Beekeeper Rigoberto Bautista explains how bees produce honey at his farm in Santiago de Puringla, Honduras. Interaction with the bees is one of his favorite parts of the process, he says.

Business is BUZZING

Story by Annie Bergman | Heifer International Writer
Photos by Dero Sanford

Santiago de Puringla, Honduras - A thick, white cloud of smoke fills the air, helping calm the hundreds of thousands of bees buzzing around the green and white hives that dot the steep slopes above Santiago de Puringla.

As bees swarm around him, Rigoberto Bautista gently pries off the top of a hive and pulls out one of the many pine frames inside. “This is a closed cell so this will be new bees,” Bautista says, showing off the bees’ work. “That’s a characteristic of a good queen.”

Rigoberto Bautista—Rigo to most anyone who meets him—is a jovial man with a weathered face and hands that betray his 39 years. He and his wife, Doris Santos, 38, work hard to provide their two children a good life in this tiny village that is only accessible by a single-vehicle gravel path that winds over rivers and up into the Honduran mountains.

Two hours after leaving the paved roads leading to the nearest city, a faded yellow sign welcomes visitors to Bautista’s village, informing them that they are nearly 3,500 feet above sea level and that, at least at one time, there was a local chapter of Lions Club International.

The narrow gravel streets that run through town are quiet even in the middle of a June day. Trucks and motorcycles occasionally pass on their way to and from the central market where Hondurans gather to buy essentials like food and clothing.

Home to about 2,500 people, Santiago de Puringla is a microcosm for Honduras: small and poor with an economy based largely on agriculture, specifically coffee. The average monthly income here is $130.

But while Honduras struggles as the second-poorest country in Central America behind Nicaragua, this town has an advantage over many others that can’t be seen from the dusty roads: bees.

Here, high in the Honduran mountains, rural farmers like Bautista who toil every day for inconsistent returns from their farms are finding security in the centuries-old tradition of beekeeping. Through a partnership between the Cooperativa Apicola Pionera de Honduras Limitada—or COAPIHL—and Heifer International, these farmers receive training and hives in addition to the insects so they can successfully raise bees and harvest honey.

While the farmers reap the rewards of having bees to pollinate the crops on their farms, they also have the backing of the cooperative. With an established brand and markets throughout the country, the co-op buys and processes the farmers’ honey, sending it out for sale to the general public.

But the co-op does even more. Groups made up primarily of women are given machinery to produce beeswax sheets where the insects live, work and reproduce. The co-op also buys these sheets and distributes them to beekeepers. It’s a lucrative cycle for everyone involved. Average monthly income for area families involved in beekeeping can be up to $370, depending on the number of beehives in use and how much time is devoted to the work. Learn more about Passing on the Bees

Founded in 1977 and based in Siguatepeque, the co-op originally worked with 10 to 15 honey producers in the field. Now, through its partnership with Heifer International, the co-op has more than 100 producers in the field, and both producers and the cooperative are more successful than ever before.

PRACTICE OF THE PAST

Ramon Amaya and Jacinta Leonilla Amaya are participants in the Honduras beekeeping partnership between Heifer International and the Cooperativa Apicola Pionera de Honduras Limitada.

Central Americans have practiced beekeeping for hundreds of years. Mayans were known for their skill in bee husbandry with the varieties of stingless bees that are native to the area. Though the technologies for harvesting honey were different—Mayans procured their honey from the hollow logs that the bees inhabited—the ways they used honey will sound familiar. They used honey as a sweetener and also as a cure for a range of ailments, mainly respiratory problems, much like today.

But it is the beehives that the co-op, with support from Heifer International, provides that are proving lucrative for the people of Honduras now.

The hives are made up of boxes hewn from local pine and painted to attract the bees. Each box contains between 15,000 and 20,000 bees, with one queen bee per hive. The boxes house beeswax sheets called laminates. The laminates are placed in pine frames and inserted into the box. Most important, these laminates are a place for the bees to make their honey.

NEW SKILLS, BETTER BUSINESS

Like many in Santiago de Puringla, Bautista was in business for himself, growing coffee for the family’s main source of income. Santos was also self-employed. As a seamstress, she brought in money by making clothes to sell in town. Over the years, Bautista experienced what many coffee growers did: fluctuating prices that left income unpredictable. So when a friend told him and his wife about Heifer International through Cooperativa Apicola Pionera de Honduras Limitada, they were interested.

In 2003, Bautista attended Heifer training and says he liked what he heard. The same year, he received 10 hives—a number that Heifer and the co-op determined was enough to be financially viable.

Santos became involved as well. She helps with the bees and is also a member of the women’s group Grupo de Mujeres Agropecuarias de Santiago Puringla that creates the beeswax sheets for the bee producers in the field. Bautista says they knew nothing about beekeeping before 2003. “[Coffee] wasn’t extremely lucrative, but it was enough to pay the bills,”

Bautista says through a translator. “Heifer originally appealed to me more than anything for the financial reasons. Over time, I learned that I liked beekeeping.”

He was taught everything about raising bees, from where to place the hives and how often they should be moved, to reproducing queen bees and collecting honey. Now, Bautista owns 70 hives that he tends about once a week for four to five hours. He prefers to go on sunny days when there is little wind so the bees are calm.

And having the bees remain calm is a necessity. Most Heifer bee recipients raise a hybrid bee—a cross between the Africanized bees that made their way into Central America in the 1980s and the local honeybees. Though he spends just a few hours with his bees each week, the interaction with the insects is one of his favorite parts of the beekeeping business, Bautista says. Once there, he checks on the whole activity of the hives.

From Bautista’s home in central Santiago de Puringla, it takes about 20 minutes to reach his hives by truck. Once he is near the hives, he puts on his bee suit—canvas coveralls, long gloves and a hat with netting around the face—and walks the 150 feet off the road through a cornfield to where he keeps his hives. Though Bautista says his bees are familiar with him, he uses the smoke as a necessary precaution, particularly when a reporter and photographer accompany him. The bees, intent on protecting their hives from the strangers, leave multiple sting marks on their crisp white suits and yellow gloves.

Bautista looks for the queen and checks the stages of life of the new bees and the process of honey production. The top hive box is where nectar is turned into honey, while the bottom hive box is where bees reproduce. During the harvesting season, the bees responsible for reproducing are further separated from those making honey. Honey is harvested when 75 percent of the cells are closed, Bautista says. But the process is a delicate one.

Beekeepers like Bautista who sell to the co-op take the frames filled with honey to their homes. New frames are inserted in their place so the bees have a new place to live, work and produce honey.

Once back at their homes, keepers remove the closed cells with a knife from both sides of the frame. The combs are then placed in a centrifuge and manually cranked until the honey is extracted. If the frames are taken out too soon, the honey can be damaged.

Producers then either take their honey to the cooperative, or the co-op organizes a pickup for delivery to the processing plant. The plant has two full-time employees who process the honey.

At the plant the honey is weighed and the humidity levels and sugar concentration checked, which determine how the honey tastes. The producers are paid 50 lempiras per kilogram—or about $1.20 for every pound—of honey they deliver.

STEPS TOWARD SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Five years after becoming a Heifer beneficiary, Bautista is a full-fledged entrepreneur. Not only does he sell his honey and pollen to the co-op, Bautista says that his honey is in high demand locally.

Rigberto Bautista demonstrates the beekeeping process.

“Selling locally to people here is more lucrative,” Bautista says. “There is a really big market for [the honey]. For everything I produce, people actually want more. People want to get their hands on more honey.”

Bautista says that he and his wife work together to meet that demand, as they both sell and market the honey. In the meantime, they both are enjoying the proceeds. Though selling to neighbors is a more informal exchange of his product, it continues to be profitable.

While Bautista and Santos are both very involved with the co-op—Santos is the secretary of her women’s group— Bautista has also branched out into other areas for himself. In training, Bautista found that he has a skill for breeding the bees. He now crossbreeds his bees and sells bees and beehives. He also earns extra income by renting his hives to farmers in the southern part of Honduras who need their crops and flowering plants pollinated during the growing season. Prices for both services fluctuate.

As proof of their success, the couple’s two children are in high school, whereas most Honduran children only receive a sixth-grade education because they have to enter the work force to help support their families.

COMMUNITY EFFORT

Bautista is one of many beekeepers whose lives have changed because of the partnership between the co-op and Heifer. There are also many other women from Santos’ women’s group in Santiago de Puringla who share the benefits.

Many women in this group pull double duty when it comes to working with the cooperative. They oversee hives and honey production and work as a part of the group making wax laminates. Adelina Hernández is one of those women.

Hernández, 33, has five children between the ages of 3 and 15 years. She received bees in 2004 after working for many years growing coffee. During this time she also raised chickens and corn for the family to eat so they could save money by reducing the amount food they had to buy.

For four years, the money the honey brought in was substantial, Hernández says. The honey provided enough money to send all of her children to school and allowed her and her husband to make several home improvements. This year Hernández says the harvests were poorer than normal. With an overabundance of rain and a cooler than normal climate, many keepers lost hives. Hernández says the climate affected the number of plants for the bees to pollinate.

Despite the poor weather, Hernández still managed a decent harvest in February from her 20 hives. She sells the larger part of her honey to the cooperative but says she saves some to sell to neighbors and others in town.

“In general the beehives have been a benefit,” Hernández says. “[Selling the honey] has helped send the children to school.” Hernández says that the family has also been able to buy a pig with the income from the honey. And like Bautista, Hernández says that she has been able to consider other means of obtaining extra income as well. While she plans to start her own business independently from the cooperative, (the front room of her home was recently stocked with sundries, and a neighbor came in to buy a drink and snack) she sometimes sells beehives to others.

Her children have also shown an interest in beekeeping, and have started contributing to the family’s income, Hernández says. Her eldest son learned how to reproduce the queen bees and sells queens when he has free time away from school.

But another source of income comes from Hernández’s time with the women’s group. Though it is a two-hour, one way walk for her to reach town, she makes that journey at least once a week.

YEAR OF CHALLENGES

The women’s group doesn’t have a designated spot or office in which to work, so they gather at members’ homes. Their work includes heating the wax, melting it and pressing it into honeycomb-shaped sheets, which are inserted into the pine frames.

Adelina Hernandez says honey sales help her to send her children, above, to school.

But the past year has been riddled with problems for both honey producers and the women’s groups. Many Honduran beekeepers lost hives, which they attributed to the colder, rainier year. One producer says pests were a problem. One keeper, Alvina Lopez Pineda, says she experienced an unexplainable collapse of her hives—seemingly similar to colony collapse disorder that has been affecting bee populations in the United States since 2006.

But whatever is harming the bees also affects the women’s group’s productivity. The group has been short on wax to produce sheets, so many of the women are not able to work, says Alex Rivera, the general manager of Cooperativa Apicola Pionera de Honduras Limitada.

“This year it has been more difficult because of the climate changes,” Rivera says. “[Our producers] have seen hundreds of bees dead on the ground, but we’ve been able to control it to some extent.”

Before Heifer partnered with the cooperative, members abandoned beekeeping in droves when the Africanized honeybee migrated north. But this time, through its partnership with Heifer, the co-op is able to cushion the hardships. Rivera says one way the partners ensure the women’s group remains employed is to import wax from the United States. The co-op also offers credit to any member if times have been more difficult.

Additionally, Heifer International and the co-op have added a new piece of equipment to the women’s group to further ensure its success and sustainability. With the new equipment—which melts the wax so it can be pressed into the laminates—they will be able meet at the treasurer’s home, where it will be kept, and continue working.

“We hope to be very productive with this machine,” Santos tells Rivera at the ceremony where the equipment is presented. “We know we’ll have permanent work now.”

Despite the recent hardships the producers and members of the cooperative report, the past six years, through Heifer’s support of the co-op, have changed the lives of the cooperative’s honey producers, Rivera says. “The entire beekeeping community has become solid and viable since Heifer’s involvement. There is more productivity all the way around.” And that productivity is what allows the community, and individual families, to improve their lives and look to a better future for their children.

Santos says she hopes that her children will become involved in beekeeping because it provides the family with more than they ever had in the past. Santos says their quality of life has improved so much that they could even buy a newer car to transport the hives. They can handle anything that comes their way now, she says.

Her husband echoes Santos’ hopes for their children. “In the chance that they don’t want to continue with this business, they will be able to go to college.”