Simultaneously tackling the vital goals of protecting bees and empowering women globally, meet the conservationists protecting our ecosystems.
May 20, 2021 was a big day for the bees—but if you’d asked any of them, they wouldn’t have known it. As honeybees, carpenter bees, and every type of Anthophila in between tended to their hives and whizzed through the air pollinating every plant in their paths, the world was abuzz with excitement, shock, and awe as it took in a truly unprecedented sight: Angelina Jolie, sitting barefaced and resolute, as a swarm of 60,000 bees
crept across her body.
The portrait, and accompanying 18-minute video, of the Oscar-winning actress bred a frenzied response of both admiration and anxiety, as onlookers around the globe complimented the image’s beauty, acknowledged Jolie’s bravery, and in some cases, credited it as the inspiration behind their subsequent nightmares. But behind the astonishing photoshoot and the bustle it caused was a far bigger story, one that had the power to affect every living being, whether they knew it or not. This wasn’t a mere glamour shot or even the product of Jolie’s longtime collaboration with Guerlain; rather, it was to announce the launch of a first-of-its-kind female beekeeping entrepreneurship initiative, established by UNESCO in partnership with the legacy French beauty house.
The Women for Bees program was created with the intent to highlight the important role that bees play in the world and the growing threat they find themselves under, as well as to empower women from a wide range of communities and backgrounds to protect and repopulate the bees through training and education.
The five-year project, which began in June 2021, centers around beekeeping courses offered in UNESCO-designated biosphere reserves where, over the course of one month, the women in training are taught the practical and theoretical skills needed for beekeeping.
During its first two years, Women for Bees will have held sessions in France, Italy, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Russia, Cambodia, China, Ethiopia, and Rwanda, with many more regions planned for the three years that follow. The more than 25 women who have now graduated from the program represent an incredibly diversity—not only in the countries they hail from but also in their experience with and knowledge of bees prior to the program.
For Aggelina Kanellopoullou, who took part in the inaugural program in France, her experience with Women for Bees was the culmination of years of learning and working with animals. “The first time I got in touch with the bees was around 12 years ago when I was studying psychology,” she recalls. “I was volunteering for a lot of environmental organizations, and I decided to take some beekeeping classes near my house.”
The then-21-year old fell in love with bees almost immediately and soon changed the focus of her studies to pursue a Master’s degree in animal behavior. “Those six months, the first connection I had to beekeeping, were really the first time I felt interested in something with such depth, and through the bees, I understood something very important: how everything is interconnected.”
Kanellopoullou went on to continue her studies at the University of California, San Diego, where she specialized in bee behavior and conservation, but she remained unsure about how her newfound knowledge and lab experience would translate to a career. Not long after graduating, however, she began working for a number of NGOs in her native Greece, and she discovered a serious gap in the space. “I saw that no one was working on bees in Greece,” she explains. “I knew it was a super important issue and that we didn’t know anything about it, so I decided I would do it, that I would start my own NGO that works on bees and bee conservation.”
“Those six months, the first connection I had to beekeeping, were really the first time I felt interested in something with such depth, and through the bees, I understood something very important: how everything is interconnected,” said Kanellopoullou
So, in 2018, Kanellopoullou started Bee Camp, a children’s educational program on bees through the arts. “It was quite an innovative project because I brought in artists, educators, and scientists, and we all together created some workshops for the kids and provided them for free to the schools,” she says. The camp was a booming success in its first year, and it began to generate attention to pollinators in Greece—so much so that its founder was accepted to a six-month ERASMUS program in France. Once there, she made an effort to network and connect with those around her, and she quickly befriended some people who were gearing up to run the first Women for Bees course. Before long, they invited her to apply.
Despite her extensive knowledge of bees, Kanellopoullou was more or less a beginner when it came to beekeeping, which made her an ideal candidate for the UNESCO beekeeping course. She joined six other women in the south of France, and for the next month, woke up at 6 AM every morning and spent the entire day taking care of around 2,500 beehives. “We spent our time like real beekeepers do, and that was really interesting to me because I had never done that without any help,” she notes.
But alongside the tangible beekeeping skills she learned during the program, Kanellopoullou returned to Greece with a greater appreciation of the true power of women. “I fell in love with women, with us, with our team,” she explains. “There was magic created, and we had a very strong bond to help each other through conditions that weren’t always easy. It was quite an empowering experience for us all.” She brought this sense of community back to Bee Camp, but it also brought her all the way to Cambodia less than a year later, where she met and advised the participants of the latest Women for Bees course, which included women like Soky Un.
Un, who served as an interpreter and teaching coordinator for the UNESCO program in Cambodia, was similarly attracted to the initiative after discovering the importance of bees. But unlike Kanellopoullou, she had no experience with them before joining. “Like most people, I was scared of bees!” she admits. “But from the first moment we opened a beehive, the first time we saw a bee queen, the first time we tasted honey from our bees, and even the first time I got stung by the bees, I have been totally fascinated by them.”
The program challenged Un and her fellow beekeepers more than a few times, but despite the region’s dearth of plants and less-than-desirable climate, they never lost their initial interest and passion. “Each training session was an opportunity to discover a new and often unexpected aspect of the life of these fascinating little creatures,” the interpreter says. “I learned about the importance of native bees for our food safety and for the conservation of the natural ecosystems; the threats they are facing, such as unsustainable honey hunting, deforestation, agriculture intensification, and climate change; and that we are all responsible of their conservation.”
But more than anything else, Un saw her time with Women for Bees as a personal journey with six other women and a lesson in the opportunity and confidence that beekeeping could offer them. “I have known these women for several years and have seen the challenges they’ve faced in their lives, and I remember them saying that they would never be able to learn beekeeping because they were ‘not smart’,” she recalls. “But week by week, I saw them learning and making progress. They might not end up making a living out of beekeeping, but learning beekeeping may have changed their lives, or at least their perception of themselves.”
While beekeepers like Kanellopoullou and Un were able to learn about bees and apply their knowledge simultaneously, other Women for Bees participants receive their training online and will put their skills to work soon after. One such woman is Patricija Vrenko, a Slovenian beekeeper who will head to France for her onsite portion of the program in September.
“I have known these women for several years and have seen the challenges they’ve faced in their lives, and I remember them saying that they would never be able to learn beekeeping because they were ‘not smart’,” said Un.
But for Vrenko, taking care of bees is nothing new. In fact, they’ve been a part of her life for as long as she can remember, thanks to her beekeeper uncle, who encouraged her to learn about the insects and work in the apiary with him. “I was always ‘buzzing’ around to see what was going on, but I still needed some time to gather the courage and start a bee-path of my own,” she says. A few years after leaving her hometown for a job, though, Vrenko decided to come back to her uncle’s farm and bought a whole unit of bees from a local beekeeper. And although it started as a mere hobby, it quickly turned into a full-time commitment when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. “I took the opportunity to work with the bees, research their world, and learn from them,” she explains.
Vrenko soon discovered aromatherapy and felt compelled to incorporate bee products into sauna experiences, so she took a one-year course in apitherapy in 2020 and began creating bee products not long after. Around the same time, she also learned about the Women for Bees program and knew she had to be a part of it. “It was eye-opening to see that people are aware of this pollinator crisis and are doing their best to make a difference,” she notes. “The importance of biosphere reserves stood out, and I started noticing that they play a big role in conserving the ecosystems and also in supporting sustainable activities to enrich it.”
As she prepares for the onsite Women for Bees training this fall, Vrenko is also thinking about her long-term plans and the impact her experience with the UNESCO program will have on them. She hopes to combine her love of bees with her passion for wellness to create mind-body sanctuaries for both pollinators and humans alike. “I hope to teach others that we have so many opportunities to thrive, but everything else has to thrive too,” she adds. “We can do that if we take good care of ourselves and our surroundings, so what are we waiting for?”
For all three women—and the many others who learned beekeeping beside them—the Women in Bees program offers so much more than a mere understanding of the bees and how to take care of them. Instead, it’s given a whole new perspective on the power of women, the crucialty of working together, and the importance of global ties. “Each woman may be based in a different biosphere,” as Kanellopoullou says, “but having this umbrella of UNESCO is bridging the gap and creating a community among us all.”
Cover image courtesy of Unesco; top above image by Marie Rouge; middle image by Amadeja Knez
