Soon you will be able to purchase El Panal Co-op honey here!
For now, you can only purchase honey at the farm.
The “El Panal” Bee Project is a valuable project that focuses on raising honey bees and harvesting bee products. The team is made up of immigrant activist leaders who decided last year to create sustainability projects in the context of local economy, and are committed on three important aspects:
- Local economy
- Culturally native ecological access to food.
Bees are an essential component of agriculture and without them, many fruits and flowers would not be in existence today! El Panal Project focuses on the care and maintenance of honey bee hives as well as the production of honey bee related products such as honey products, beeswax products, arts and crafts, and cooking with honey.
Original project proposal:
After a group of learners from English for Action’s action committee researched these three issues for a year, it was decided that a relatively quick and tangible solution was to create a co-op business for ourselves.
Project El Panal (one of the groups formed) aims to grow a business of honey production in cooperation with immigrant farmers and members of each family.
The project consists of three parts:
- Training in business development (see details below).
- Exchange knowledge on best practices for beekeeping in Rhode Island and Mass.
- Developing a collective marketing strategy, product & brand share sales at farmers markets and regional sections of natural food stores in food deserts identified.
The El Panal project, is a democratically run group business, we are a cooperative (co -op ) in formation that not only makes honey for the community but is also a short-term project with a long term sustainable and environmentally friendly business. Therefore, we conclude that it is a productive, ecological and sustainable project. It is also profitable considering a small investment of our beekeepers members , they can achieve expand our cooperative producers of honey, beeswax, pollen, royal jelly and pollination as part of income generation beekeeping .
The main sources of income are a beekeeping enterprise honey production and pollination.
Most beekeepers start with a minimal amount of bees, with two to four colonies which multiply according to implementing management, experience and management skills .
This is a community project of cooperatives, economic support for families, mitigating local economic problem, which is sustainable and that also slows extinction of bees and the impact of this on the environment.
This project is at an early stage, so we are looking for an initial financial investment and then make it a sustainable project.
We are in the incubation period, are taking classes to learn how to create the cooperative, as incorporate us, as how to do our bylaws, permits, insurance, licenses, etc. our business plan and many other things necessary for a small business .
We are also learning to work together as a community, it is very important for us not to lose the identity of each celebrate our cultures and the cultures of the other members of the cooperative , we are looking to be able to do a business where everyone has the same capacity and the same power of decision, we seek a way of doing business where the profit is not measured in money but in experience and quality of our products .
Our goal is to create a local market where we can bring our original Creole products , where we not only sell our products but we also share our culture with others and provide our customers with the fruit of our work and effort.
It is a cooperative project developed by women, youth, children and men with limited economic resources in order to improve the income of each of the members and thus meet the needs of their families. Members need to put into practice their acquired knowledge about beekeeping and anything related to managing market and cooperative.
So far, plans to sell honey in Farmers Markets ( farmers market ) in Rhode Island and other small companies producing wine in Boston, MA . I also planned this elaborate candles with beeswax and other products derived from honey and wax.
We ourselves are now taking classes in the cooperatives will help us efficiently manage our project as a cooperative, then take beekeeping lessons which will help us to give the necessary care and take advantage of 100% .
We have managed to raise enough to pay our first training academy cooperative money but lack further support to start our project.
Given the knowledge gained in management of cooperatives and current training in care of bees, we clarified the idea that our project is economically sustainable over a period of 2 years.
WE are looking for like minded organizations and projects to partner and help each other in this very important life changing adventure.
New to the Bee Project? Check out the I’d Like to Keep Bees: Can you Help Me?