Why I started
a honey company
IT'S ALL ABOUT
Helping People.
When I started Nature Nate’s Honey Co., I was asked by a mentor, “What do you want to do with a honey company?
” My quick answer was,“I want to help people.” I desired to create a company, not just sell a product. By creating a
company, we would be able
to provide fair-paying
jobs and, ultimately through
the sale of honey, be
able to make a tangible
impact in the lives of
others. Always starting
with making the most
pure, best-tasting
honey for our customers.
Lal - Taking Ethiopian Honey to New Heights
Meet the Pharmacist, who became an advocate and a champion for the advancement of the honey sector in Ethiopia. Born and raised in Addis Ababa until the age of 15, Seble Makonnen earned her Pharmacy degree in 2002 from Butler University (Indiana, USA) and practiced as a pharmacist for more than a decade in the US, before returning to Ethiopia with her family in 2011.
Seble was greatly influenced by her visionary father; he was a farmer, and the son of a farmer who believed in the importance of education, hard work, and dedication which he instilled in her at a very young age. Seble’s daily interaction with individuals from very different backgrounds, cultures and languages was influenced by her mother who always valued and embraced these differences and who believes in a strong social fabric and importance of supporting each other in personal and professional journeys.
The decision to move back to Ethiopia came from the advice of her father who had asked her and her husband to join the family business founded by him 30 years ago, and is engaged in the distribution of high quality agricultural technologies and in promoting Conservation Agriculture, with a vision to unlock the agricultural potential of Ethiopia sustainably with a dream to one day be able to witness a proud food secure Ethiopia, which he believes given Ethiopia’s natural resource, is truly the breadbasket of Africa. This work took her husband, who joined the family business to many corners of Ethiopia, which gave him the opportunity to bring back small collections of rural products such as honey, coffee, oats and regional artifacts. By early 2016, Seble had a large collection of many unique honey varieties, that differ in taste, texture, color, flavor and smell, which became her prized collections. The sudden realization of the immeasurable abundance and diversity of Ethiopia's natural resource and Ethiopia's centuries old beekeeping tradition and history is what gave birth to Lal -The Honey Company.
Honey became the gateway through which Seble soon began to explore and unravel the great enormity of the natural resources Ethiopia is blessed in many ways, especially in beekeeping and honey production. The journey through different parts of Ethiopia to engage with beekeepers allowed her to learn about the different honey varieties, their use and value in different regions and cultures which inspired her to promote not just the honey but also the communities producing them. Seble now works with a strong conviction and a great sense of responsibility as this has become her life passion. Seble highly values the rich indigenous knowledge of beekeepers, who share with her the medicinal application of certain honey varieties in their communities. Her background in pharmacy is enabling her to investigate the prospect of identifying honey varieties with high medicinal values, to market as medicinal products.
Today, Seble, through Lal, would like to be the driving force behind the recognition of many varieties of Ethiopian honey and to catapult their status to the world stage.
Seble concludes "I am committed to telling our collective Ethiopian honey history, to share with the world the centuries old traditional beekeeping that has sustained the largest bee colony in Africa, one honey variety, one community at a time"
Lal - Taking Ethiopian Honey to New Heights
How TO USE HONEY
Although my favorite way to use honey is straight out of the bottle, here are a
few of my go-to uses for nature's sweetener.
Buttery and creamy
melting texture
Collected from Bore, Home
To The Indigenous
Buttery and creamy
melting texture
THE LAL HONEY COMPANY
SUBSCRIBE !
Sign up with your email address to receive upcoming news and events.
We respect your privacy
