by Greca N. Meloni
The first time we met, they welcomed me into an office. Next to the desk was a large candelabra with candles resting on the remains of countless other candles lit over many years of activity, giving the room a particular scent.
After a few minutes spent talking to Daniela, she arrives, Maria, a lifelong beekeeper. Proud, with a straight back, she still manages the company and its apiaries with the confidence of someone who knows this job well. Her lively eyes tell the story of a life spent following the buzzing of bees. She has visited the world to learn the different ways of beekeeping. She tells me that, in her company, she has always chosen to surround herself with women, determined and capable. Her kingdom is outside, in the open air, among her land, where she grows different types of plants that make jams and a delicious myrtle. “Do men graft?” she says to me. “When I got tired of waiting for men to graft my plants, I learned to do it myself! It doesn't take much!”
As a child in my family, I always heard about Maria as a strong woman and a great beekeeper. In the 1970s, she and my grandmother Giustina had the courage and strength to found a professional beekeeping company.
They became two professional beekeepers when this profession was still practiced rationally by only 12% of the beekeepers on the whole island [i]. Today, Giustina has hung up the smoker, while Maria continues working with her daughter Daniela, who manages and sells honey. She, too, is a woman of extraordinary entrepreneurial ability who sees beekeeping as a fundamental activity that supports the world of agriculture and the entire environment.
But Daniela and Maria are not the only Sardinian beekeepers I have met during my years of research.
There is Anna, who, despite her innate shyness, professionally manages the laboratory of the family business and takes care of the relationships with the customers. The laboratory is her kingdom. Her daughter Jenis, who learned beekeeping from her father, must have learned from her strength, determination, and kindness in managing the workers and the hives. Her expert knowledge is all contained in her way of beekeeping, a dance that knows the rhythms, the steps, and the needs of her bees well.
Working alongside them is Chiara, a brilliant, sharp, and perceptive woman who has been working with her husband for about 40 years both in the apiary and in the management of the laboratory. She knows intimately the toil, sweat, and satisfaction that this profession offers.
Like Chiara, Roberta is a beekeeper who, despite the hard work, loves working in the apiary and with the bees. She also helps her husband manage the colonies and sell the products. Her shyness disappears in front of her confident and firm gestures while she works with the bees.
When asked, “How many female beekeepers are there in Sardinia?” beekeepers often answer uncertainly, claiming that there are very few female beekeepers because the work is too hard.
Barbara is one of those "few" beekeepers who manages her company. Like any other professional in the sector, she raises queens and has found personal solutions to make her job easier and more productive. She manages the bee families based on the experience she has gained over many years of work. For the heavier jobs, such as honey extraction, she gets help from some workers—males.
But then again, who are the professional beekeepers who work without workers?
Finally, there is Francesca, also a beekeeper for about 40 years who knows the work of bees and the more strictly bureaucratic one.
Maria, Daniela, Giustina, Anna, Jenis, Chiara, Roberta, Francesca, and Barbara are some beekeepers working in Sardinia. Sometimes together with beekeepers, sometimes alone. Their industrious buzzing often goes unnoticed compared to the socially, perhaps, noisier one of men.
Yet many of these women are professional beekeepers who know beekeeping problems perfectly in Sardinia and Italy. Women are wrongly attributed with alleged "physical limitations" that would prevent them from working in a sector that requires a lot of strength.
Thinking of Sardinian beekeepers, I can't help but remember the photo of Maria sitting on the truck that she drove to transport the many honey supers full of honey. Or Chiara, who managed the honey extraction of hundreds of hives together with her husband, without help. Or Francesca, who, like all beekeepers, returned from the honey extraction to load and unload honey supers, found the strength to continue working all day to care for her children and husband.
No, I still don't understand if there is something (and what it is exactly) that women don't know how to do in beekeeping.
[i] Prota Romano, 1983, Notes on the beekeeping situation in Sardinia, in Annals of the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Sassari.
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