 for joining me on the farming podcast brought to you by Private Property. Today we have an interesting entrepreneur and she is in the beekeeping space of farming or beekeeping side within the agricultural sector and her name is Mohadima Beina, founder and CEO of Native Norsi. I really encourage you to ask any questions if you have. It's quite a niche industry so I know a lot of you will be listening intently curious about how you become a bee farmer or how you process honey for example and what really goes into the process of farming and producing honey. Native Norsi is a brand that is quite known. Now I know it, I've seen it, I follow their pages on social media and if it's your first time hearing about them, please do support them and but yeah without wasting any further of your time let's get into today's conversation with Mohadima. I encourage you to please ask any questions that you might have because I'm sure this is going to be quite a conversation full of knowledge and information which we can all take away when we go home or after this life. So Mohadima thank you so much for joining us and how are you doing? I'm okay. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so yeah let's talk about Native Norsi you know I'm sure you get a lot of these questions like black girl growing into bees how did that happen what were you doing before and bees are harmful you know they sting so it's it's an industry that not a lot of us come across or especially you're one such professional entrepreneur that is in an industry that we really don't think about especially in agriculture you know so just tell us please about Native Norsi when you started and how you came to incorporate Native Norsi. So Native Norsi is a beekeeping company we specialize in the production of pure South African raw honey and we also deal with pollination services we provide these services to crop farmers who need active pollination from honeybees on their farms so that they can be able to yield a better quality crop and a greater number in terms of the crops that they will harvest per season and those are our two specialities as Native Norsi. We have been registered since 2015 and actively operating since 2016 and it's our fifth year now in in operation how we got into it or how rather I got into it I'm the founder of Native Norsi and my father is a beekeeper that's how I actually got into it but he was doing it at a subsistence level so he was doing beekeeping at a scale where he wanted to actually provide the basics for his family and that's the scale at which he was doing it and I went to tertiary I had a normal life I went to tertiary in Pretoria at the University of Pretoria and I studied international relations and then I went into the corporate space and started working there and while I was there that's when the seed for Native Norsi started because I realized that people were using honey and for the first time in my life I don't know why maybe because people who actually afford honey are people who are working because previously before that obviously I was in tertiary you're not trying to buy honey in tertiary because you're not that bougie all the money is for groceries and drinking and partying and so honey is not part of your your your basic acquisitions when you're in tertiary so when I was in the working space I realized that actually these people are not using the honey that I know to be honey or at least the honey that I know my father was farming while I grew up and then I asked them you know like is this what you guys refer to as honey and they're like yes I'm like but I'm not sure what the deal with this honey is but but I know it's not honey and I know that it needs not the honey that my father is producing and they're like what do you mean this is honey and I'm like okay cool I'll bring in some of what my dad makes and I did that and they weren't berserk they're like oh my goodness like what have we been having this time and some of the the people who grew up in the rural areas who were exposed to honey hunting because that's what we do as Africans we find honey in in the wilderness and in trees and in cavities and the boys that are herding cattle or livestock will normally like burn tires or whatever and then they'll like get the honey from the trees and then that's what you know that the honey that we consume in the rural areas is and when I brought them some of my father's honey the ones who knew honey in that way that I just described resonated with you know the honey that my father's honey tasted like and they're like oh my god this reminds me of the honey and that we grew up eating and this tastes like the real honey and they were asking me what what did your father do to the honey and I'm like exactly like this is like pure honey my father did nothing he just took what the bees made and this is what I'm sharing with you and obviously at the time I didn't I wasn't as educated as I am like in terms of the industry knowledge and I didn't know the difference between what was being offered at the commercial shelves or retail markets versus what my father was was was doing but it soon became clear that my father is making real honey and that is what people actually want and people then started buying the honey from me and that kind of snowball because the one person would tell the next and and and and then people started you know wanting more and more and my father is like look I'm not making enough to actually feed your demand anymore how about I introduce you to some of my network farmers these would be farmers in the Lepopo region who are doing it at a small scale like him and they were not really involved in supplying any formal markets so I spoke to these farmers I told them look there is a market in helping where I'm staying which actually is looking for the honey that you are producing do you mind if I buy it from you and sell it to them and the like kunis because at the time they were also doing it informally so they were selling it to whoever wanted to buy and it wasn't always a good price but I mean you know 10 renders is better than nothing for example and so we got into an agreement of you know how much I would be getting the honey from them at and and then whenever they had stock they call me up and then I go and get the honey and if they're able to send it up to how then I do that and then they soon started running out of honey because the demand on my side was growing and growing so my father's like I think the best thing for you to do is to get your own beehives and secure your own supply so that if you don't have honey from me or from the farmers then at least you've got some honey of your own that you can also then throw into your current supply and sell and that's what I did and that's how native mercy was born because then you start having to formalize you know people who you give honey to are looking for proper invoices are looking for a proper bank account and and you know you have to now start working in some sort of formal structure and then that's when I registered native mercy in 2015 and then 2016 you know I started actually learning about beekeeping because the whole time I was selling honey I was not at the at the production phase I was just getting insane and then in 2016 that's when I enrolled myself for a beekeeping course at the time it was with a guy called Mike Miles he was at the time the chairperson for the South African bee industry organization we call it Sabio which is the industry regulator for beekeeping in South Africa so Mike Miles was doing these beekeeping courses he does beginners courses he does advanced beekeeping courses and I enrolled myself because I realized that look I actually have to have some sort of formal knowledge to inform what I'm doing because I've just been sort of winging it because all the time I didn't actually need to learn the production side of things now that I do I need some sort of knowledge to back me up and I was already in howting my father wasn't important so even though I was able to get tips from him I did not have the time to be with him full time for me to actually learn everything that I needed to learn with beekeeping and then I learned through the beekeeping beginners course and that's when I started getting behinds of my own and then started practicing what I learned from Mike Miles into my own beekeeping practice and that's how native nosy was born and that's how I actually got into beekeeping. Wow so let's get into that Mokhari you mentioned that your farmer and your father and the other farmers that you were outsourcing or procuring from were in Limpopo and you started your own beekeeping production is that based in howting? So most of so I do have beekeeping in howting but what what happened unintentionally was that the places because now I know we're probably going to come back to that as the interview goes but I don't have a farm native nosy doesn't have a farm so the places where my father had a network of farmers which were either crop farms or just livestock farming where they had other areas on the farm which they were not using and that network was from Limpopo because naturally my father is from Limpopo. I was not a farmer so I did not have any kind of network of farmers who I could then ask to place my beehives at and I did get a farmer in Pretoria who allowed me to place my beehives but the farm was not big enough and there was not enough vegetation to sustain my bees throughout the year so what happened was that my father's network helped me to actually have a variety of farmers which I or a variety of farms which I could place my bees at so that because with bees you have to if you're doing it at a commercial level or at a small scale level like myself where you are rotating the bees around to actually have enough honey throughout most of the year and is that you can't have them in one area if you are going to sell the honey for profit like I do if you are doing it at a small scale or at a hobby level where you just want beehives at your farm either for recreation or for you know pollinating your crops or just because you love bees you can have a farmer to and leave them permanently at the same location and I could not do that so the nearest network of farmers that I had was the farmers in Limpopo and then what I did in Pretoria is that I got the ever processing equipment at my house I dedicated a small space at the back of my house which was dedicated to processing so I would then place my beehives at these different farms in Limpopo and then when it's ready for harvesting I harvest the honey there and then I process it in Pretoria processing it is not talking manipulating the product processing is talking throwing the honey into an extractor where the honey can be extracted from the honeycomb and then be able to to be bottled so that we can be able to sell it and that part of the business takes place in Pretoria but the actual farming takes place in Limpopo and in Pretoria we have what we call observation hives so those would be the hives that I keep for filming for when you know I have media interviews when people want to have an idea of what bee farming is about and so the bees there are enough for that kind of demonstration but for the actual farming will we actually make the honey there to be sell at native that takes place in Limpopo wow so you know you're mentioning so many things here which is starting to pop so many questions in my mind so what I'm hearing you say is that you can farm bees virtually anyway and that you don't have to physically have a farm to farm bees it's a matter of investing in beehives and maybe putting it in a specific piece of land where those bees can produce is that correct that is correct so you don't really well having your own farm always helps because it centralizes operations and it cuts down on your costs so you don't need to run around to different locations for you to be able to move the bees and you know do hive inspections and then bring them to another location to harvest take them to another to bottle and stuff so having your own place is really really critical in terms of containing costs and also centralizing operations and but I didn't have it so in the absence of me having it was the next best thing to do so that's where we then speak to our network of farmers to host our hives for us the common denominator with beekeeping is that the place has to be secure so security is a big big factor because otherwise the beehives are very expensive and if you place your bees in an area where they are vulnerable to to to to vandalism vulnerable to theft and then you are losing your investment which is your beehive and which is a very expensive asset that is critical to your operations and so even if you are not farming on your own farm the most important thing is for you to get into a partnership or with a host that is that cares about bees and bee farming as much as you care about it so that they can make sure that in your absence then your assets are secure and the bees can actually thrive because even though the farmer may not be directly benefiting from the bees the bees from from from agro economic perspective and a social economic perspective are essential for our lives as humans and so you want to get into a partnership with somebody who understands the role of bees so that they can be very invested in ensuring that they're secure and even when you are not there the bees still are able to thrive and knowing that they're in an ideal environment with farmers who actually want them to thrive yeah so you did mention that you're mostly uh native nose is mostly from the processing part of it all side of of of bee keeping you're sourcing this honey you're packaging it and obviously selling it through to the market let's maybe focus on that processing element um did you find that your customers or your consumers started asking um things like for example when you buy uh the native nosy honey for example does honey expire and should it be kept you know in a fridge or in a in a in a cool area for example so um if it's raw honey it should not expire uh raw honey has an indefinite shelf life and someone was actually making a joke and saying it's actually a commodity like oil on the jse because honey does not rot if it's raw honey it shouldn't rot and the only thing is that it will crystallize um of the glucose content or the chemical makeup of the actual product of the actual honey um but it doesn't it doesn't rot so the the the client will ask that and then they'll say why is my honey crystallizing because they think that when it crystallizes it's rotten and we're like no it behaves that way because of the chemical makeup of the product but if that does not compromise the quality or the or the or the lifespan of the product uh you just simply take it in in its jar put it in a bath of hot water um in your sink go in a bowl and it should go back to its liquid form just do not put it in the microwave because then it will destroy all the enzymes that make honey what it is. Walk us through to your branding process Mokhari and getting that product packaged um and the reason for this is that sometimes always focus on the prahmi production you know but there's so many other things or red tape or things that we have to take the boxes that we have to take from a processing perspective so walk us through your journey in branding and packaging native norsi what type of food safety requirements did you have to adhere to um when selling honey um and also um yeah just and also maybe edge getting to a point where you educate the consumer on things like that raw honey versus processed honey this is the difference and this is how it would look like you know after you've kept it for a couple of months etc yeah so um i'll just take you through the whole thing so in terms of um farming so what you do is you have a beehive and then you um wax it you you you take beeswax and then you pour it hot inside of the beehive to actually attract bees to the hive and then you then take the beehive to a place like a farm which has some vegetation in season and the best time to do this is during spring and so between after july july august so between august and around this time november december you put your beehive out there in a place where there is vegetation in blossom and then you are hoping that that wax that you put inside the beehive is going to attract bees because bees are attracted to wax or anything that smells like any component of the beehive and then the bees come in and then they populate the beehive and then they stay there for as long as there's food um in the vicinity so you then give it a year or two depending on the area so how quick the honey will take to make will determine how much food there is around for the bees to eat this is going to be determined by the types of you know area is it is it a crop farm is it a wild flora farm so where they depend on indigenous vegetation is it an urban area where where it's depending on individual gardens um that that people plant you know that is going to be the source of food for the bees and depending on how much of that is available then it will determine how quickly the bees are able to actually make honey then they will make the honey they will first establish what we call the brood chamber which is the bottom part of the beehive once that is established i refer to it as the manufacturing plant then you have a top layer which you put on and that's where the bees put all the extra honey and this extra honey is not for us it's actually for the bees so that during seasons dry seasons like winter where there isn't enough food bees can then actually go back to this to this this honey that they've stored and then they will go back there to actually sustain themselves through the dry months so that they can be able to then survive winter and then during spring then they'll make up more honey again so we as beekeepers have to time that if it's closer to winter we don't harvest and then after the winter we harvest so harvesting you go to the beehive and then you take the top layer which i told you about then you take that for extraction how you extract is that you will physically remove this top part and take it to a processing plant where you take out it has what we call the hive frames you take these hive frames and then you place them inside an extractor and then you extract that honey it sort of spins out the honey out of the comb and then you put a mesh or a sift at the bottom of the extractor where it will separate the wax particles from the honey and then you let that honey rest what that process does it allows the honey to actually take out all the bubbles air bubbles to the top and then any sediment that will be left in the honey maybe i don't know pieces of soil or whatever to the bottom and then you give that about 24 hours and then you package it you literally open and that evolve and where the honey will come out and get into the bottle depending on how big you are you can that process can be automated or or or done by hand manually we are still doing it by hand so each and every single bottle that you get from native noses is bottled by hand we open and close that labor and then you then actually have it ready for the market but also depending on which how big you are so up until this year we were not using any food safety regulations and okay formal ones but now that we've opened a shop where we actually offer a retail interface and also we are getting clients that are providing honey to the formal market we are now having to formalize so part of that is a basic food safety and certificate that would be a certificate of acceptability that you have to get from your municipality they will then come to your premises look at your process look at the type of equipment that you are using to process your honey look at your your your hygiene you know how you are affecting your hygiene do you have places to wash your hands are your people wearing headscraps do you wear aprons are you have gloves on are they detergents to wash your hands are those detergents food safety detergents how do you wash your equipment that you bottle with so from a food safety perspective that would be the basic that you would actually need and then depending on the industry that you are actually supplying to you may need passive food food certification you may need halal food certification depending on who you are actually providing your food to and they will also then have their own requirements that you would then need to adhere to and they're extremely stringent and but they they do it to protect the consumers obviously so don't look at it as a limitation i used to look at it as a limitation like how is a black girl supposed to thrive in place but i realized that when you have those things it becomes easy up for you to actually get your honey in any market within the the confines of the country and then from the labeling perspective the Department of Agriculture has a labeling requirement which dictates what kind of information needs to be on your packaging and also how should it be displayed so the text size and the gram of or the mass of your product where your product is actually packaged from you know so that people can be able to get hold of you and all of that kind of information the name of your company the visibility of it and all of that is it raw is it irradiated is it not irradiated all that information needs to be declared on your product so that it can be compliant to the labeling standards of the South African Department of Agriculture and this is also done to inform the consumer because you want to know if this is raw honey if this is not raw honey the country of origin is it a South African product if not where is it from is it only from there or is it from there but it's labeled in South Africa is it from there and also labeled there or packaged there so it's very interesting to inform the consumer so that they can be able to make informed decision when they get the product and those are some of the the the legislation that you actually have to observe when you are packaging your product or when you are processing your product wow and here we thought you know eating bee eating honey is just straight from the bees you're selling it through to us and that's that but there's so many things that are involved throughout that process for that product to be sold through to a consumer I read some I think recently I think it was a few weeks ago or yeah a few weeks ago where you posted on social media and we're pretty much thanking everybody that has support of native Norsi over the years simply because you know they've been a lot of highs and very and very low lows in your business and so take us through the challenges that you've experienced in the past five years of having to run native Norsi oh so the challenge I don't even want to get into them because there are so many but I think people have really embraced native Norsi because it really is one of a kind you don't get a lot of people of my demographic or profile who actually get into bee farming so I think one which can be a challenge but also an advantage is the fact that I had no script I have no one to refer to and everyone that I refer to does not have the same experience that I have you know and they are normally Caucasian they are normally male they are normally middle aged or you know in the older generation and they normally have farms or resources and even if they don't have a farm they have resources to get a farm and so I think some of those challenges have been you know and talking about beekeeping to people who do not face the same limitations that I do so I had to literally write my own script decide how I want to do beekeeping and with the limitations how am I going to find a way to actually get to where I need to get to and one of them being farming without a farm I mean then has its own challenges you know and you find that even though a crop farmer is you know willing to have us on their farms they will probably have like some spraying programs that they have to undertake and with bees being there and us not you know owning the land they will tell us that look in a week we are spraying come and remove your bees and that is a logistical and very expensive project to undertake because now you have to find another location for your beehives you have to now organize resources hire trucks and things like that to take them from point A to B your labor costs go high so just trying to farm smart given the limitations that we have and obviously as I was talking about the red tape all the regulations that we have to adhere to to actually do what we do before we open the shop we open our first shop in July we knew that we had to do these things but because we were not doing it formally we were not selling to the formal market we're literally selling from our online store households who wanted to buy so say it's you buddy you want to buy you are in the Eastrend you simply log on to our website you choose the products that you want fill in your details and your delivery address and then we package from our home and send it to you so there was no actual red tape that we had to observe for us to actually do it we were just from our corner obviously practicing hygiene to make sure that you know our product had integrity and it did not harm any lives that actually consumed it because obviously we are not trying to do anything that may implicate our product in a bad way so we did you know do our part in terms of practicing safe hygiene fast to actually package but we were not doing it with a gun against our head that if you don't do this then you can't train now that we have the premises we have to get all of these things and they're not cheap you'll find that you can only have stainless steel in your kitchen you know you need to have two basins you need to have changing rooms and have like all this protective gear PPE that people have to actually use you know your environment must not have certain noise levels your things must you know so there's so so so much your paint must be a certain paint it can't be a matte paint which absorbs dust it has to be an all-base paint that you have to paint and by that time you already painted your store you are still painting all like all the capital costs that you you had to undertake to actually start your place so that is really really tedious and it's expensive you know because you don't have that budget like like it's literally like hand to mouth and so so that also came with with its own limitation yeah just people then you know not so sure black lady be keeping like are you sure you're doing the right thing is this product even like where did you say you do your honey do you understand so you having to actually convince those people who are not so convinced that a black girl can actually show up in and do this thing and that also comes with its limitation so constantly trying to prove yourself to people that look this product is superior yes I did it and yes I can put my head on the block for it and stuff so just you know convincing the market that you are actually legit and you actually know what you're doing and that your product can actually trust it and is is another limitation so I think just being a pioneer in a space that has not you know been dominated by people like yourself has had its own challenges and in terms of me entering into the space wow so for everybody that's listening where can we find native noses products so we currently opened our own store which is in Greenland Village Center it's the native nosy honey emporium in Greenland Village Center in Menlo Park Pretoria and you can definitely get it there we not only sell bee products or honey products we also sell other African indigenous products that compliment our honey that's also made by other young female black entrepreneurs that have equal quality and integrity as the native nosy product has been known for and we also have stockings we've got lamarina foods in modern fontane Johannesburg and we also have in Brooklyn Pretoria pure living and that's our health goods and our honey is also hosted by them and press for coffee in a very Glen Pretoria whose coffee products and bread and then they also have a nice deli which our honey makes part of the deli we also in Cape Town have a wheeler's pharmacy they also have a nice deli they sell the most amazing product and what I love about them is that they also support a lot of local brands and so you can get our honey from them they are in Hout Bay it's called wheeler's pharmacy and lastly pajamas and jam which is in Strunt in Pretoria in in in Cape Town they also have a beautiful deli which also sells our honey we also are looking to partner with pharmacies delis fresh food stores then actually embrace the kind of product that we sell because we do not want to sell our honey in the mainstream market where people who are going there are not looking for artisan products they are just you know looking for what the market can offer and normally they are the kind of consumers who will complain that you know it has crystallized or it has it's slightly more expensive because Rohan is slightly more expensive than irradiated honey which is basically imported honey with no nutritional value that is what you will play on on most commercial retail shelves so if there are people you know scattered all of us and every girl who are looking to partner with us they are more than welcome and lastly we saw from our online store we've got a native nosy online store which is nativenosy.co.za you go to our website and say buy honey and then it will give you all the products that we actually sell in our store as well as our honey you pick the products you like you check out enter your personal details and we will deliver any product on our online store wherever you are in the country because we deliver nationwide so that's where that is fantastic and I know we're running out of time but I really feel like we shouldn't have a next life because there's another part of native nosy that you mentioned about pollination services you know and I'm very interested in that as a farmer as well and that also opens the eye to many other farmers in terms of how you can collaborate with other farmers that are typically not in your niche that could benefit in terms of your farming production so I hope we could have you once again next time but just to some of our conversation what's next for native nosy? Oh my god there is so much. We are obviously looking into growing our pollination part of the business which I am happy to have another engagement with you on that because not only does it you know give us another service offering as native nosy but what it does is that it also provides a revenue stream for native nosy so we are looking at growing that and partnering with more croc farmers to grow that side of the business and then we're also looking at because now we've got a retail space we are now doing a lot of bee keeping training because a lot of people come to us they want to know you know how we got into the space they want to start their own small little thing whether it's for hobbies or whether they want to do it at a commercial scale and we were redirecting a lot of the stuff and we realized actually we know all of the stuff why don't we actually just do it ourselves so now we offer bee keeping training straight from our emporium and then we use our Pretoria site to actually do the practicals and then the last thing is corporate gifting and eventing where we curate gifts around our honey products to actually you know do impact gifting where it's not just you know getting something from a retail shop putting it together in a gift basket but it is a basket that celebrates what native nosy is about and it also then empowers everybody who is involved in the native nosy value chain but also because native nosy intentionally sources from like-minded entrepreneurs and farmers who are giving superior products and superior quality and these are not products that you would find in the mainstream so we are looking at sharing that from a gifting perspective and from an event perspective when we give you know other entrepreneurs who have unique offerings to actually curate events around that whether it's honey tasting whether it's um indigenous teas um whatever it is that we can curate events around that and actually offer it to the markets to give them a different experience and to let them in into our world through the gifting and the events. Wow that is interesting I think I've learned something over and above everything that you actually said as well impact gifting you know it's really about educating the consumer where the product comes from and the importance of supporting local but not only supporting local but there's a definitely added advantage in supporting local products and understanding what you're buying how this process um you know who the partners is who sorry who the partners are in creating this specific gift Mochari thank you so much for for your time today I really really appreciate it I'm really going to hold you on to that one to have another one another conversation another podcast interview because your product your brand is so interesting definitely niche in the industry and for my side you are the only black girl that I know is in that's in beekeeping so I know that you are definitely doing the most in in a very in an industry that you you weren't you didn't really have enough resources when you started you were just trialing things and look what it's become so I definitely commend you for for still being while growing the native no seed brand for five years over and above the challenges but yeah I think I just wanted to thank you for for your time thank you so much for having me and let's have the pollination one I know that a lot of our farmers are in crop and livestock farming and it would really be beneficial for all of us to see the touch points between the different types of farming that we do because at the end of the day we are all contributing towards food security and we are all contributing towards job creation and we need to really collaborate so that those aspects can come alive and benefit you know the country as a whole from native no seed which is a proudly South African brand honey brand please do check out their website with all the other products that they sell they definitely do sell the brand so or the honey online as well as the different stockists stockists or location that she had mentioned but I do believe that all of that information will be on the website so as mochari said you know it's not about just buying products of the mainstream retail it's about understanding how the product was made why you're procuring it and who else you're supporting along the value chain so instead of just buying a product let's just buy it with an intention because we are creating an impact as consumers and for anybody wanting to be an entrepreneur in this space you could definitely learn so many lessons from mochari's story she went from just selling bees taking bees from her father's production and selling it to consumers because she could taste the difference between real honey versus processed honey with other products that are really not serve you as an individual in terms of nutritional value and then she created this brand so if you're watching and you're thinking of what type of business to start you could definitely be a value adder into the agricultural supply chain especially if you're interested in farming it's not only about being on a primary level but there's so many opportunities around the the the agricultural value chain that we can all leverage off so I really hope that we could have mochari soon again to have a different conversation around her other service that she offers or partners with farmers but that's it for me today and thank you so much for joining us thank you buddy for having me