PICK N PAY STORES LIMITED Members of the Cwebeni cooperative trek four kilometres to harvest honey deep in the forests of the
It's
Mpumapi is a member of the
To visit their beehives, members of the cooperative have to walk through the Mngazana mangroves, the third largest mangrove forest in
Cwebeni is located on the periphery of the mangrove forests of Mngazana, and is difficult to access via road. With very few employment opportunities and little access to basic services, most villagers rely on social grants and remittances to survive.
The catalyst for starting a beekeeping cooperative came one morning in 2008, when beekeeping volunteers visited the local school. "They went to the bush and showed us how to install bee hives. But we did not have enough understanding of bee farming then," says Mpumapi.
This led a group of women from Cwebeni to visit the
"We didn't understand that you could farm bees, but after we visited the women in Libode, I knew we could do it," says 62-year-old Nolulamile Lazola, another beekeeper from Cwebeni.
A year after its formation, the cooperative started receiving funding from
Central to the foundation's support for the cooperative was training.
Dell has over two decades of experience working with bees, founding BMan, a company specialising in cruelty-free bee removal. He said he first visited Cwebeni in 2010 and travelled there repeatedly over four years to train and educate the villagers about the importance of bees in the local ecosystem.
"The concept I used to teach was that if you look after the bees, then the bees will look after you," Dell told GroundUp.
Mpumapi joked that they were "clueless about bees".
The cooperative established a training and bottling facility for honey in Cwebeni in 2013, repurposing an unused community building. Other funders included the
In 2018, the
This severely affected the operations of the co-operative and its ability to produce and bottle honey. However, the members have continued at a smaller scale.
"We lost our equipment. It was devastating. We now don't have any place to bottle the honey," says Lazola.
Vovo Qhuzelwa has fond memories of the cooperative's training and processing facility. "People would come from all parts of the province to visit the centre and learn about bee farming," he says. Before beekeeping, Qhuzelwa worked as a labourer in
The cooperative now sells the honey for about R60 per 500ml to nearby Entabeni Hardware stores and to the
With some of the beekeepers getting old, they are struggling to walk the long distances and to carry equipment, says Lazola.
Bee-keeper Nosiseko Klaas hopes the cooperative can grow to support more members of the community. She wants to pass on her skills to the next generation.
"This has helped relieve my poverty, so it is important that the youth also get the opportunity," says Klaas.
Copyright 2024 GroundUp. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com)., source
