Sweet Success

Victor Rodriguez tends his beehives. Photo: Roger Burks/Mercy Corps

For Victor Rodriguez, the taste of success is sweet. In fact, it has a distinct peachy flavor with hints of pineapple.

Victor, a farmer who lives with his family in the Honduran highlands near the town of Bella Vista, is enjoying the fruits of his labor as he harvests delicious honey from beehives. After donning protective gear including a netted mask, he carefully extracts the honeycomb from each hive.

The honey, fragrant with an aroma of spicy fruit, will help Victor earn additional income to support his wife and four small children. It's a sweet proposition for his family, who live in a tiny house in one of the country's poorest regions.

The past several years haven't been kind to Honduran farmers like Victor. They saw their fortunes change nearly overnight as a result of the global coffee crisis. Shortly before that economic collapse, Honduras was nearly flattened by the fury of Hurricane Mitch. This one-two punch destroyed Honduran farms, plunging already-poor families into even more desperate poverty.

In the wake of these dual disasters, Mercy Corps and local partner organization Project Global Village started the Small Species Program to help impoverished farmers recover and rebuild. This program donates livestock such as goats, chickens, pigs and bees to rural farm families and trains them how to care for them.

The honeycomb inside Rodriguez's hand-made Gimerito hives is the source of exotic, distinctly fruity honey. Photo: Roger Burks/Mercy Corps

The Small Species Program serves several families in each community to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity for a brighter future. In Bella Vista, there are six families with beehives. They learned about the program through community meetings organized by Mercy Corps.

When families expressed interest in participating, a Mercy Corps agricultural officer was assigned to begin work with them. These agricultural officers continue to visit each family, including Victor's, on a weekly basis to make sure that their projects are going well.

With help from Mercy Corps, Victor's farm is really buzzing again. Not only have the beehives produced an abundant supply of delectable honey, but Victor swears that the bees' activity has made his coffee and other crops flourish.

Victor has also become a bit of an entrepreneur: he's built nearly a dozen hives for tiny, bee-like insects called Gimeritos, which don't sting and make a luscious, wild-tasting honey.

"I don't know of any other farmers who've had success raising Gimeritos," says Adan, the agricultural officer who works with Victor. "Victor has taken our assistance and used it to blaze his own paths."

Victor plans on selling both regular and Gimerito honey to stores and at roadside stands. He is very optimistic about the prospects for extra money to support his family.

"Mercy Corps helped me learn a new skill and open up more possibilities," Victor says. "I'm more confident about the future now."