WELLNESS Warehouse has partnered with honeybee Heroes to produce a new honeybee education initiative for health and wellness company’s customers.
Honeybee Heroes is a honeybee sanctuary and education non-profit organisation in South Africa’s Overberg region. The organisation seeks to create accessible opportunities for South Africans to engage with the environment, grounded in the conservation of South Africa’s endemic Capensis honeybee, which is an increasingly at-risk species.
The new partnership between Wellness Warehouse and Honeybee Heroes will bring honeybee advocacy to Wellness Warehouse stores countrywide. On shelves featuring Wellness Warehouse’s many local honey options, Honeybee Heroes will place information regarding the plight of the honeybees and how consumers can get actively involved in the effort to prevent honeybee decline in South Africa.
The partnership also offered customers the opportunity to sponsor a Honeybee Heroes beehive through the hive adoption programme, giving a new home to up to 30 000 Capensis honeybees for R2 000. Hive sponsors receive a personalised adoption kit, including a range of honeybee-branded wellness and retail products and the chance to visit the hive for free.
Since the organisation’s founding in 2020, Honeybee Heroes said it had placed more than 700 honeybee hives in the Overberg region and hosted more than 150 individuals for free beekeeper training courses.
Drue Birch, Wellness Warehouse food category manager, said the new venture aimed to educate consumers about why purchasing raw, local honey was beneficial to the health of the consumer as well as the honeybees and to local beekeepers forced into competition with cheap, fraudulent honey from overseas producers.
By supporting local honey producers, or by adopting a Honeybee Heroes hive, consumers were increasing the capacity for South African beekeepers to care for more honeybees, leading to a much-needed spike in colony numbers for the Capensis bee.
“Our team at Wellness Warehouse couldn’t be more excited to partner with Honeybee Heroes in providing only the best products and education in the honey category,” Birch said. “We have always stocked only raw, natural honey and now we’re taking it to the next level in supporting the Honeybee Heroes ‘Adopt a Hive’ Initiative. We truly believe in supporting local beekeepers and providing only the best honey options for our customers. Join us in saving South Africa’s honeybees,” Birchsaid.
Honeybee Heroes founder and director Chris Oosthuizen said he believed consumer decisions played a “major” role in conservation efforts.
“We have seen that consumers have an incredible capacity for impact when they make responsible food purchases. That’s why we’re so excited to partner with Wellness Warehouse to help spread awareness about the plight of the honeybees, and to educate their consumers about the importance of buying raw, local honey. Through this collaboration, we can merge our two communities to help save the bees and inspire thousands of South Africans to live an eco-friendlier lifestyle,” Oosthuizen said.
Meanwhile, last month the Western Cape Bee Industry Association told Business Report it planned to soon provide improved guidance for pollinator beekeepers and introduce higher standards.
The chairman, Brendan-Ashley Cooper, has been spearheading this drive, which includes the establishment of a corps of pollination inspectors, who will ensure that the interests of both the honeybees and the farmers who hire them will be protected.
BUSINESS REPORT