Women behind the lens: the female beekeepers who hold ‘the keys to a better world’

This group of women are the first female beekeepers in their town. Their work began in 2018 after they arrived at the Ximenes settlement, in the municipality of Barreiros in Pernambuco state in north-eastern Brazil. They had been displaced from their homes because of the expansion of the Suape port area farther north.

The new settlement provided by the government is surrounded by a huge sugar cane plantation. The soil is unproductive, and pesticides threaten the native bees. There are no paved roads, schools or health centres in the area. Housing is precarious and the area is often flooded by the river.

With few options for planting, the women turned to the local university to learn how to keep bees. Prof Renata Valéria Gomes, from the zootechnics department at the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco, provided the protective suits and hives and taught them beekeeping techniques to produce quality honey, free of pesticides. Until then beekeeping in the municipality was exclusively undertaken by men.

Added to the financial independence they got by selling honey, the women pushed for a new sustainable dynamic in the community. To attract more bees, they began to plant crops around their homes using techniques passed down by their ancestors, transforming their back yards into oases with flowers, trees and crops. They combine genetic improvement techniques with ancestral knowledge to find sustainable ways of producing honey.

I photographed this project in 2021, during the pandemic, and by watching these women who improved their lives by taking care of bees and also their surroundings, I was encouraged to think about a future with other possibilities, in which we don’t have to destroy to survive.

I felt some kind of hope, not an innocent hope that just waits for better days, but a kind of hope that shows us that we already have within our reach, the tools and resources to establish cooperative projects that are in tune with the rhythms of nature and life itself.

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I like to imagine in this photo a kind of Pandora’s box which, instead of giving rise to all the evils in the world, opens up to countless possibilities of cures and benefits, as long as we look at the planet with more care, respect and love. That’s what I learned with these women.

We are at a crucial moment in our history and we need to use all available resources: science, technology, yes, but also community, care for the land and the ancestral wisdom these women bring to their lives. The keys to a better world for humans and non-humans are all around us.

Gabriela Portilho is a documentary photographer, journalist and educator with a strong focus on the environment and gender issues, particularly in the Brazilian Amazon. She is also a co-founder of Doroteia, a collective focused on stories centred around women. Follow her on Instagram

This project was a winner of the 2023 Carolina Hidalgo Vivar environmental award at POY Latam: https://poylatam.org/