In a country where women mostly find employment in the agricultural sector, wives of beekeepers have set an example for branching out from their peers. Though male-dominated elsewhere, the beekeeping business is a joint livelihood for couples in the southwestern Turkish province of Muğla.
Traveling beekeepers of the province, which produces 80% of the pine honey in the country, appreciate having their wives on their side as they pursue the best honey out there. “They are our queen bees. There won’t be honey without them,” Mehmet Çepel joked while praising the support his wife, Emine, provides. Emine Çepel says they travel for “probably 5,000 kilometers (3107 miles) or more” every year, with bees in tow, “like our babies.”
Beekeeping migration is tough, requiring a life on the road but it pays off, with higher earnings through the sale of better quality honey. Muğla’s beekeepers head to central Turkey, southeast and to Thrace (Trakya) region in the northwest to extract the tasty honey from bees. Women comprise almost half of the traveling beekeeping community in the province.
Couples climb mountains and hills with rich flora for honey production, living in makeshift sheds or tents for months, away from their children.
Emine Çepel, 56, a resident of Muğla’s Dalaman, said they leave home in the spring and return near winter. Çepel is no stranger to the business as she was helping her father, a beekeeper, before she married Mehmet. “It is a tough life but I love beekeeping,” she told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Tuesday. The couple will first travel to Konya before another stay in Afyon province and later hunt for quality honey in Trakya.
Mehmet Çepel said his wife is a professional and knows how to take care of bees and extract good quality honey. “She is of great support to me,” he says. Apart from the challenges of lengthy travels, he says their biggest challenge is using pesticides that lower the quality of plants used for honey production.
Durdu Çakar has been accompanying her husband for the past 22 years. Unlike Emine, she took up the job after her marriage. “I was scared of bee stings at first. I was stung a few times and remember crying a lot, but I got used to it,” she said. “I stay at home half of the year and the rest of the year in tent while on the road. It is a difficult job, but it gives me pleasure,” she said. “It is a sweet job for me but only because I have my wife on my side. I wouldn’t do very much on my own,” her husband Mustafa said.
