Foto: MAR Fund
The Corozal village is located in Roatan, the biggest of the islands of the Bay Islands Complex of Honduras, within the Mesoamerican Reef.
Juanita, a very young energetic woman and mother of two, lives in Corozal and was one of the first people from the village to jump into the journey of honey production. Juanita says that when she decided to join this entrepreneurship, her little daughter said: “Mom, and aren’t you afraid that the bees will sting you?!” But her faith in this new phase of her life, and her desire to succeed, prevented anything from frightening her. More than twenty families joined the adventure. Using community land inside the village, they built and installed forty hives to produce honey and learned how to handle them.
Like any business in its inception, and since they were not constituted as a formal enterprise, the honey could only be sold informally and didn’t make immediate income, so most of the families that began working on it, withdrew. This didn’t discouraged Juanita. She and seven other families decided to stay and give the bees and their delicious honey a chance.
Now, after approximately two years of continuous work, Juanita and the other seven families have raised enough money from the honey sale to establish themselves as a legal figure. They have completed all requirements and are waiting to have their legal papers with them. This will allow them to formally sell their product to hotels and restaurants in Roatan, many of which have already placed their order of honey to the Corozal Beekeepers Association – APICOR.
They are planning to expand their production to one hundred hives.
Some of the families that retired when saw no benefit from the honey, tried to join back into APICOR. Unfortunately, there is no vacancy at the moment.
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