Five women have battled the odds and become successful entrepreneurs
Thuli Nhlapo
An age-old tradition and a pastime for herdboys in rural communities bee honey harvesting is becoming a thriving small-business activity that has diversified to produce other products such as candles and cosmetics.
This is the success story of a group of women from Phokeng, outside Rustenburg in the North West. Marang Women in Agriculture is reputed to be the first bee honey farmer in a province internationally known for its platinum production.
“We started with only four bee-catch boxes. After a few months we added another 12. We thought we would wait for a while before expanding further but the demand for our products was so great that we now have 35 boxes. Even that is no longer enough,” said project manager Tshidi Mataboge.
The project began 18 months ago when the Bafokeng Tribal Authority handed over a hectare of the Makalele plot in Kookfontein to the group for bee farming. Their initial labour-intensive equipment consisted of four bee-catch boxes placed on platforms made of old tyres (to steer away honey badgers) and painted yellow to attract bees.
Each harvesting area, located around trees, is fenced and locked. A white board displayed on the gate warns: “Danger, Kotsi, Ingozi”.
This is where bee-catch boxes are found. Adjacent is a stall built like the Batswana traditional hut that displays processed and labelled honey products.
>From a distance one can spot insects surrounding the catch boxes and workers wait for about six to eight weeks before they harvest the sweet and sticky produce.
“It sounds scary and difficult because the only thing people know about bees is the sting, but our job is full of fun and it is really safe because we wear special attire when harvesting,” said Mataboge.
After burning a special stick and directing the smoke inside the boxes, Mataboge says “the swarm knows that they have visitors and fly from one to the other side of the box”.
“When bees move to one side of the box that does not mean one can just open the box easily. Before laying eggs bees tightly close every gap that can allow air inside the box. This substance is called propolyx. We use hive tools to open boxes and bee brushes to wipe them away from honeycombs,” said training coordinator Sefi Taje.
Twenty five-litre buckets full of honeycombs mark the beginning of the process, because the produce is then taken from the farm to Phokeng township for processing, and then put into containers and labelled.
One of the rooms in Mataboge’s backyard at Phokeng has been turned into a shop for the honey products. The shelves swell with honeycombs, pure honey and honey with dried fruit. The group also produces beeswax candles, which are sold to residents.
Mead, a beverage made from fermented honey, is consumed by locals during their leisure time, while propolyx is used to produce medicinal alcohol that can be used as a natural antibiotic for the treatment of ulcers, diabetes and other ailments.
“We could also choose to specialise in honey cosmetic products, but that would be impossible right now because we are still using manual equipment. [With modern equipment] we could produce shampoos, night creams and other skin products,” says Mataboge.
Boipelo Kubyane, Marang’s sales and marketing officer, says men and women use honey differently. He says women prefer to use honey for cooking and children’s coughs.
“Men mix honey with an egg yolk as an aphrodisiac and they also use it for hangovers after a night of drinking.”
The group also supplies established retailers such as Foodies Convenient Stores, Spars and bakeries around Rustenburg with its products, which are marked Marwa Honey Queens.
Marang’s bee honey harvesting has just completed a training course on the farm, thanks to the Tlhabane Bus Service who provided an old bus that is now used as a training facility.
“We cannot afford to be jealous when it comes to bee farming because we need many black groups to collaborate with, since the industry has always been in white hands. The Department of Trade and Industry has approached us with an import offer but we realised that the five of us would not be able to meet the demands of the international market. We need help, that is why we put more emphasis on training other groups,” says Kubyane.
“We may soon sign in a new customer, Sun City. They want to come and inspect our premises. We are not worried because health officials visit our sites more often and they are satisfied with our standards,” says Kubyane, adding that they also complied with the South African Bureau of Standards’ international protocol.
Establishing the small enterprise has not been easy as Marang struggled to get seed funding and the women had little training.
“We knocked on so many doors but we were dismissed simply because we did not have training. We were so excited when the National Development Agency [NDA] said they would fund us,” said Mataboge.
The NDA is a government-owned development-funding agency that aims to address poverty. Established by an Act of Parliament in 1998, the agency began implementing its projects in May last year, with Marang as one of the first projects it funded.
“To be honest, we liked the idea We believed in their dream because that is all it was, a dream, and development is about making sure that people’s dreams come true,” says Bridgette Masango, the NDA’s executive director of communication.
After meeting Marang the NDA approved the funding of a three-month training course in bee farming and bought a bakkie to meet the group’s transport needs.
“A year later we have no regrets about the R250 000 that we pumped into the project,” says Masango.