site.btaYoung Woman Lives Her Dream of Saving the Bees

Monika has lived in the countryside since she was a child. She holds a bachelor's degree in finance and a master's degree in international banking and financial markets. After university, she decided that living in the big city and working with numbers was not her thing. Earlier in her life, she developed a passion for nature, climate and the environment. One day, she read a newspaper article which said that the bee population had dwindled by 30% in 20 years. It sealed it for her. She would be working to save the bees.

The young woman's story was presented in a Bulgarian National Television documentary titled The Advantage of Being a Beekeeper, which was aired during the programme Small Stories on January 2.

Fulfilling a romantic urge proved a tough job for Monika. Using money she had received from her parents for graduation, she bought three beehives and set them up on family property. She consulted a book to learn how to raise bees organically, which, she explains, meant no treatment for disease and no feeding. Just reading books without learning directly from experienced individuals resulted in many mistakes. Those three beehives became 10, then decreased to three again, and later, when she had six of them, a bear came out of the forest and ravaged them. Monika was not discouraged. Now, at the age of 26, she owns approximately 100 beehives and plans to stick to apiculture as a livelihood.

"Since most beekeepers were men, they treated me with mistrust at first, because I was a young girl who looked even younger than her age, a smiling lass who could not be serious about such a job. With time, they realized I was really keen on it, and they began to take me much more seriously. Most people are happy for me at present and generally have a good, positive opinion about me," Monika says.

She believes that people can learn a lot from bees. "A bee colony is a vast universe which can teach us how to advance together and how we can achieve much more as a community than if we act as separate individuals. It's fascinating. I have seen how a bee, after visiting a flower contaminated with a pesticide or something, is kept out of the hive by the other bees, because they know that otherwise the whole colony could be contaminated," she says.

She goes on to comment: "Bees are unique creatures which can even sacrifice their life for the survival of the colony. If we understand this and somehow turn it to our own personal lives, if we can sacrifice our own needs for the common good, we will be much more advanced, not just in the material sense but also spiritually, much more advanced as a society. I am convinced that we can live in a society and still be individuals. If we listen to our inner voice and listen to the love inside us, we will have no problem being individualistic and thinking about the common good at the same time."