assess. The register says a business exists, what it is, and when someone last looked — it does not say the business is good, safe, solvent, or better than another.
What we do not have
This is the section most about pages leave out, so it goes near the top.
- No founding story, no founding date, and no claim to have been doing this for any length of time.
- No awards, no accreditations, no certifications, and no memberships we can point at.
- No testimonials, no case studies, no client list, and no advisory board.
- No traffic figures, no audience numbers, and no growth chart. If we ever publish a number about ourselves it will come from a log you can ask about.
- No claim to be comprehensive in any category, ever.
Anything in that list would be easy to write and impossible for you to check, which is exactly why none of it is here.
How the work is done
Every register entry carries the name of the person who reviewed it and the date they did so. Every check corresponds to a row in a check log, so a displayed date cannot drift away from the check that produced it. The procedure is published at the method and versioned, with a changelog recording what each version changed and what it invalidated.
Drafting and editing are AI-assisted. Deciding whether something meets the bar, writing an entry description, producing a check result, producing a date, producing a citation, and handling anyone's quoted words are not. Those are done by a named person, and the person is recorded.
How this site is funded
Not by listings, in any form — not inclusion, not position, not removal, not a badge, not a faster review. Who pays for this sets out the mechanism rather than the promise, including the fact that the record schema has no field to sell and the build rejects one if it is added.
At present the site sells nothing. If that changes, the change appears on this page and on who pays for this before it appears anywhere else, and it will never appear inside a register record.
Corrections and complaints
Errors are logged in public at corrections, dated and described, including the ones a reader or an operator caught rather than us. If you are the subject of an entry and want it changed or gone, request removal — free, no reason required, and no attempt to talk you out of it.
If you think we have crossed one of our own stated lines, say so. The Line exists so that there is something concrete to hold us to.
Where this site stops
We are not a marketplace, a broker, an introducer, an accreditation body, a review platform or a lead-generation service. We do not arrange anything, take a commission on anything, or pass your details to anyone.
We also do not cover several categories at all — adult commerce, gambling and betting, lending and credit, supplements and health products, income schemes, and crypto trading are excluded from the register and from the editorial work. Reopening any of them is a legal decision rather than an editorial one.
Naming note
StumbleBees uses a bee mark and a warm editorial theme to reflect independent discovery.
About this publication
Who writes this?
A small editorial team. Register entries and tombstones carry a named reviewer on the record itself, which is where accountability actually belongs — a staff page is easy to write and tells you nothing about who checked the thing you are reading.
Is any of this AI-generated?
Drafting and editing are AI-assisted and we would rather say so than not. Entry descriptions, check results, dates, citations and anyone's quoted words are not — those are produced and signed by a person.
Do you take sponsorship?
No. The site does not operate sponsored email or sell placements in register records.
Do you use affiliate links?
There are none in any register record, and that is permanent. Anywhere else on the site, an affiliate link would carry a visible disclosure next to it — and the site's preferred position is to have none at all.
Why is the register so small?
Because the bar is real and checking is slow. A larger register would mean either a lower bar or checks we did not actually run, and both would remove the only thing this site offers.
Can I reuse your content?
The agent reference explains reuse boundaries; no separately licensed dataset export is supplied. Operator names, quotes, logos and marks are not ours to license and are excluded.
How do I contact you?
Through the routes that lead somewhere: corrections for a factual error, request removal if you are an operator, and submit a business for a suggestion.
This page describes the site as it currently is. Where something is planned rather than built, it says so.