Beehive Kit ($65)

What could be sweeter than honey? The added income that beekeeping means for farming families in the highlands of Honduras. For small coffee farmers who have been adversely affected by wildly fluctuating prices, beekeeping is a new skill that provides more economic stability to poor families.

Why Help Is Needed

Most indigenous families in Guatemala and Honduras live in isolated rural areas and subsist mostly on the meager crops they grow. Raising bees is one way Mercy Corps helps indigenous families in these two Central American countries increase their household income so their children can enjoy better healthcare and more educational opportunities.

Mercy Corps In Action

Learning how to raise bees provides greater economic stability to poor families. We're training family members — especially women — how to become beekeepers and supplying them with bees and materials for building hives. We're also connecting them to markets where they can sell their honey and taste financial success.

Angela's Story

Angela Quiix is not afraid of bees. In fact, she's embraced them for the benefits they bring to her family and community.

The 31-year-old mother of six helps raise bees in Xalache, a Mayan village in northern Guatemala. "I like it because it's easy and practical," she says as others pump smoke around her to quell the remaining bees in her hive. In her hands she holds the fruits of today's harvest: a honeycomb dripping with sweet, organic honey.

Last June, Mercy Corps showed Angela and 11 other women how to become beekeepers and supplied them with materials for 20 hives. The group responded by harvesting 5,000 Quetzales (about US$700) worth of honey in the first year.

The village consumed about 15 percent of the honey themselves, then bottled and sold the rest to restaurants and hotels in Coban, the regional capital. With the profits they purchased supplies for another 18 hives and stocked away money in the community's savings-and-loan cooperative, which helps community members buy livestock and increase their production of cardamom and corn.

"This project contributes to our family income," says Angela. "Hopefully it will contribute to the education of our children, too."

Beehive Kit ($65)
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Purchase of a Mercy Kit is a symbolic gift that supports Mercy Corps' worldwide programs to help children and families in need. The Breastfeeding Kit, Climate Change Kit, Fuel-Efficient Stove Kit, Cricket Farm Kit, Send an Orphan to School Kit, Plant a Tree Kit, Play to Heal Kit and Uganda Farm Kit supports those specific project funds. Proceeds from the sale of other Mercy Kits will be used where most needed.