Hi, I am Aurora Zeas from Nicaragua, for the love of the bees I initiated this bee world in 2003 with my family with 5 bee hives. Then, in 2011 we decided to see it as a business. However, I am a social entrepreneur and my focus is not only to grow and have money but to grow with all my employees and beekeepers that I work with, to make the beekeeping activity in Nicaragua more profitable, so more people want to take care of bees is my first and last goal.
Zeas Apicola, S.A., is my 2 brothers and I's a corporation, dedicated to producing bee honey, packing it, and to elaborate derivatives in the food, medical, and cosmetics sectors. As a social responsibility, we empower women, especially those in rural areas who are heads of families facilitating them with beehives, basic tools, and training to produce honey as well as other derivatives (pollen, beeswax and propolis) incentivizing them to care for the environment by reforestation and sound agricultural practices.
Due to the 2018 political unrest followed by the pandemic 2019-2020, we strived to keep our personnel and maintain our support to beekeeper women under our coverage (11 groups of families) y buying the total or partial production of 78 beekeepers, that period was too long, and suddenly, as a consequence of that heartfelt decisions, we piled debts amounting U$ 90 thousand dollars, Thanks to faith in our leadership we could restructure our debt and we continued our commitment to our associate women beekeeper, the environment, and the development of this agribusiness branch.
However, the road has not been easy, as we were not able to consolidate all the debts, because Nicaraguan’s bank system accepts only real collaterals, we consolidated only 55% of the debt, and the remaining is still under diverse types of loans, and carrying high interest rates.
In addition, Nicaragua’s domestic market, which is our main market, is very damaged in terms of purchasing power and our products become sumptuous. We are already reactivating our exports, which were curved because of our weak financial position.
That is why we are asking for support today, to be able to continue with the company and its commitments, we are a social enterprise,, and throughout the 12 years that it has been operating, our primary goal, besides business, is the commitment to bee proliferation, both Africanized and native, giving awareness talks to the population, saving beehives that are located in houses at no cost, farms, etc., giving technical support on beekeeping. We also have a program called "Wings of Hope" which consists of converting women from rural areas, who do not have any activity or economic income, grouping them into 5 or 6 women to teach them the basics of beekeeping and then provide them with tools, clothing and finally give them beehives and offer to buy their honey and beeswax from their production, so that they can improve their financial situation.
We assure you all we are committed to surviving and we will appreciate a big hand for a strategic firm in this Central American country.