Tropical Honey is an impact- driven women-owned and led beekeeping enterprise transforming the historically male-dominant beekeeping industry through promoting an inclusive honey value chain that empowering women and marginalized groups including persons with disabilities and refugees by providing them with skills of making beehives using locally available materials, hive management, honey harvesting, business and marketing skills, allowing them to generate income from honey, beeswax, propolis, candles, and royal jelly while balancing family responsibilities.
In Uganda, beekeeping is seen as a male-dominated profession, making it difficult for women to break into the industry. Social and cultural barriers are significant obstacles, as women are often expected to prioritize domestic duties over economic activities. Also, cultural beliefs, norms, and stereotypes discourage women from participating in the profitable beekeeping enterprise.
Tropical Honey uses principles of inclusion in addressing social and cultural barriers and promoting gender equality to create a more inclusive and supportive environment for women entrepreneurs trading in the honey value chain for income generation and sustainable livelihoods. We further invest and engage the community, especially men on re-balancing and re-negotiating gender roles, fostering new relationships between women and men as equal human beings, and promoting women’s participation in beekeeping for economic independence.
Tropical Honey work with women beekeepers as out-growers for the production of honey to meet market demands. Beekeepers are organized into groups and provided with training and technical support to set up a suitable apiary for quality honey production, and supplied with the necessary equipment for high-quality honey harvest. Beekeepers are further trained on making beehives using locally available materials to increase the number of their beehives and honey production to meet the market demands. Tropical Honey then provides beekeepers with a honey market by buying their bee products at a fair, guaranteed price, adding value, marketing, and selling the honey products to urban consumers.
Our strategy of working with women beekeepers as out growers guarantees a sustainable, reliable production and supply of quality natural honey products to the market.
Tropical Honey was registered with the government of Uganda in 2017 as a profit-making enterprise with registration number: 80020000249292.